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Home My WebLink AboutMinutes CC - 01/18/2007 - MINS 01 18 07 REG (Migrated from Optiview)Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 1 of 34 Regular Meeting of the Mayor and City Council of the City of Milton was held on January 18, 2007 at 5:30 PM, Mayor Lockwood presiding. CALL TO ORDER Mayor Lockwood called the meeting to order. ROLL CALL City Clerk Marchiafava reminded everyone to silence their cell phones and pagers. Additionally, those wishing to provide public comment during a public hearing or at the conclusion of the meeting under the public comment section are required to complete a public comment card. They need to be turned in to the Clerk. City Clerk Marchiafava called the roll. Councilmembers Present: Mayor Joe Lockwood, Councilmember Karen Thurman, Councilmember Julie Zahner Bailey, Councilmember Lusk, Councilmember O’Brien, Councilmember Tina D’Aversa-Williams, and Councilmember Rick Mohrig. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE Mayor Lockwood led the Pledge of Allegiance. APPROVAL OF MEETING AGENDA City Clerk Marchiafava read Agenda Item no. 07-154 approval of the meeting agenda. City Manager Bovos asked for the deferral of Agenda Item No. 06-139, which is the second reading under unfinished business of an ordinance establishing noise control within the City of Milton. He asked that it be deferred to a work session agenda. However, he suggested that since this item was publicly advertised that the Council take public comment with respect to the formulation of the ordinance at the point and time at which this item would have normally been heard. City Manager Bovos said there were no other changes to the agenda from staff. Motion: Councilmember Lusk moved to approve the meeting agenda as amended: 1) Deferral of Agenda Item No. 06-139, Noise Control Ordinance, to a work session. Second and Vote: Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams seconded the motion. There was no Council discussion. The motion passed unanimously. PUBLIC COMMENT Mayor Lockwood stated that the next section is public comment. Public Comment is the time for citizens to share information with the Mayor and City Council and provide input and opinions on any matter that is not scheduled for its own public hearing during today’s meeting. Each citizen that chooses to participate in public comment must complete a comment card and submit it to the City Clerk. Please remember that this is not a time to engage the Mayor or members of City Council in conversation. When your named is called please come forward and speak into the microphone stating your name and address for the record. You will have three minutes for remarks. Mayor Lockwood asked if there were any public comment. Gordon Hunter, 14680 Wood Road, Milton, stated that he lives on a gravel road and right now there seems to be no maintenance on the road. He called the City about it and was referred to Roddy Motes. Mr. Motes informed him that there were contracts in the works and there is no maintenance to be provided right now. Mr. Hunter thought the County would be contracted to continue the maintenance work on roads continually upon the origination of the city. There are potholes in roads and no way to fix them and no process in sight for that kind of relief. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 2 of 34 Mr. Hunter also reported a street light out at the intersection of Red and Hopewell. He reported it one week ago and the light is still is out. This is a very busy intersection and the area is very dark and hard to judge at night and feels it needs to get taken care of. It is a very simple thing and we need to get it done. He wanted to know who would be in charge of maintenance of roads if we had an ice storm happen or during the spring during thunderstorms when trees are down. He asked who is responsible for spreading salt and clearing the roads on bridges, etc. He feels there has to be a plan that can be erected in a matter of hours and not days or weeks. He stated that with all the development on Crabapple going on right now, it would be a great opportunity if the little gravel bypass road that goes around Crabapple Circle could be re-routed about 100 yards further north to make it a northern bypass around the City center of Crabapple. He felt that now was the time to do it because of the state of construction going on within that area. If they put back the gravel road the way it was it will serve no purpose at all. Those are some items that he has noticed around the City and he wanted to bring them to the Council’s attention. Carol Lane, 14890 E. Bluff Road, Milton, stated that zoning issues would be coming up soon and it was her understanding that the City does not have a planning board yet and nothing else is in place in order to address these issues. She stated that Councilmember O’Brien reiterated in his campaign that he had a plan for having immediate control of zoning decisions and wanted all zoning processes to be put in a moratorium on new applications so that the community can update its land use plan and develop a vision for its future. She felt the City was not ready to hear any zoning at this point. She stated that what happened last week on the process of the agenda and resolutions from the last meeting, she felt the public still needed sufficient notice, especially with the Mayor’s assistant. The fact that that was voted out and had absolutely no public input was not right. She feels the issue needs to be looked at with a more thorough discussion held. Kim Horne, 415 Wade Glen Ct, Alpharetta, stated that noise pollution could be very intrusive for the community and quality of environment for everyone. Milton should enact a noise ordinance that is extremely strong with responsive control for excessive noise. The ordinance before the Board is not fully developed to protect the City. There are stricter laws that could be looked at. She questioned if the Council and staff looked at an amplified noise ordinance that other areas are using – they seem to be a little more protective especially in the area of plainly audible standards versus what Milton currently has that have more time standards. She stated that she agreed with Ms. Lane in that the City might not be fully ready to start addressing zoning and respectfully asked that the Board uphold the Comprehensive Land Use Plan, that all the county and now Milton approved master planning, zoning resolutions, and guidelines are enforced to the strictest letter of the law. REPORTS AND PRESENTATIONS Mayor Lockwood stated that there were no reports and presentations at this time. CONSENT AGENDA Mayor Lockwood stated that there were no items on the Consent Agenda. ZONING AGENDA Mayor Lockwood stated that there were no items under the Zoning Agenda. FIRST PRESENTATION Approval of an Ordinance Regulating Sexually-Oriented Businesses and Related Ordinances. This is the first presentation of the ordinance establishing licensing requirements and regulations for sexually oriented businesses within the city of Milton. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 3 of 34 Motion and Vote: Councilmember Thurman moved to approve the First Presentation. Councilmember Mohrig seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously. UNFINISHED BUSINESS Approval of an Ordinance Establishing Noise Control within the City of Milton, Georgia. Deferred to a future work session by motion and vote. Public Comment Kerry Eubank, Montana’s Bar and Grill, Highway 9, stated that he would like some clarification on the noise ordinance and he understands that it is going to a work session. Being a violator of the Fulton County noise ordinance, he would love to see this tightened up, plainly audible, and clearly heard. He would like it put in decimals and stated that he would buy the equipment. He would like for the Council to reconsider and tighten the ordinance up so he can stay within the ordinance. Approval of an Ordinance to Adopt and Approve Chapter 8, Parks and Recreation, and providing for inclusion and identification in the future developed Code of Ordinances for the City of Milton, Georgia. (Second Reading) Community Services Director Greg Wilson stated that Chapter 8 of the City Code of Ordinances recommended by the staff is for regulating allowable uses of the public parks and recreational activities within those parks. It instills what the rules and responsibilities are of the recreation of parks director, allowable activities, specific prohibited activities, violations, and enforcements as enacted by the public safety department. Additionally, Chapter 8 describes special events, what the departments are, how people need to bond and provide assurances, cleaning of the park, etc. There are a number of items that deal with those things as well. He is available to answer any questions members of the Council may have. Mayor Lockwood asked if there was any public comment on this item. There was no public comment. Motion and Second: Councilmember Mohrig moved to approve the Ordinance to Adopt and Approve Chapter 8, Parks and Recreation, and providing for inclusion and identification in the future developed Code of Ordinances for the City of Milton, Georgia. Councilmember Lusk seconded the motion. Discussion on the Motion: Councilmember Thurman stated that she had an item that to discuss under Item M, Smoking. “It shall be unlawful for a minor to smoke in the park”. She believes it should be unlawful for anyone to smoke in a City park. Smoking regulations now are you are not allowed to smoke in buildings; you are not allowed to smoke in restaurants. The parks are an area where our children are going to be and she feels like we should not allow smoking for adults or minors in the city parks. She believes most city parks in Alpharetta do not allow smoking. Mayor Lockwood asked the City Attorney to address this issue. City Attorney Scott stated that he did not see a problem. It is part of the local police power and certainly within jurisdiction and has the power to do that. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that she would support that modification. Motion to Amend: Councilmember Thurman moved to Amend the Motion by revising Section M as follows: “Smoking. It shall be unlawful for a minor or an adult to smoke in the park.” Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams seconded the motion. There was no Council discussion. The motion passed unanimously. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 4 of 34 Continued Discussion on Original Motion: Councilmember Lusk addressed Community Development Director Wilson and referenced Article Section 4D; Killing Wildlife. He had a question about how the section is crafted. It appears that the city manager could be the executioner and wonders if it is necessary to have that phrase included: “Unlawful for a person to hunt, trap, shoot, mame or kill, any animal or wildlife…..without the written permission of the city manager”. Community Services Director Wilson stated that this was certainly not their intent to suggest the City Manager would be killing wildlife. It was obviously an oversight. City Manager Bovos asked for clarification, was Councilmember Lusk asking that the language be removed. From staff perspective, certainly we would like to see that language left in from the City Manager’s perspective. There may be an event where an animal that has rabies or an animal needs to be trapped or killed for the safety of the citizens. We would want to leave the section in that prohibits that type of activity, but allows for an exception in the event we have a public safety or citizen who is in danger or could be in danger as a result of an animal being in the park facility. Councilmember Lusk asked if that would be covered under Animal Control. City Manager Bovos said it is actually not covered under Animal Control. Animal Control, as far as the enforcement, would not be covered, but if we were to remove the ability of the City Manager to have written designation and we have to get the animal out of the park before anything could occur relating to safety. We would want to be able to enforce Animal Control provisions within our parks. That is primarily what we are going to see on City property. Councilmember Lusk had another question referring to Section 4K “Posting of Signs”. He asked would it be necessary to make reference to the City Sign Ordinance under that section since in section 4F we are making reference to the City’s Noise Ordinance. City Attorney Scott said that he believes that the City Sign Ordinance already says that it is not lawful to post signs on trees. Councilmember Lusk referring to Section 4C “Permit Applications”. He asked do you think there is a need to address parking limitations under special events. Earlier or above this section in this ordinance makes reference to bussing people in. He does not want to labor this or get into too much restrictive language; he just recognized that as a potential problem. We talked about earlier that vehicles needed to be parked in designated parking spaces, and then when you get into these special events where there are hoards of people. Community Services Director Wilson asked for clarification on Councilmember Lusk’s question and asked if he was asking under Section 4C, that we include addition language. Councilmember Lusk responded yes. Community Services Director Wilson stated that he did not think it was an initial necessity. He might defer to the City Attorney or City Manager to see if they had any additional thoughts. His initial view was that it was not a necessity there. City Attorney Scott said he did not see any issues from a legal perspective. He can certainly think of some logistical perspectives, but that is not really what is being asked. City Manager Bovos stated he was actually a little bit confused and asked if Councilmember Lusk was referring to 5 of 8 under Section C. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 5 of 34 Councilmember Lusk replied yes. This is information to be included on the permit application. City Manager Bovos stated that from their perspective, special event permits does not necessarily include a special event just at a park location. For example, the Roswell Women’s Club is holding a special event on a property that they are marketing on Dorris Road and that has fallen under the special event premise. We would more than likely not grant a special event permit if there was not adequate parking. We are certainly not going to get into the position of managing or trying to find or provide additional parking for special events if the facilities that are requesting to be used do not contain that parking. For example, the Roswell Women’s Club will be bussing people in and have gone through both the Public Safety review and Community Development review with respect to how that occurs and how the logistics of how that bus system works. The origin of that bus system is actually outside of the City of Milton so we have no potential jurisdiction over that event. But to answer the question, as far as plan for parking or parking spaces, again he is not going to grant a license or permit for an event that does not have adequate parking. Councilmember Lusk said that was his question. He had two other points. Under section 7A “Performance Bond”, subparagraph I. In the main title reference is made to performance bond and in subsection I reference is made regarding performance deposit. He asked what is it; is it a monetary deposit or is it actually a performance bond. City Manager Bovos stated we actually offer both capabilities for people who are requesting such events. We are currently working with the City Attorney’s office on a bond program that allows people to buy bonds and the City Attorney’s office would then manage those bonds and there is an offset cost to that. In addition, they can provide us with the cash deposit that we hold in escrow, when the event is completed we would refund that money. This is a very similar process that we are actually deploying with respect to land disturbance permits and development within the City of Milton. Councilmember Lusk asked if it is the City’s bond form. City Manager Bovos responded yes. Councilmember Lusk continued and stated that further in Paragraph C “Harmless Agreement”, applicant is required to provide a safe harmless agreement. He asked is that also a City form. City Manager Bovos stated that is correct. Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams had a question or point of clarification for Mr. Wilson. She asked would this document/ordinance be the one that would specify how to go about working with the various associations that might come under a certain parking requirement. For example, the Hopewell Youth Association that currently utilizes Bell Memorial Park, which falls within the City limits would certainly fall under these guidelines, but is that a special use permit that they have that is long term. City Manager Bovos explained that there is a separate agreement that the Council passed during the month of December that applies to youth sports associations or any associations utilizing any public facility. They are governed under a completely separate set of guidelines outside of this. Therefore, no reference to that subject needs to be listed in the ordinance. Councilmenber Zahner Bailey addressed Mr. Wilson regarding, Section 2, referencing the City Manager may appoint a recreational parks director. For clarification, would that director already be a budgeted position or are there currently plans to fill that particular position. She asked if he could expand on that whether that is Greg Wilson or the City Manager. City Manager Bovos responded that at this point and time we have created a Community Services Department that includes transportation, field services, public works, parks and recreation. We have no actively programmed parks that the City actually programs. Coucilmember D’Aversa-Williams referenced earlier the Hopewell Youth Association and they are the only association at this point and time actively programming within our facilities. As a result of that, we have not created a parks and recreation director position, but have created a department that oversees that function. Mr. Wilson serves as public works director, transportation director, and the parks and recreation director. No different than Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 6 of 34 we have multiple director levels being served by one position in other areas within the organization. In the event that the parks and recreation program is expanded, it would be reevaluated at that time to determine whether there is a need for a specific parks and recreation director within the organization based upon not only volume but infrastructure aspects that may be associated with parks and recreation. Councilmember Zahner Bailey referred to Section 4C, regarding Land Disturbance within any park land. It may be that this was an earlier question that may have been resolved internally, but it appears there was a question as to whether or not there need to be specific reference to potential land disturbance within park land, and whether or not that would be handled within the section that talks about injuring public property and whether or not that needs to be distinguishable from necessary land disturbance at some point that we need to build the ball fields or putting paths and/or trails in. She asked if that had been clarified within this document. Community Services Director Wilson stated it is his understanding that the document would cover from that perspective. It does not cite intentional growth for ball fields and those sorts of activities. His discussions with the arborist, he agreed with the way it was worded. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that in the future when we start planning for a park, the arborist would be involved and land disturbance would not occur without appropriate identification of tree coverage. City Manager Bovos replied that is correct. Councilman O’Brien questioned Section 4B, regarding “Fire Arms”. He asked could that be rolled into injury of public property. His concern is if a lawful person with no criminal intent is not engaged in any unlawful activity, but perhaps a duly licensed fire arm owner with a carry arms permit from the state of Georgia, would that be a permitted activity. He asked can we in fact from a 2nd Amendment standpoint say that no one may possess a fire arm in that context. Public Safety Director Chris Lagerbloom stated we can and should regulate this based on the environment in a park. In his opinion that would be an area of mass public congregation and that is not something that he would perceive anyone having a lawful need to have a gun in the park. Councilmember Zahner Bailey wanted to verify under Fire Arms it referenced fire works, the variance process by which the community or group would go through to request a variance. She asked would it be administrative variance or is it covered under the variance process. City Manager Bovos replied it would be a special event application through this chapter. Councilmember Thurman stated that she had a constituent approach her wanting to know if we were allowing anyone to use any of the fields up in Birmingham for any kind of practices. They are looking for fields to the point that they do not care if it is a cow pasture right now. They offered to mow it themselves so they can use it for lacrosse practice. They wanted to know if any time in the near future we are planning on allowing that type of thing. City Manager Bovos responded that there are no plans at this point to open the Birmingham Park for that type of activity. We do have insurance coverage on that land in the event someone was to be injured, however, not traditional park and recreational insurance. It would be strictly from a liability perspective. The park is also not covered under the current CH2 Hill contract for maintenance or service because it is undeveloped. Signs need to be posted regarding no trespassing and no use. The purpose to date has been to have that facility closed until a point in time it is developed. Mayor Lockwood asked that the staff explore that option so that in the near future we might be able to do that since there is a concern with the lack of park space. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 7 of 34 Mayor Lockwood stated we have a motion for Agenda Item #06-140 on approval of an Ordinance to Adopt and Approve Chapter 8, Parks and Recreation, and providing for inclusion and identification in the future development Code of Ordinances for the City of Milton, Georgia, with the amendment to band smoking altogether. Vote: There was no further Council discussion. The motion passed unanimously. An Ordinance Adopting Amended Rules and Procedures for the City Council Meetings and Public Hearings for the City of Milton, Georgia and for other purposes. (Second Reading) Ordinance No. 07-01-03 City Manager Bovos discussed the procedures for the City Council meetings. It is a two part presentation. The first is with respect to the amendments that are listed in the ordinance itself and under staff reports and comments he will walk through the PowerPoint presentation based upon processes that are associated with this specific policy. There are two primary changes to the rules and procedures. The first is on the second page under section 6, mayor pro tem. We have changed the language with respect to balancing what is currently referenced in the Charter and what is in the rules and procedures. It is easier at this point in time just to reference the Charter for the election of the mayor pro tem and we have done that through adding Sections 3.29 and 3.30. Lastly, in Section D 12, subsection B, under Work Sessions, we have added the addition of work session meetings as the second Thursday of every month, which would mean that we would meet in regular Council meetings the 1st and 3rd Thursdays, the 2nd Thursdays for Work Session. We then clearly define that the Work Sessions will be held at 5:30 pm, which is the current time we had normal Council Meetings and they will be held in Council Chambers. Work Sessions are a public forum and there is no voting that takes place. We do not go through the traditional practices we would have done during normal City Council Meetings. The goal of the Work Sessions is strictly to allow items to be introduced and discussed both between staff and Council and gain consent on whether or not that item carries forward to the agenda. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that she had a couple of questions regarding Work Sessions. Within Item 1, she wanted to clarify that those meetings are recorded and we have minutes of those meetings as she believes is outlined here. She wanted to make sure that we are clear and that the public is clear that those meetings are recorded and whether or not those recordings, just like the minutes and recordings of these meetings, would be maintained as reference if we ever wanted to go back and refer to what our discussions had been. Also within Work Sessions, she was interested in the perspective of staff and also Council as to whether or not we could allow for some limited public comments if it was germane to the topic of the Work Session. Many of us are receptive and want the input of our public if it was germane to the Work Session topic. City Manager Bovos responded that he and the City Clerk had a conversation today about minutes for Work Sessions. As an organization perspective, we have no problem recording the meetings and keeping the minutes, but reiterates that no official action takes place. The recall of minutes or of the recording would simply be from staff or Council’s perspective to revisit what was said. Minutes are traditionally done in the bullet format and are not brought back to Council for adoption because no formal action was taken. Just a recounting of what occurred during the work session. Regarding public comment, it is an extremely valid point. Anytime the end product is improved through public participation that is a beneficial thing for the organization overall. The challenge is how do we allow public comment in a time frame that facilitates the agenda’s that we are going to have for work sessions, which at this point are going to be pretty lengthy. Some items need to be discussed, and some items discussed quickly to manage the overall process. His recommendation is to spend just a minute on the process, but traditionally if an item comes to a work session and there is public comment and feedback, his preference would be that staff would follow up with any of those residents or constituents who are requesting or have additional information or input. Staff can call meetings in public participation meetings or even call people who have expressed an interest to be sure we are representing the needs of the community. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 8 of 34 The only way to find that out, however, is if there is some type of notification or some type of identification of the Work Session that those people exists. Other than the public comment portion from his perspective we are absolutely fine in allowing public comments. His only recommendation would be that we limit that in some nature by totality so that we do not end up having public hearings develop out of a Work Session and then that could potentially be the entire Work Session timeframe. Mayor Lockwood suggested we possibly have something like our comment cards. The public is welcome make comments at the Work Session and anything the public wants to say or recommendations or comments can be put in writing. It can be reviewed and if contact or discussions are needed it can be done later. City Manager Bovos said absolutely. They are not opposed to having public comment at the Work Session. He suggested that it be limited in totality and by person, such as 2 or 3 minutes per person with a 10 minute or 15 minute total so that we can continue through. If there are issues with the ordinance and we have five people taking the whole fifteen minutes, clearly we know there are issues with the ordinance and it needs to be addressed before it can move forward. Councilmember Zahner Bailey asked if it could be a combination of the two and limit that during any one Work Session that no public comment would be greater than 2 – 3 minutes. It could be that people come and would prefer just to give us those comments and we could have the benefit of those comments during the course of our discussion. That is really the intent of her question is to ensure we have the benefit of our citizens’ input while we are in the midst of the Work Session so that we do not preclude ourselves from considering those comments while we are having a healthy dialog. Her request would be could we consider as part of the adoption of this ordinance to have language that would amend this Section D to state that we would accept public comment that is germane to that Work Session and topic, limited to no more than 15 minutes with a limit of 2 – 3 persons, depending on the number of people, and that could be up to the Mayor to determine at that Work Session. For clarification, that would be 15 minutes total for all items. But, perhaps the language that is currently there, if we had a particularly heavy Work Session and there were 6 or 7 items and 15 minutes would not be enough, it would then still be the pleasure of the Mayor to be able to on a day by day basis to extend that if we needed to so in order to accommodate more public comment. Mayor Lockwood stated that he agrees if there is an issue that deserves more public comment that we do have the option to extend the time. Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams stated as a point of clarification, the city of Alpharetta, for example, when they had their Work Session; she had the pleasure of being in front of them. She was the public commenting and they were given an hour to complete the conversation during their public comment. She asked what is the difference between what Councilmember Zahner Bailey is referring to in public comment and the difficult work session that we have enjoyed with some of our fellow cities that may be 15-30 minutes or 1 hour long. City Manager Bovos stated that in the particular example that Councilmember D-Aversa-Williams just used, she was the presenter for the city of Alpharetta and we may have external people presenting during Work Sessions. That is different from a public comment perspective than staff presenting a noise ordinance and inviting public comment with respect to the verbiage in the noise ordinance. Alpharetta does not allow public comment in a work session. They do allow people to come in from the public and present, so was scheduled on the agenda as someone from outside of the organization as the public and making a presentation. Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams stated during several sessions that she has been involved with additional folks were involved. Some were not initially invited as a presenter or a party to the presentation. City Manager Bovos stated that is what this draft of the ordinance does. It allows for, in the event that that is done, for the Mayor to call on those people and still provide public comment back to the Council. He thinks what Councilmember Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 9 of 34 Zahner Bailey, if he is understanding correctly, is asking that if it is a staff presented item, we take comment cards and allow public comment no different that the second approval of the ordinance. Staff is fine with that. He asked are we doing one public comment session at the beginning and one public comment section at the end; are we taking public comment on the items specifically as they are being addressed because he actually feels like we are all over the board on this. From a staff’s perspective, we certainly encourage public comment and he feels we could end up being in a much better position if we allow it initially and negate some of the challenges that we might have at the second reading. He wanted to be sure of the Council’s expectation. Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams stated based on those comments we do have to be very careful to limit them pretty strictly and have some strict requirements because some of those meetings go on for hours and hours on one topic. Mayor Lockwood stated we need to have a case by case and have control of it. We obviously want to allow public comment, but also keep in mind the time. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated to clarify she would be happy to suggest that we put the 15 minutes of totality at the beginning so that all public comments could be made at the beginning of that Work Session and that it would be at the discretion of the Mayor as to whether or not that particular Work Session might need more than 15 minutes. She would think during that discretion Mayor Lockwood would also have the ability to either extend the 15 minutes at the beginning and/or accept public comment at the time a particular items comes forward later in the session. That flexibility would allow our community to know that they have the opportunity of 15 minutes limited at the very beginning of a Work Session if it was germane to that Work Session. Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams stated do we have any legal situation that we need to be aware of if we start to limit or expand arbitrarily. City Attorney Scott stated there are two issues there. One is the procedural and one is legal. Procedurally, and he will be going over this shortly in the Robert’s Rules discussion, but you can limit debate and you can limit discussion any time at any meeting. That is not a problem. Secondly, from the legal perspective, since it is only a work session, no vote is going to be taken and it is not a public hearing, you could deny the public the right to speak at all if you wanted to at the Work Session. Mayor Lockwood stated that he thinks we need to have the intent that we want comments from the public, but we do not want it to run lose and have a six hour meeting. City Manager Bovos asked if he could make a recommendation. Staff is certainly fine with what is being proposed. Our goal from the Work Session perspective would be to schedule a little more, tightly, the agenda items and time frames around those agenda items. As a result of that, he would hope that we could allow public comment at the time the agenda item is being heard. For example, if we have three agenda items on the agenda, and we take public comment at the very beginning, we may negate some discussion on the back end of that particular agenda item that would address the public comment or provide additional discussion from the public and they may end up having to sit through a highly controversial item that they have no interest in for a potential hour. In the event we change that and limit staff presentation to 30 minutes on this particular item, have public comment for 10 minutes, we could potentially then allow, or have some additional feasibility in telling people your item will not be heard until 7:00 versus you need to be here at 5:30 and stay until 10:00. He asked that the Council consider public comment at the time the item is heard. Councilmember said she appreciates that input and it is a great suggestion. Knowing that we are all sensitive to making sure that it is productive, would we then need to limit it to 10 minutes per agenda item. Councilmember Thurman stated that she agreed with 10 minutes per agenda item. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 10 of 34 Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that they would also be able to submit comment cards if they wanted us to be able to review any written documentation that we could of course share with staff and Council. City Manager Bovos said absolutely, and he would reiterate that if there are 20 people there to talk and we only get through the first 5, we as staff can follow up with anyone who wanted to comment or has comments with respect to what is being done to be ensure that they are heard and have the ability to have input. Councilmember Thurman stated that the Council would then still have the benefit of those comments. We could be discussing and reading the comments and have that be a part of our healthy discussion. City Attorney Scott stated that under Robert’s Rules, the Council always has the ability to ask for an extension since it is informal. Mayor Lockwood stated that he does not think this would be a problem. Councilmember O’Brien stated that the purpose of the Work Session that the City Manager described is to have a very tightly scheduled event and it seems consistent with quorum rules that it would be productive time and he wondered just who set apart the concept of the Work Session from a normal Council meeting if those with input shared that with a Councilmember via e-mail so that those concerns could be succinctly addressed and then retain the opportunity as an exception if warranted open for public comment, but make that the exception rather than the rule. He does believe that it is a very constructive and productive to protect the Work Session environment for what it is intended for and does feel that we could slow down the progress and effectiveness of those events if we did invite public comment. Public comment is always available at the regular meetings and again retaining opportunity to afford that if there is clearly a need, as there will be from time to time. He suggested that we establish a protocol where electronic input should be extended to participants of the Work Session and concerns would be addressed in that fashion. City Manager Bovos stated that these are Council’s Work Sessions and staff is absolutely fine with either approach. From his experience, the time seems to fly by during Work Session and it seems like there is never enough time to address all of the items. Some items have a great need for discussion. Mayor Lockwood stated that we will have to balance it. We may have some special situations and issues. If we have to revisit it some point, we will. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that the intent of her amendment is simply to make sure that we have at least allowed for public comment as part of the process. Councilmember Lusk commented to both of these points and to address Councilmember O’Brien’s point, these are intended to be Work Sessions and he would suggest that we leave the verbiage as written and that gives us latitude to do practically anything we want to do at a meeting. He would hesitate to set up strict rules that not only the Council, but the public would have to go by too. He thinks we are open enough for discussion at these sessions to allow input from the residents. We need to leave it vague to give us latitude to accept warranted public comment. The purpose of a Work Session is to get some work done. He would like to stick to an agenda and time limit and get things done. Councilmember Thurman stated that under Section 13 it reflects that public comment is heard right before adjournment. It was her understanding that we are now hearing public comment at the beginning and she wanted to make sure that was changed. City Manager Bovos stated that is correct and we will make that change. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 11 of 34 Councilmember Mohrig referring to Section 11 regarding starting times for regular meeting today is 5:30 and he brought up at the last meeting that he is requesting to move that time to 7:00 PM so that who commute can attend. He would like to discuss changing that to 7:00 PM to get more public participation. Councilmember Thurman stated that she has heard comments from residents asking why the Council meetings are so early and they are during their regular scheduled dinner time. They have asked for the meetings to be scheduled a little bit later. Councilmember Mohrig stated that in order to attend a Fulton County meeting to address the Board of Commissioners you would have to take the day off from work or get off early. His proposal is that we want to be user friendly Council and have more accessibility and that is why he wanted to bring this forward. He thinks that this is more accommodating to the people that live in Milton. Mayor Lockwood asked if staff has any comments on this. He knows that they have contacted some other cities in the area. The only problem with staff is that is it usually a long day for them. He requested staff’s comments. City Treasurer Carol Wolfe stated that from her perspective it does not matter what time a Council meeting starts it is her job to be here. Having accessibility for the public to come and comment takes priority over staff having a long day. City Manager Bovos stated that we can always adjust schedules internally. The only thing he would caution is that we have not had a Zoning agenda yet. Some items could have discussions of hour or more for each item to include other items that are not zoning items to include a regular business agenda, Mayor, Council and staff reports; he wants everybody to be prepared that there may be a need to have a meeting until at 4:00 AM. When that changes it will be the requirement of us to complete that agenda. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that we all want to be respectful of the public’s desire to be a part of those meetings. She is very sensitive to the start time and similarly sensitive to the end time and as those meetings have the potential to be quite a bit late, she is concerned on how do we balance maybe a slighter later start time. She does not know if Councilmember Mohrig would consider starting later than 5:30 but earlier than 7:00 PM so that we also mitigate the risk at the back end. The same citizens she knows want to be here at the beginning may need to be here for the item that is potentially going to be at 11 or 12 at night. Those same people are going to have a similar concern. It is a tough balancing act and, again, she is asking for consideration of 6 or 6:30 as a start time. There are many occasions that these meetings could end after 11:00 PM or midnight and we will lose our audience after 10:30 or 11:00 PM. Councilmember Mohrig asked do we know what the average times around Georgia when City Council meetings start. City Manager Bovos stated that it varies and that they have received information back from a few cities. Alpharetta is 7:30, Acworth is 7:00, East Point 6:30, Fayetteville 7:00, Kennesaw 6:30 with Work Sessions at 6:00 and Roswell is 7:30. Councilmember O’Brien stated that he shared the concern as Councilmember Mohrig. Frankly, if he had to pick, he would pick 7:30. But again, a lot of that boils down to preference. He is sensitive to those that may work downtown. Some are on the GA 400 for an hour or so and a 7:00 or 7:30 start would afford someone the opportunity to say hello, set their bag down at home and perhaps take their tie off and come join us and participate or be engaged. He feels that especially in the beginning, we are dealing with a lot of fairly big and interesting issues and a lot of people in the community are excited because they are able to participate much more directly for probably the first time in a long time in our process. To some degree that is the fun and challenge that the community does want to be engaged, but he would suggest and be very supportive if staff that are affected by these late meetings had perhaps a policy of a 1 for 2 comp for those who had to be in attendance. We would understand that if you work a long day and then have to cover a meeting that those affected staff would be allowed latitude or comp for at least a 50% ratio of the time that they have committed Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 12 of 34 to us. The other final thing is if we get started at 7:00 or 7:30 for instance, and we find ourselves going to midnight, perhaps that is over scheduling. Rational scheduling is important. City Manager Bovos responded that compensated absences or comp time is certainly something that is allowable of governments. We have specifically not included that in the personal handbook from a perspective level of accruing a liability. When you allow leave time to individuals outside of traditional sick or vacation leave, you have to accrue additional liabilities for them. We have not done that, but it does not mean we cannot. We will incur that expense one way or the other, so in the event it happens it will be addressed. The flip side of your question is in scheduling, and there will be times when we have absolutely no control of the number of items that come before the Council on the zoning agenda. They were applied for within the time frame and they will have to come to the Council because that is the statutory requirement. In the event you get 12 in one week, he can assure you that we will hear all 12 of those at the next Council meeting in which it would occur. We do have some latitude on general business items and his response to that would be in the event that we can defer some of those because they are not absolutely critical, we will. But in the event we cannot, obviously those will be scheduled as well. The zoning items are quite honestly the much lengthier of the business items that would be heard. Councilmember O’Brien commented that he feels less strongly about the work sessions. If Council were somewhere between 7:00 – 7:30, that would be his preference for the reason stated, but also for the work sessions, where as we have learned those of us who have worked on some projects and some other things, you do not appreciate how difficult it is to get together in a quorum and just get what you need done in compliance with the standards that are present. He would say that for the work sessions 5:30 or whatever the staff prefers because they are completely different. Councilmember Mohrig commented that is why he is just addressing Section 11 because Section 11 is regular meetings on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of every month. As far as the start time, he heard anything from 6:30 to 7:30 from the cities actually polled, and that is why he went originally with 7:00. People have family time and different issues there, but he thinks the intent is that we are really trying to be more user friendly. He would suggest that when we get to zoning items, where we really are going to have people presenting from the public, maybe from a timing standpoint to address Councilmember Zahner Bailey’s comment, we move some of those to the front end where we know we are going to have input and the regular staff things we have towards the tail end, similar to what we do today. Councilmember Thurman asked would we have zoning items regularly on both the City Council agendas, or is it typically only going to be on one of the agendas. She also asked for clarification that the 1st Thursday agenda would have more of our business type items and the 3rd Thursday would be more zoning items once we start hearing zoning cases. City Manager Bovos responded that typically it would be on one agenda and clarified the difference in the 1st and 3rd agendas. Mayor Lockwood asked as a Point of Order if there was more discussion from staff on this agenda item. There were no additional comments from the staff. Motion: Councilmember Zahner Bailey moved to approve the Ordinance Adopting Amended Rules and Procedures for the City Council Meetings and Public Hearings for the City of Milton, Georgia with the following amendments: 1) Amending Section 11 for the start time of the meeting to change to 6:30 PM 2) Add public comment to Work Session and limit it to 10 minutes per agenda item, two minutes per person, and allow the Mayor flexibility to extend time if needed The motion died for a lack of second. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 13 of 34 Motion: Councilmember Mohrig moved to approve the Ordinance Adopting Amended Rules and Procedures for the City Council Meetings and Public Hearings for the City of Milton, Georgia with the following amendments: 1) Amending Section 11 for the start time of the regular meeting on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of the month to change to 7:00 PM. Second: Councilmember Lusk seconded the motion. Mayor Lockwood asked if there was any more discussion on the amendment. Friendly Amendment to the Motion: Councilmember Zahner Bailey moved to amend the motion by adding the following: 1) Add public comment to work session and limit it to 10 minutes per agenda item, with no one person having more than two minutes, and allow the Mayor flexibility to modify time if needed Second: Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams seconded the motion. Vote: The motion passed 6-1, with Councilmember O’Brien voting in opposition. Public Comment Carol Lane, 14810 E. Bluff Road, Milton, commenting on the time frame with zoning coming up. She understands that to make it convenient, 7:30 is more convenient for the businessmen, but when you are dealing with the public and they are not paid to be there, it does get to be 1:00 in the morning. That is where the public does not get their due or say because it is too late and people have to go home and their kids have to go to bed. Having the meetings earlier is helpful for the public comment. She does appreciate the Work Sessions having public comment too and 10 minutes is not going to be disruptive. City Manager Bovos stated as a point of clarification, the rules and procedures that are before the Council tonight are also in Chapter 2 of Administration. With respect to the time change, tonight and this policy, we will also need to amend Chapter 2 to reflect the time change as well. That is in the Code sections of the City’s ordinances, so he would ask the attorney in the event that this is changed tonight, can we administratively change with Council’s concurrence to Chapter 2 or does Chapter 2 need to have another reading. City Attorney Scott stated that we could consider this the first reading on that, but we would have to have a second reading. Mayor Lockwood asked if there was any other comment from Council or discussion. There was none. Vote on Original Motion: There was no further Council discussion. The motion passed unanimously. NEW BUSINESS Mayor Lockwood stated that there was no new business. MAYOR AND COUNCIL REPORTS Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated she participated in a meeting with Katie Reeves and the Fulton County School Board earlier this week and wanted to mention that there was some very healthy dialog about new buildings and construction that will be taking place within the City of Milton, in particular the sites included already approved elementary school that will be at Birmingham Highway and Wood Road. Her specific request to the School Board as it relates to that school because land disturbance will be beginning relatively soon was that we have collaborative discussions about land disturbance before it begins so that we might have community input. Not only as it relates to the Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 14 of 34 LDP tied to that school, but also infrastructure concerns. Obviously there is a gravel road that is well loved by our community, that being Wood Road and we need to consider what we are going to do with the school board relative to infrastructure. Additionally, we had discussion with Katie Reeves and our area superintendent Vicki Denmark and talked about the additional land they are pursuing for a middle school and a high school and of course because of land requisition requirements, we can not divulge those locations. The discussion on behalf of the mayor and council was to request that the school board work collaboratively with us in that we might have some dialogue before they make those acquisitions. Just to restate things with regards with policies, including our no sewer policies that would obviously impact the schools as well as potential architectural considerations. Based on that discussion it could be the pleasure of council and mayor, she’d like us to ask staff to consider drafting a letter to the School Board that would be from all of us restating our collective desire to work with them on a multitude of those things that we could elaborate on with staff as that gets drafted. If that be the pleasure of Mayor, staff and Council. Councilmember Mohrig asked if they are looking at doing a joint site similar to what they did with Milton and Northwestern. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that she believed that that is the desire and also from a funding perspective, they are discussing that through the last vote in March, that if that does go through their projected funding would include funding for the new high school, as well as the build out of that new high school. They do not currently project that they would have enough funds to build the new middle school. So from a prioritization standpoint the new high school would be first the middle school would be second, but the Birmingham Elementary School, which is contingent on these SPLOST dollars potentially. But the School Board is committed to building that school and it’s effectively looking, from a timetable perspective will be built in 2008. Rough estimate, land disturbance could begin as soon as the summer. She would ask as part of that, that we as our arborist Mark Law to also walk that property and see if there are specimen trees and things of that nature. As a good neighbor with our School Board, she thinks all of our intent would be to have that collaborative dialog with them while we have that opportunity to potentially have some positive influence. If that would be the pleasure of this Council and Mayor and ask staff to please help draft a letter from all of us. There was no further discussion or comments. STAFF REPORTS Cost Estimates for the City of Milton’s name change - Carol Wolfe & Chris Lagerbloom City Manager Bovos provided a handout and stated that he will walk through the documents. This is the process in which we deploy the agenda setting process and included in the policy that we actually just adopted on the second reading with the amendments for time and public comment. Beginning on page 2 of that document, he wants to talk about how a resolution ordinance or just general business item gets added to the agenda for the Council. This page deals strictly with Work Session agenda, not a Council agenda and he just wants to make sure everybody is clear on that. In the way the work flow currently exists within the policies, the Councilmember can notify the Mayor of items being requested on the agenda list. This is pretty straight forward – pick up the phone, send an email; however you chose to do that. The Mayor will review those and forward those to the City Manager’s office. We in the City Manager’s office and the City Clerk’s office need to have those items submitted six days prior to the Work Session. You will see a calendar and a work flow chart in just a few minutes. Review and comments will be done by the City Clerk, concurrently reviewed by the City Manager and the City Attorney occurs, and the final agenda is prepared and distributed to the City Council three business days prior to the Work Session occurring. At the same time, then we post the agenda when it is ready at least 24 hours prior to the Work Session and that is at the very latest. We try at the same time that those agendas are distributed to the City Council to have those posted on the web. Strictly from the standpoint that the sooner we get them out to the public for review the better off we are as an organization. The 24 hour period is a minimum based upon meeting state law requirements. Work sessions do begin the 2nd Thursdays of each month as we have approved tonight. Work Session items that require work from staff will leave Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 15 of 34 the Work Session and go back to staff to be worked on. Work Session items that are ready to move forward to Council would then be carried forward to Council on the next subsequent agenda based upon timing of the formulation of that agenda. There have been some questions in the past about who writes resolutions and who writes ordinances. To be very clear about that that is really staff’s responsibility to do that and we are absolutely fine in accepting and taking that responsibility. If there is a business item that needs to come up, in the address use a Councilmember or the Mayor just need to raise that business item through Work Session once it is on the agenda. The item will be discussed at the Work Session and it is staff’s responsibility from that point to come back and draft all the appropriate documents. Clearly, if it is sponsored by one particular Councilmember or group of Councilmembers, will be included in the early process to be sure that what we have taken away from the meeting is clearly represented from the discussion and what the desires were from the Work Session. Moving forward to page 3, “Resolutions to Ordinances and Businesses Items for Council Meetings”, this would be a regular meeting the 1st and 3rd Thursdays, items due in the City Manager’s office 12 business days prior to the meeting. That sounds a little bit lengthy, however, these really and truly are items that have to go through a pretty rigorous process, not only City Manager review, but legal review. At this point we have formulated resolutions, we have formulated ordinances, and we are actually bringing something forward that will be voted on. As a result of that process, and the time frame required in that process, 12 business days is needed. The City Clerk completes a preliminary review at that point and time of all relevant documents and cover memos. Standard with the operation that each agenda item is a cover memo, ordinance or resolution, supporting documents and all will be attached for current review. The City Clerk will manage that process. Then we go into time review by the City Manager and the City Attorney. From that point, the package is approved (reference 4th bullet down on the documents you have says if approved). If approved means by the City Manager and by the City Attorney. If there is an agenda item written from the City Manager, for example, that gets to legal and there is a issue with what has been written, it can get kicked out and be carried forward to the next subsequent agenda to be addressed. Same is true with his process. If we have a conflict or there are things that need to be discussed further among staff, we will certainly make sure that all of that review and all of those discussions occur before going to the Council. Five business days prior to the meeting we distribute the packet to all of the Councilmembers. Our goal obviously then is seven days or a week with five business days so that Councilmembers have an opportunity to review it. One of the things that have been occurring, which is absolutely fine, is discussion at the Council meeting. One of the things that is offered to everybody is that when you get your packet and you have questions, please feel free to either pick up the phone or send an email about questions you may have and we are happy to respond to those prior to the meeting to ensure that everybody has their questions addressed. One of the things that that will do is certainly speed up the meeting when we have had the agendas, but also allow staff to be sure that we fully investigated or reviewed during sections of the ordinance, and any cross ordinances that are previously approved. Then the agenda again is posted a minimum of three business day prior to the meeting. Traditionally that is a little longer than three days. On page 4, you have an example of a month of February. We will start with the Council Work Session on the 8th of February. Notice on January 31st, is when items are slated to be submitted to the work session (six business days before). Beginning February 5th, we have Work Session information distributed and February 7th the agenda is posted for the Council Work Session. Referring to the green section and the February 15th Council meeting, that process begins on January 30th. Items have to be submitted to the Clerk on January 30th. That review process occurs actually beginning Friday, but technically, Monday. Legal and city management review occurs on February 5th, any review in document changes occur on the February 7th, with final prep and distribution of the agenda packets on February 8th. We post the agenda on February 12th and the Council meeting is on February 15. This is an illustrated portion of that. Referring to page 5, he wanted to be sure we have provided all Councilmembers with an example of what is a proclamation, what is a resolution and what is an ordinance; just to be sure we are all on the same page with respect to that. On page 5, proclamations or ceremonial documents; public awareness, special honors, you want to proclaim a day, and you want to raise some type of awareness as a result of something that is occurring. That is a proclamation. We Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 16 of 34 have not had too many of those yet and those are certainly available to all member of the Council. Traditionally, they are sponsored more so by elected officials than they would be staff. On page 6, “Resolutions”, traditional documents containing directions to take a stand or engage in some action. Resolutions do not carry the weight of law; it really just sets the position of the Council and directs either staff or specific action to occur. Page 7 is an ordinance. These are the things that do carry the weight of law. They are enacted by a municipal body and do require two readings. The reason they require two readings is because of significant importance of those. They do govern manners not already covered by state or federal law, such as zoning and building regulations. We will also adopt our budget by ordinance because it is law as well as personnel policies will be adopted by ordinance versus resolutions, etc. Page 8 goes through 1st and 2nd readings of the ordinance purpose. 1st reading is just an initial presentation and Council can review those and provide any feedback, and make changes between the 1st and 2nd readings necessary. The 2nd reading provides discussion, public input, and approval by Council. When you see an item on the agenda on the packet that is under First Presentation it is really your opportunity to read through it and provide questions and feedback to staff from the time of the first reading and the second reading. The goal however of now having work sessions is that it is technically the second time that you have seen it versus the first time because if it is of significant importance, it will go through the Work Session process to begin with. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that with the first reading thus far we have really not as a matter of process made any points during our meetings and based on the Work Session first, then this first reading effectively being in our second reading, is it typically the preference for staff and then the Council and Mayor that the first reading is not when we engage in discussion. As a matter of process, it is something that somehow has come up that is in that document and asked if it was appropriate for us to have a statement at that time to convey to staff or is the preference to do that separate from that first reading. City Manager Bovos answered we do not allow comments during the first reading. During a public meeting, it would not be appropriate to make a comment or statement to the first reading ordinance. What would be highly appropriate is once you get the agenda distributed, whether that is after the formal first reading or after the distribution, for anybody to contact staff and say that they have a question about section 1 or they have a question about section X, and can you provide some clarification here. Our preference from a response standpoint would be that any question regarding an ordinance would be asked before we get to the second reading. Any changes or things that need to be addressed in the ordinance would be done and available at the time it is read. If we need to provide a substitute ordinance that can really be done between the first and second reading so that now if there are desires or wishes of the City Council what will be posted at second reading is truly the update of what Council wants to adopt. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that is what she wanted to verify. At the first reading, the document itself can change, from first reading to second reading and as that document changes that would then be available on the website or through other means so that they have access to the most current document. Councilmember Mohrig asked would all of the first readings we have that on the agenda be available for the public to review at the time on the web. The public will have the availability to see the first reading and then the updated second reading. City Manager Bovos responded that every time we have a formal agenda, we will post everything traditionally on that agenda for public review. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 17 of 34 Councilmember Lusk requested clarification and asked will all of the first readings come out at the first meeting of the month. City Manager Bovos response was no. Councilmember Lusk asked if the first reading came out at the second meeting of the month, would we not have a Work Session in between then. City Manager Bovos stated that was correct. However, when an item gets carried forward from the Work Session, it has to be completed. Traditionally, items are not completed at the Work Session itself. So depending on how long it takes to get completed, it would then be routed through the normal process. If we have a first reading at a second reading of the third Thursday of the month, that may have come from the prior Work Session the month before. Or the month before that, depending on how large the item is and how much work is needed to complete that particular agenda item or that particular ordinance or resolution. Councilmember Lusk stated that more often than not, the first reading occurring at the second meeting of the month would not necessarily pass with the first meeting the following month as the second reading. City Manager Bovos replied that the question is raised that if you have something that requires more time, it may not come out on the next meeting. Work Session items on the second Thursday will absolutely not make it to the third meeting of the month. There is no feasible way possible because the second Thursday, would have already missed the deadline, if you go back a couple pages. We are one week and a half behind, so there is absolutely no way you will see a Work Session item carried forwarded from the second Thursday to the third Thursday’s meeting. It is not feasibly possible in the schedule. So a Work Session item, if it comes on a Work Session and it is fully prepared and we are ready to go and we have minimal work, it will be scheduled at the first meeting of the subsequent month. Assuming it does not have very much work to do. If it has a little bit more work to do it will be addressed at the third Thursday meeting. City Manager Bovos continues with Page 9 purposely omitted from your process and the City Attorney is currently working on some rules of engagement with respect to Council interaction with the City Attorney’s office and staff interaction with the City Attorney’s office. We will be back to report on that once that document is completed. Page 10 is strictly as an update and reminder about what our Charter says with respect to interfering for the administration. We have been a bit liberal with respect to it and he is fine with that application. However, he reminded everyone as we move forward that based upon the language of our Charter, it is very specific that Council interaction from your perspective needs to come through the City Manager’s office and distributed at that point back to the respective staff. Clearly, we are all busy and clearly we have a minimal staff, so he cautioned the Council on if you have a quick question and you need some information, he really does not have an issue with you picking up the phone and calling him. If you need to engage a staff person in a project it really needs to come through the City Manager’s office first. Councilmember Mohrig asked would any requests come through the City Manager or once we see the org chart would they be able to go to the department heads. City Manager Bovos responded that if you have a simple question such as when do I get paid or how does this work or I’ve got a constituent that has a question, he does not want to bog down our response time by having to route all that through the City Manager’s office so he does not have an issue with calling the director themselves. If you are looking for Carol Wolfe and are requesting a study on the ABC Project, please contact him. What he does not want to have occur is Mayor and Council engaging staff in projects that we do not have concurrence on. At that point and time we are going to kick them back to a Work Session to ensure that everybody is clear about how staff is being directed. Will Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 18 of 34 this be in the annual work plan and if it is not will everybody agree with staff spending time on this and not necessarily doing the projects that we all agreed upon in the work plan. The bigger issues are what he is more concerned with. The next two pages of the packets (10 & 11) are an example from Sandy Springs about the application to request the city proclamation. The City Clerk will be formulating Milton’s application process which will be very similar. If you all have something that you would like to proclaim, Arbor Day, for example, or specific event knowledge about people in the community, very simply fill this document out, we will get your signature on it, submit it, and move forward. Staff more likely than not will come to you with proclamations. Those are things that need to be originated or facilitated by the Council. The last four pages are the process again in a work flow diagram. It is just a different way to review when Work Session items and Council items are due to staff. This is approved in the policy under the “Rules and Procedures” policy and it is referenced in Section 12 or 14. He is happy answer any questions anybody has with respect to this document. City Manager Bovos stated there are a few other staff reports tonight and if there are no questions, we can move on to the next. City Treasurer Carol Wolfe and Public Safety Director Chris Lagerbloom will provide an estimate and update on the City of Milton’s name change with respect to where we are from a cost perspective. Cost Estimates for the City of Milton’s name change Public Safety Director Lagerbloom stated that what he has done since the last Council meeting was to try to put together some anticipated cost time and describe individually where he feels we are and to do some follow up from where we were last week and some items that he has been able to take from that 90% confirmation to that 100% confirmation point. Everybody should have a document with some red arrows on it. This document gives an indication of each of the months would be comprised by two blocks indicating the first of the month, the left line, the 15th of the month the middle line, and then the end of the month at the beginning of the right line. We can get an idea as to what we have done that has been personalized and what we foresee that we will do that has deadlines that would be personalized with the word, city or town. At the bottom we can get a running total of what those dates are and when a decision will be made and what that decision might potentially cost. Starting at the top, we talked about police and fire badges last week and that deadline date passed. That was a hard deadline that we had and it passed and those dollars were spent. Fire truck painting would be the next one. We confirmed yesterday that the cost to repaint the front cabin on a fire truck is $8,000 per truck. You will notice that that figure is $24,000 and that is only accounting for three trucks even though we bought four. Three are due off the production line quicker than that fourth. To provide an accurate number of $24,000 figure that deadline is January 31st. We have some flexibility with police car lettering simply because that is a printed graphic program. He projected a date of about March 15th because he does not want to play it a whole lot closer than that when we start to get towards when we anticipate employing and deploying. There are certainly other things that would take our time once we get to the April 15th date. He can tell you that the police cars absent the safety barrier system are just about complete and prepared for delivery to Milton. All that would be missing is the graphic package. He can happily report that all sixteen marked patrol cars are now on the ground in Georgia. Format document printing is something that would really require more staff time than production cost. Most of what the police do, most of what the fire do, most of what public safety does is documented on some type of form and that is really a good honest guess. The $1,000 figure is not a process that we really started at this point, but something that we certainly will have to have before we deploy, and that is why he has given it a deadline of April 1st. There is also patch design and production. We are in the graphic part of the patch design right now and both police and fire uniforms, shirts, jackets, etc. has an estimated figure at eight patches per employee – three for shirts and a pair of patches on a jacket, at roughly $2.50 per patch, which is the going rate plus design cost is how we get to that figure. The one thing that he can move from that Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 19 of 34 90% that we talked about last week into a 100% confirmation is the originating agency number that we spoke about that had made it through the state and had ended up in the federal government. He has confirmation and that process will complete as we started it. If we choose to do a name change, it would simply be a name change. There would be no delay or cost associated with that. The creation of the police department with the peace officers standards training council, that is what POST stands for, that we talked about last week there appears to be no delay or cost associated with changing the name with the organization. He feels comfortable that he has gotten 100% answers for those two issues, which were large issues out there looming. What you see if you follow along in the bottom of the box is that if we were to do this today, from a public safety perspective, we are in roughly $8,000 that we would have to redo if it was important to us to have personalized badge that was representative of the new name change, to wait after January 31. We would then add in the cost of the fire truck painting to get us to $32,000 moving on with our dates of March 15th and April 1st to see how that tracks along $36,000 - $38,500. Costs that are provided at the bottom are other costs which are itemized at $7,500 and Carol Wolfe will discuss those numbers. City Treasurer Carol Wolfe stated that the costs at the bottom represent community services, community development, operations clerk, and the communications department for $7,500. These are all services that are deployed at the current time. So the $7,500 would be an immediate cost incurrence. The majority of those costs are signage uniforms and vehicle repainting. There are minimal costs associated with replacing check, stock letterhead, and business cards and that $7,500 does include an estimate of staff time to change contract leases just to effectuate the name change of the legal documents. City Treasurer Wolfe asked if there were any questions regarding these cost items. Councilmember Lusk asked for clarification on at what point these additional costs would be in incurred. City Treasurer Carol Wolfe responded that the $7,500 cost would be incurred immediately upon a name change because these services are already deployed and we already have signage, vehicles, and uniforms for community services and community development that need to be changed. This is really equitable to the $8,000 and the police badges and fire badges that have already been ordered. These would be costs that would be incurred immediately upon the name change. Councilmember Lusk questioned if we are looking at Mr. Lagerbloom’s graph, the total would actually be $46,000. Public Safety Director Lagerbloom said that would be correct if we waited until April to do that. Today, if you would top to bottom you would be at $15,500 and then as the dates went up, the total of each of the columns would be the $8,000 plus the $7,500 or the $32,000 plus the $7,500. Introduction of Deputy Public Safety Director Charles Millican Public Safety Director Chris Lagerbloom stated that since the last meeting a new public safety professional started with us this week and he would like to introduce him. He is Deputy Director of Public Safety for the City of Milton, Charles Millican. Charles comes to us from the Fulton County Fire Department where he served as the Deputy Chief of Operations and EMS. Presentation of Franchise Fees City Treasurer Carol Wolfe stated at the last meeting it was requested by Councilmember Mohrig to report on alternatives to the assessment of franchise fees. She would like to start that report with a quick overview of our current budget. Everyone has a handout in front of them. As a reminder, the fiscal year 2007 budget recommendation to find four key financial factors considered as priority as we put together and balanced the budget for 2007. Those were sustainability of existing services, meeting the deployment schedule for city operations, initial contribution to operating reserves, and funding capitol projects that were already in place. On your handout, she has listed the revenue and Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 20 of 34 expenditures that were budgeted. During those public hearings, we also had comment centered on the great possibility that as we deploy City operations there would be additional budget appropriations; things we missed, things that were unanticipated or unplanned for and that we would bring that back to Council during the middle of the year for additional budget appropriations. We move on to franchise fee. As you can see on the second page of your handout, franchise fees are our third largest revenue source, $823,000. That is second only to property taxes and local options sales tax. To be very frank with you, there are no revenue replacements for franchise fees, which brings us to balancing the budget. If you reduce franchise fees or eliminate franchise fees, the budget must be balanced by a reduction in expenditures. We have had this conversation again during the budget appropriation process so we understand that a balanced budget has revenues to equal before it exceeds expenditures. This budget as the five of you who are already elected during the budget process know was a very tight budget. It is her opinion that any reduction in expenditures in the current budget will mean a reduction in service level. That is probably not the news you want to hear in the report, but that is a very honest opinion of what it is going to take if this Council chooses to move down the road of eliminating franchise fees. We have also identified in your handout, some areas that we have costs for and some unknown costs of those midyear budget adjustments that you will see later in the year; building permit for city hall, additional funds for public safety recruitment, street lighting expenses. She will bring a report in the next couple of weeks on street lighting expenses and options for reducing that $220,000. Again, some unknown costs. In summary, we just cannot stretch our revenue estimates to cover an additional $823,000. The $823,000 elimination would have to come from a reduction in service levels in the appropriate expenses that go along with those services. Mayor Lockwood stated he wanted to make a comment on franchise fees. He thinks there has been some miscommunication or need some clarification. Franchise fees go all the way back from the original Carl Vincent study and they were included in the $900,000 range on the budget that it would take for the study to become the City of Milton. Through the process of steering committees, all franchise fees were always in there as a revenue item. Everything he looked at, backdated, has those franchise fees in there. Also the Charter specifically states franchise fees, what the are for, what they can be charged on, and the City has the ability to charge franchise fees, as well as the majority of all cities do charge them. The biggest point he has and it is the misconception that the public has is to make sure that they realize that franchise fees are not something that we sat here and made up for the first time as some more revenue we can have for the City. As City Treasurer Carol Wolfe said, when we sit down with the budget, we had to do a lot of cuts in the budget just to make it balance. We were very fortunate that we were able to balance the budget and the option of taking out a revenue number that had been in there for the last, almost two years; we did not even have that option to even think about. Just wanted to make sure that is clear. Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams asked if we feel like through this review process we have explored any opportunities for additional revenues that maybe other cites used or some unique opportunities for additional revenue to be raised. City Treasurer Carol Wolfe replied yes and she also went back through every revenue that we did budget for looking at the method we used to budget to see if perhaps we under budgeted that revenue. In only two months into operation, she can not run a lot of data sets on the revenue we have collected so far to see if we are going to trend above or below revenue. She will certainly begin to do that once we get through a quarter or four or five months so we can begin to see what revenue we are actually collecting and compare that with what we estimated. At this time, she feels confident the revenues we did project and appropriate in the budget are good numbers, but they cannot be stretched any further. We are taking advantage of every revenue source that is appropriated at this time. Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams asked if anyone has any ideas or thoughts on recommending that maybe the legislature might give us a grant to replace this money since apparently it is a controversial for them as well. City Treasurer Carol Wolfe stated to reiterate that this is a annual revenue that we fund services from so replacement or elimination this year would need to be ongoing. There would have to be a replacement for franchise fees and revenue from this point forward. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 21 of 34 Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams thanked City Treasurer Carol Wolfe for her diligence in exploring these options. Obviously, we want to make sure we have done everything we can to not have to charge them if we do not have to. Councilmember Zahner Bailey wanted to make a point of clarity that we are not charging the fee directly to the citizens, but the utility companies that have a franchise fee it is their choice either to absorb that as part of their cost structure or to pass that on. She does not know if Councilmember Lusk was going to mention the comment that he made, it was a great suggestion for consideration. Councilmember Lusk stated that he had discussed with the Mayor yesterday the possibility of negotiating with a couple of these utilities to provide an exemption for retired persons and persons with a fixed income. He just came up with that yesterday has not had time to investigate. He would like to know if that is a possibility to continue or further pursue that option. Mayor Lockwood stated that we might add to Councilmember Lusk’s idea, that this is an opportunity for the City to show that we are trying to help out, but it is also a very good public relations opportunity for the utilities companies. To also expand one more thing, like Councilmember Zahner Bailey said, Georgia Power, for example, charges the franchise fee and it is figured in their rate no matter where you are. In all the cities they are in, they pay that but for all the counties they are in they just have an extra 4% in their budget. Bottom line is that they were just making more on us when we were Fulton County. So anybody who has Georgia Power has not gotten a rate increase or got a franchise fee added in there. Councilmember Thurman stated that she thinks clearly we cannot get the budget to balance without the franchise fees in it, or at least at this time some of the franchise fees in it. Our challenge is to make sure that the services we are providing to the residents are superior to what they had been receiving in Fulton County. She hopes that at least they feel they are getting more for their tax dollars than they had previously been receiving especially now because some of them do perceive this as an additional check. We want to make sure that they realize they are receiving greater services. They will have more than one police officer in the Milton city limits in where they were used to having only one on a good day. That we will be much more responsive to them than they had been receiving and she thinks that is going to be our greatest challenge going forward. Councilmember Mohrig stated that he thought that was a key point. The increased services that we are going to start out with right away are part of the expense we are incurring as a City. We could continue to look at franchise fees and knows we will continue to do so. We will have more subdivisions, more businesses and that would be something you could look at when we go through annual budget to see if we are going to have increased revenues. But, what he is hearing said is that this year these are necessary for us to go forward with the level of service we plan. Councilmember Thurman asked what point in time will we actually get the tax digest from Fulton County. City Treasurer Carol Wolfe stated that generally we get a certified digest in July and that is early. She said last year in Alpharetta they received their certified digest in the middle of August. Councilmember Thurman continued saying we really will not have any idea if this number is accurate until July when we get the certified digest. Mayor Lockwood stated that for the public to realize that every one of us up here is also getting hit with franchise fees too. There is absolutely no gain for the staff or Mayor and Council for having these franchise fees other than to provide services to our public. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 22 of 34 Councilmember O’Brien stated that as the Mayor said those who are concerned and many of us are receiving emails, they have our full attention. He asked is it convenient possible as a follow up that you would have the break down of the individual franchise fees revenues. City Treasurer Carol Wolfe stated that she does have that, but it is not attached. Councilmember O’Brien stated that many of us are familiar with utilities and variety of other entities, could we seek municipal participation or particularly just for seniors or the disabled for those who were perhaps most concerned and hardest hit by these fees. City Manager Bovos stated that one of the things he would comment with that is that we have to apply franchise fees equally across that industry sector. Using electric as an example. Sony Electric through the PFC does not include franchise fees in their rate structure. Their rate structure as a membership coop does not include the franchise fee. Georgia Power does. So their rates are included and adopted by the PFC and, like the Mayor said, have a franchise fee included. We have no control over the PFC or no control over rate structures being adopted at the state or federal level. We can potentially exempt to that, but you may have different sections and different populations receiving a reduction based upon the service provider they have. For example, Sony may be able to pass that on because it is not included in their rate structure, but Georgia Power will not and they will charge everybody the franchise fee. The thing to caution you on is moving forward in a non equal application with a franchise fee, whether it is shown on the bill or not shown on the bill from the service providers themselves. Councilmember Zahner Bailey commented that potentially the effect would be that some citizens would actually have a higher bill. City Manager Bovos said the amount is based upon the gross receipt of that organization. For example, and that potentially could occur based upon how the ordinance is written. We do not charge it based upon individual, based upon business, or based upon location. We charge it on gross revenue so if the gross revenue comes and they apply 4% of that fee, 3% of that fee, or whatever it is for that particular industry and then they remit it back to us. Councilmember O’Brien asked a question if Sony bills $1 million to customers in the City of Milton, we get $40,000 as a city from the $1 million grossed business. City Manager Bovos stated that was correct. If you exempted a certain population out of that $1 million the portion is going to pay based upon regulation of the franchise fee. What is customary and what has been done before, certainly in respect to garbage service, he has seen across the board for seniors. The challenge with that is traditionally done in municipal operated garbage systems which we do not currently have. That will be a discussion obviously for a work plan in the future and whether we want to move in that direction or not move in that direction. At this point and time we have the same challenge with a plethora of service providers within the City and they have to charge multiple different rate structures having the offsetting customers pay the difference. Councilmember Mohrig asked on that same item referred to garbage collection, do we know what the total franchise fees out of that $823,000 would be. City Treasurer Carol Wolfe stated that the $823,000 is comprised of $450,000 for electric, $778,000 for cable, and $295,000 for gas and phone. The solid waste franchise fee is in the capital project fund. That is a dedicated revenue to infrastructure improvements. So that is not included in the $823,000. That is a general fund number only and $50,000 is the estimate for solid waste franchise fees. City Manager Bovos asked if there were any more questions with respect to franchise fees. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 23 of 34 Councilmember Mohrig stated that we have already been paying Comcast. If you get Comcast in the City, it is just like Georgia Power. If you have Georgia Power you are already paying for it. City Manager Bovos responded that that was correct. Discussion of Town Hall Meetings – Bill Doughty Communications Manager Bill Doughty stated that this marks his fifth week as Communications Manager, and he commended the Mayor and Councilmembers on their obvious commitment to consistent ongoing two way communications between the Council, the City and our residents. That makes his job that much easier. One method that he is bringing for consideration tonight is one of many methods to maintain that ongoing communication. He is proposing a series of town hall meetings to be hosted by the Mayor and Council and as he proposes it, it would be topic based. The purpose of these meetings would be to communicate with City residents regarding significant topics of interest as we move forward as a City, and to build relationships among our residents, Council, Mayor and City staff. It is a rather informal setting. We will host a topic per meeting and appropriate staff would make presentations related to those topics with plenty of time for questions from the community residents attending. We have put together a proposal of topics for this first year. The town hall meetings would be held bi-monthly, starting in February and held on the 4th Monday of those months, with the exception of December because of the holiday on the first Monday. He provided a list of topics and certainly we would welcome Council input on those topic for the Town Hall meetings. He is happy to answer any questions. Mayor Lockwood said he thought it was a great idea and hopefully the public will take advantage of them. Communications Manager Doughty stated that he will try to get the notice communicated so that everybody is well aware of these meetings. Mayor Lockwood asked if Communications Manager Bovos will be adding the Town Hall meetings to the website. Communications Manager Doughty replied yes and this is just one of many ways to publish our meetings as he goes forward putting together communications plans for our city. Councilmember Lusk asked if it was planned to send out mailers also, not everybody is internet active. Communications Manager Doughty said that right now we will have to rely a lot on the media because we do not have, to his knowledge, a complete mailing list of the entire City. As we get greater capabilities for GIS, we will be able to get a more accurate mailing list and email list. We are trying to put something together as best we can as we go forward. He knows Council has a lot of names, addresses, and emails from their campaigns and he would welcome those be forwarded to him. Discussion about January 25th Work Session on Crabapple Master Plan – Mike Tuller Deputy Director of Community Development Mike Tuller stated that we will discuss the Crabapple Master Plan at next Thursday’s Work Session. The Crabapple Master Plan originally adopted was approved by the Fulton County Commission in approximately 2003. This review will allow those members of the Council who may not have been involved in the process a few years back to get up to speed as to what is taking place. Certainly, we know there is a lot of development that is happening in that specific area and we have also asked John Wieland Homes and Neighborhoods membership to be in attendance next week. We have mentioned to both groups that it is going to be a very civil conversation and it is not intended to be something were they are being tested or chastised for their efforts, but certainly they both are well respected groups. Mr. Sizemore’s group was involved in the town plan for the city of Smyrna, the city of Duluth and they are very great programs. Certainly his efforts and the firm’s efforts in the Crabapple area are Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 24 of 34 worth noting. John Wieland Homes has done a good job too. Staff has been very careful in watching the activities that are taking place to make sure that what is going on the site is compliant with the standards that were approved by Fulton County and we are continuing to monitor those areas. Councilmember Thurman asked if they will be bringing with them the master plan for Crabapple and also John Wieland’s plan for that area. Deputy Director of Community Development Mike Tuller responded that they will be bringing the PowerPoint for the Crabapple master plan, but he does not know that he was involved in any great degree with Wieland. Councilmember Thurman asked if Wieland would be bringing the plans for that area. Deputy Director of Community Development Tuller responded yes and that they spoke to a fellow by the name of David Neiderhauser, who is the regional president of Wieland Homes and he is going to bring at least two staff members. He plans to bring the site development manager on that Crabapple site to the meeting for next week to answer questions. Councilmember Thurman stated that she knows that a lot of the community has been very concerned about the Crabapple area, and asked if we are going to be notifying them of the Work Session. Deputy Director of Community Development Tuller responded that it will be on the agenda on the website. He said that certainly they will let the public know about this Work Session. They have been very careful in watching their efforts out there on the site, but, it is location, visibility and size that do create a lot of attention. Councilmember Thurman asked if there was any way to post any kind of sign for the people going through that area that are interested so that they would know about the Work Session. Deputy Director of Community Development Tuller stated that he thought we could undertake that effort. Councilmember O’Brien asked if it was possible that we had the capability to stream that at a minimal cost. It does not have to be fancy, but at least to have audio that we could stream on the web. He would also welcome either hardcopy or disk of their briefing plan so that in the future when Crabapple is at issue we have the opportunity to refer to that in an ongoing fashion. That would be a great convenience. Councilmember Thurman stated that the Crabapple master plan is on the Fulton County website unless it has been recently removed. Councilmember Lusk asked Mr. Tuller to address Gordon Hunter’s issue on Crabapple Circle and asked if he had knowledge of it. Deputy Director of Community Development Tuller said he does not know enough about that area to really provide an expert comment. City Manager Bovos stated that traditionally, when we have public comment so that everybody is clear, public comment with respect to questions about the organization, staff will go back after the meeting to respond to those individuals outside of the normal traditional process. He just wanted to be sure that you are clear about the fact that we will follow up. Traditionally, we do not end up in engagements back and forth with Council or staff with respect to public comment because we end up spending enormous amounts of time to do that. He has made a note of the public comment and the will be happy to not only follow up with those people who made those comments, but also members of the Council as well. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 25 of 34 Councilmember Lusk said he understood that but was just interested if he was familiar with the details of that land/site plan. Councilmember Zahner Bailey commented that in preparation of that Work Session, she was just wondering if in addition to the Wieland site plan, she gets similar inquiries about the development occurring on Broadwell and obviously some of that is more visible to the passer by and there is still a lot of development that’s occurring across from and down Broadwell and also off of Crabapple Road, so there’s that quadrant. She just wondered if that might be an opportune time to at least have the site plans, not necessarily those developer representatives, but have those site plans. When you think about Crabapple on the master plan it is of course not just John Wieland, it’s the other development that are ongoing and she knows that Tom Wilson was in fact downtown again earlier this week accessing site plans from Fulton County, so it just might be a great opportunity for Council, Mayor and any public that is there, even if we just paste in on the wall so that people can have a reminder of the site plans that were approved buy Fulton County, and that are underway, which is why there is a lot of comments from the community with some of that activity that’s going on right now. Mayor Lockwood stated that we have gotten a lot of calls on the development in Crabapple and obviously it was something that was approved before the City of Milton. The only thing we have in our ability is to just make sure what was already approved to monitor that is was done correctly. He wants to thank Mike Tuller, Tom Wilson and the rest of their staff, because we have gotten a lot of calls. They have spent a lot of time out there making sure that everything was done according to the plan. He knows it does not look clean and looks like a bomb went off, but our staff has spent a lot of time making sure that what is being done at least matches what has been approved on that or not. Councilmember Zahner Bailey suggested that the transportation and she will use the term “improvement “cautiously, because what one person perceives as an improvement, someone else does not necessarily. A lot of citizens also have expressed a lot of concern about some of the transportation activity that is underway. Not only that which is underway, but also that which is not underway, such as turn lanes and things of that nature, she wonders if it would be helpful to have Roddy Motes and anyone else available as part of those discussions as part of an update of that Work Session. City Manager Bovos stated that is a great idea and they will certainly support that. City Manager Bovos asked that Mike Tuller to go forward and update the Council on the meeting with Forsyth County concerning rezonings. Deputy Director of Community Development Mike Tuller stated that yesterday he was thankful to meet the staff planners with Forsyth County, in particular his counterpart, the assistant director for Forsyth County, Tom Brown and the person in charge of current planning. They have both acknowledged that they have us on the distribution list for public participation. Any rezoning that does go forward, we will be notified through the email distribution list of what is on the horizon. We are welcome to attend these public participation meetings that are really a step prior to going to planning commission and the board of commissioners. They have unveiled this opportunity for the City to be more active. He mentioned the counties effort to do a comp plan update very similarly to what we are going to be entertaining in another few months. This may also be an opportunity to involve our residents in some of the character mapping that is part of the Department of Community Affairs’ new standards for comp plan updates. This may give us a vehicle to meet and interact more and also mentioned thoughts of maybe inviting our Mayor and Council to a work session or board session to involve your efforts of help. Overall it was a very good conversation and we are going to continue efforts to coordinate efforts in Forsyth. As noted, they do have a 90-day moratorium on residential developments. Commercial developments will still go through the zoning process and any applications that are in the pipeline already will be heard. Those applications will likely be heard probably through March or April and then the moratorium would kick in for those residents, but not to say those commercial projects will not be heard and anything that has been heard will still have that legal right to go forward to be considered. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 26 of 34 Councilmember Zahner Bailey commented that in regards to the 163-acre rezoning that occurred back in November, some of the discussion that she had that evening with the board of commissioners, including the now chair, Mr. Laughinghouse, was even though the rezoning has already been approved, there is obviously a lot of potential analysis and some additional consideration with regards to transportation improvement with regard to the GRETA recommendations, with regards to some modified conditions that were brought to the floor that evening and approved part of those approved conditions. She know that Mike Tuller had discussed this as a result of that meeting and her representing the Council that evening, that we would try to have some additional follow-up as to what we could or could not potentially influence. We had discussed roundabouts, we had discussed some of those GRETA projects, and there was that an opportunity for additional follow-up. Deputy Director of Community Development Tuller stated, as Councilmember Zahner Bailey noted, it was approved by the board of commissioners last month, or actually in November, and it is going to be going forward for site development. We do have still opportunities to discuss things, but it will be tricky at this stage as the developer has the zoning in place, so he will be entertaining land development activities. Councilmember Zahner Bailey commented that that evening the developer was part of those discussions that were promoted, actually by the commission, the then chair directed the developer to have that conversation. We had a very healthy, positive conversation about the opportunity to collaboratively work with them. She would just encourage as a function of this discussion that we might circle back and whether that needs to include Council and Mayor to ensure that some of the concerns that had been brought to us by folks that live off Bethany Bend and Hwy 9 that would be directly impacted, that we do not miss the opportunity that was afforded us. Yes, it will be a little bit tricky, but she thinks that we have got a window of opportunity that will continue to narrow and then go away. She would just encourage us all to encourage them to be good neighbors and for us to collectively follow up on some of those things. Deputy Director of Community Development Tuller said we would coordinate with community services related to transportation needs. Update on case litigations and a discussion on Robert’s Rules of Order – Mark Scott City Attorney Scott stated he had two reports. The first report he has for is from a memorandum that Shirley Riley forwarded to the county attorney and that regards cases that are involving properties in the City of Milton, legal cases, and law suits. As you know, we have already discussed the fact that there is a billboard case proceeding against Fulton County. At the same time that the particular billboard companies chose to file that lawsuit, filed a suit in Superior Court in Fulton County and also a lawsuit in Federal Court basically alleging the same thing. Both those suits are ongoing and those are the suits that are going to involve five sites within the City of Milton; four of them being on Highway 9 and one of them being in the newly annexed area off of Arnold Mill Road. There is another lawsuit that you need to be aware of entitled “Largenfeld vs Fulton County, et al” and it is a zoning case challenging zoning conditions placed in 6.1 acres of land located within the City of Milton. He does not have any more specifics on the actual address at this point, but it is also a challenge of the constitutionality of the Northwest Fulton Overlay District which should be of interest to all of us. The case has been tried by Fulton County and they are awaiting final order from the judge. Since there has not been a decision yet we do not know what the outcome will be. Certainly, either side will have the right to appeal after that point. From a practical standpoint, if Fulton County does not prevail, there may be a question about the Northwest Fulton Overlay District. We have reenacted that for our purposes, so as long and the reenactment is not an issue, we can certainly reenact it with changes. Every ordinance in the past has a severability clause which says that if one portion of the ordinance is declared unconstitutional, the rest of it is still valid. So we may have to deal with that, but he is not exactly sure what we are going to be doing with that, but we will deal with it. Councilmember Zahner Bailey asked do we know where that 6.1 acres is and could we get a follow up on that so that we can specifically understand where it is. She asked who is managing that case. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 27 of 34 City Attorney Scott said he believes that most of these cases in litigation are being handled by Steve Rosenburg, who is also handling among other things, the Love Shack case for Johns Creek. Councilmember Zahner Bailey continued to say that hopefully an appeal will not be necessary. Hopefully, we will get it resolved that just confirms the constitutionality of the overlay land use plan. If in this or any other case there was a case currently being handled by Fulton County that was going to go to appeal, she asked at what point do we evaluate whether or not both Fulton County and not City of Milton, become joined as part of that counsel team. City Attorney Scott said that was a very good question. In any of these cases we are not parties. There is a serious question in his mind and he thinks the answer is simply, if a court were to grant a plaintiff in any land use or land related case, relief against Fulton County involving property that is now located in the City of Milton, that is no longer in Fulton County’s jurisdiction, he does not believe that we would be bound to that decision because Fulton County just does not have jurisdiction over it any more. Essentially, most of the zoning cases are considered mandamus actions. You may know what that is, but he will say it for the record just so that everyone, public included, understands. A mandamus action is an action whereby the plaintiff in the case is asking the court to order the governmental entity to do something. So, in most zoning cases in Georgia, a mandamus action is asking the court to order, say Fulton County in these cases, to either not rezone or rezone, for example. Fulton County would not have the ability to rezone property that is now within the City of Milton. What he is concerned about is somewhat more, in the sign cases because he is less clear about that. He still does not believe that ultimately a court can order Fulton County to issue permits. But at some point clearly we are going to have to get involved in these. One of the things, to fully answer the question, is on appeal, we would have the opportunity to draft what is called an amicus brief, a friend of the court brief, and we may very much want to consider doing that when the cases get to the appellate level. At that point we can say this is our jurisdiction now, this is our feeling about it and we are asking the court, particularly because Fulton County does not have jurisdiction over us any more, to rule in this matter in our favor. Another case, and again he will be following up on all of these because he just recently got this in the last few days, is called Lauderbach vs. Fulton County. That involves the challenge of the zoning modification to allow outdoor lighting of a recreation field. Fulton County is planning on filing a motion to dismiss the case based on the fact that it is now located in the City of Milton and they do not have jurisdiction over it anymore. Another case is Windward Beverage. He does not know if anyone is familiar with Windward Beverage, but it is located right behind the Wal-Mart and they are less than 500 feet away from another liquor store, which is not legal. They can not have a license. He received a call from one of the Fulton County attorneys, he thinks it was the week of our first council meeting when began operations, and they asked us when we were assuming operations of the licensing. He checked with the City Manager and he said we are assuming them now. At that point Fulton County decided that they were not going through with another hearing and it was the same people. He is not exactly sure of the procedural aspect of how they could be coming back again for it when it is already tied up in court. He needs to find out more information on some of these things, but the point is we are going to have jurisdiction over this one and Fulton County is not. The good news though is that Fulton County filed a motion to dismiss, the final signed order is forthcoming because the judge ruled from the bench, which does not happen very often. That case would be dismissed. They may file an appeal and, frankly, he does not think they should waste their time because Fulton County does not have jurisdiction over it anymore. Of course if they do, we can file an amicus brief. Frankly, they would be better served if they just ask us for a license, and we could deal with them appropriately. Those are the cases involving Milton that we see on the horizon and at some point or another except for those that have clearly gone away; we will be involved in those. Councilmember Thurman stated that the Bartenville case was on Arnold Mill Road, and it was a case back in 2002, where they had requested from AG1 to C1 zoning for five free standing buildings. Five retail buildings to include a Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 28 of 34 convenience store with gas, pumps, and a free standing car wash. It is in front of the Chadwick location according to the Fulton County website. City Attorney Scott asked if that would be in the node. Councilmember Zahner Bailey said not necessarily. There were some issues and Glenlock Raleigh was very specific at that board of commissioners meeting because they were asking for some things that were specifically prohibited by Fulton County standards, as well as the Northwest Fulton Overlay. Councilmember Thurman stated that she thought that was property that was now the City of Roswell not the City of Milton. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that she thinks this one is on the east side of Arnold Mill heading north. It is literally in front of Chadwick Road. The real issue became some of the commercial being requested. They were asking for a convenience store with gas, and she thinks there was a car wash, gas station and some of the uses would have been allowable, but what they were really driving for was for some of those convenience/gas/carwash. That became the issue. There was some very specific dialog that was a matter of the records of the board of commissioners that would be very valuable for review. Councilmember Thurman stated that they were also requesting six concurrent variances in addition to just the zoning. City Attorney Scott asked the Councilmembers if they were saying that is on the east side of Arnold Mill Road or the west side. Councilmember Thurman and Councilmember Zahner Bailey both agreed that they believed it must be on the east side. City Attorney Scott stated he was asking that in part because he’s not taking it at face value, the city/county attorneys assertion that that is in Milton, certainly that could be on the west side of Arnold Mill Road/Roswell access road. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that she believed that this would still be within the City of Milton and it maybe that Steve Rosenberg represented that applicant at that time. City Attorney Scott said that Steve Rosenberg would not have represented the applicant because he was one of the county attorneys. Councilmember Zahner Bailey questioned how long Steve Rosenberg has been a county attorney with Fulton County. She believes he was part of that case. City Attorney Scott stated that clearly he and Mr. Rosenberg will need to have a discussion about where these things are going and the extent of our involvement and what they are expecting us to do in terms of the handover. He believes that we are going to be coordinating efforts with Johns Creek, particularly, on the billboard issues to pursue that. That will be a priority. Robert’s Rules of Order City Attorney Scott stated that the next issue is the fun issue of Robert’s Rules of Order. Before he says too much, he stated that everyone should have received an email from him with a memo this week. He hopes everyone has had a chance to read that or at least skim it. He also wants to bring to the Council’s attention a book that has been a great resource for him this week, which is Robert’s Rules for Dummies. He would say that we are all to a certain extent, dummies when it comes to Robert’s Rules. He is lumping himself into that because what he thought he knew about Robert’s Rules last week, he found out that was not all correct. He would certainly encourage using it as a great Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 29 of 34 resource. It boils down to a user friendly package. It is almost a checklist form of everything. It is very easy to read and follow. It is certainly available at any bookstore and he would certainly encourage everyone to get familiar with it. He will go through fairly quickly, perhaps within the context of tonight’s meeting and some of the procedural things. He has been watching everyone with an eye towards procedure to try to be able to give feedback on what you did well and what you did not. He will say in general, we did a lot better this week than last week. He spoke with the Mayor about this topic earlier today and explained to him that the onus is on the chair for a lot of this and so he is going to get a little bit more familiar than we have all been up to this point. Perhaps the Mayor will be a little bit more expert about this than some of you may have to be. It is to everyone’s benefit, procedurally, to get good at this because those of you, who will be good at this, will be able to get business done a lot more easily than those who do not take the time to get to know it. As we have all been through tonight, the basis idea here is making motions. Robert’s Rules for Dummies refers to those as main motions – a motion to pass an ordinance, for example. Example is topic X. In our context is to pass a motion/pass a resolution. There are incidental main motions; motions to adopt, motions to ratify, motions to recess, motions to limit debate when no other motion is pending, or point of order. Those are motions that are incidental to what is already on the table, but a main motion is a motion that is already out there that is being discussed. The mechanics (checklist), for each of these issues will follow. A main motion requires a second. A main motion is debatable. A main motion is amendable. A main motion requires a majority to prevail. We have done all that tonight. One of the procedural steps that he wants to explain, and he will go through more of the mechanical steps, he thinks we have been doing this fairly well and that everybody understands that this is the basics of Robert’s Rules. You address the chair, who is the Mayor (you don’t have to rise up and stand). The chair recognized the member, the member states the motion, and the chair is supposed to restate the motion. It is important for this reason among other things. Last week we discussed the issue of friendly amendments. There really are not friendly amendments. You can make a friendly amendment before it is restated by the chair, but once the motion is received by the chair, it is no longer that councilpersons motion anymore; it is the entire body’s motion. So, it has to be disposed of and handled by the entire body one way or the other. The chair would then say, it is moved and seconded that the council adopt ordinance X (for example) and then asks if there is any discussion. You then debate. Once the debate is clearly finished and in our case we would also include in the debate, public comment where that is warranted, and that is warranted in most ordinances as you know. The chair puts the question into a vote and you announce the result of the vote. Frankly, in our case, that would be the clerk who would do that. He will just mention that there is an objection to the consideration to the question, which is another type of motion which you can do along the same way. If you do not even want a question to be dealt with at all, you can just object to it and get rid of it. A subsidiary motion states “let’s do this with the main motion” and that is where you get into amendments. We did that tonight and there was some discussion about whether we needed to do that and you handled it well. We said OK, we had discussion this time without the motion being made, so by the time the motion had been made, we would have discussed it enough that we knew that there would be amendments to be made. You can actually make the amendments when you make the initial main motion. There is nothing wrong with doing it that way. You cannot though, do friendly amendments because once it is made, it is out of the hands of that person. Essentially, by making the motion to approve the ordinance with such amendments, you are making your own friendly amendments. So getting to the mechanics, for a motion to amend, you cannot interrupt the speaker. You must wait your turn and be recognized by the chair. It must be seconded and a motion to amend is debatable and it can be amended, the amendment itself can be amended, but only one amendment to the amendment can be done at a time. It requires a majority vote and it can be reconsidered. A number of these motions can be reconsidered after the fact, if something comes up during the discussion, a member may say, but wait a second, now that we have done this I’m not sure that doing this earlier is a good idea. Therefore, that person can move to reconsider the passage of ordinance X or resolution X. Motion to commit is a motion to defer a topic to a committee, generally for ad hoc committees. Motion to postpone, we talked about last week, we did a motion to lay on the table, with Councilmember O’Brien’s resolution. That was not exactly right. If we were going to lay it on the table, what we really meant to do is postpone it. So, in the future, what Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 30 of 34 he is going to ask the Council to do is do a motion to postpone. He is not going to go over all the mechanics for all these because it would take too long and you could read it for yourself. Councilmember Zahner Bailey asked if you can use the word postpone interchangeably with deferral or no. City Attorney Scott said there is no deferral in these rules. Councilmember Zahner Bailey commented that maybe not in the Robert’s Rules for Dummies, but with regard to other boards, obviously with which she has had quite a bit of experience, and that there are deferrals and there are term of deferrals. City Attorney Scott stated that he has been the chair of planning commission before and has run meetings like this before. He has had friendly amendments and motions to lay on the table. He has done all these things before and he knows that other city councils do these things, but they are not in Robert’s Rules. There are a lot of things that people think are in Robert’s Rules and they are not. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated for clarification even words such as deferral or withdrawal, which are standard and are used, but the word deferral is not utilized. Mayor Lockwood asked if that would be the same as postponed and be interchangeable. City Attorney Scott said it could just about be interchangeable, but he would encourage everyone to use the terms that are in Robert’s Rules because that is what we are supposed to be using. It is really not that hard. What we would have liked to have done a week ago, is to postpone that motion and then it could be brought back later at a future meeting. Councilmember Zahner Bailey asked if in some cases, we can postpone with a specific time frame. City Attorney Scott said that is exactly correct. He continued that one of the discussions earlier, in the context of Work Sessions, and it really does not apply to Work Sessions because they are not conducted this formally, but is that the idea of limiting debate. We were discussing the issue of working with the zoning agendas, particularly, how late they may go. The chair particularly may wish to seriously think about limiting debate. When we have controversial zoning issues, and we know we will at some point in the future, in order to get the job done and get out of here before 5:00 the next morning, we may have to limit debate. We can do that at any time, and you can interrupt the speaker. It has to be seconded, it is not debatable, and it can be amended, but no debate. This requires a 2/3rd vote or unanimous consent. In other words, you can just say that OK we all agree to it, you do not have to actually carry on a vote. If you all agree, you can do it that way. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated she wanted to ask a question about limiting debate. She has always had concern about limiting debate when our citizens take the time to come and have input. Separate from limiting, which of course is always an option, she believes that Robert’s Rules also gives some frameworks. She thinks the intent always with Council whether you are in agreement or not is hopefully to always give opportunity for issues to be fully resolved. She realizes this is a summary, but she would hope that we as a body have some concurrence, whether we are in agreement or in disagreement, that according to Robert’s Rules we would want for all members of this body to feel that they are pros/cons that are fully flushed out before we move forward. She just wanted to make that point that limiting debate is kind of a subset of the whole process of good dialog amongst this body. City Attorney Scott said he thinks to that the fact that it requires a 2/3 vote, as opposed to just a majority vote, also shows how important it is that nobody be cut off and not be given a change to consider everything. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 31 of 34 He continued and asked if Council recalled last Thursday night that they called the question. You can not call the question. That is again something that lots of people do and it is a widely held myth that it is part of Robert’s Rules. It is not. But what you do is make a motion for the previous question. In other words, motion that debate be finished and that we vote on the previous question. The best way is to, Mr. Chairman or Mr. Mayor, I move the previous question, to a vote. You can interrupt someone else who has the floor already, it has to be seconded, it is not debatable, it is not amendable, and it requires 2/3rds vote. Again, because you are cutting off debate, you are infringing on other people’s right, so it requires more than that majority vote. Motion to lay on the table – that we did last week and there is such a thing but it is not something that you do to table a vote forever. What you do is, and the purpose of it is, say that one of our elected representatives has come in during the middle of our meeting and we decided that we wanted to give that person a chance to speak. We could lay the pending motion on the table until the speaker has spoken and then we could pick it up off the table and finish that business later in the same meeting. That is what it is really for. Privileged motions – those are motions that you do even though there is a pending main motion. Those are things that you can basically interrupt the flow of business for. One of them is a call for order of the day and that basically says let’s get back on the subject, we have gone off on a tangent and we are going back to the subject. Motion to raise a question of privilege is basically, issues dealing with comfort of the organization. If it is too warm, if there are loud noises, if there is something that needs to be done, somebody just says, Mr. Mayor, I’d like to raise a question of privilege, and that does not require a second. At that point you can say, I’d like to raise a question of privilege in order to stop the debate, would somebody please lower the thermostat or something else, or is there is a loud noise outside the building, that takes care of that. A motion to recess – is a similar thing as a motion to adjourn. Again, it is the same thing. Incidental motions – let’s do this to better handle a pending motion. The most frequent incidental motion is one we have used tonight and he thinks we have used it generally and correctly that is a point of order. You can interrupt with a point of order. No second is required, it does not sound like a motion, it is just an outburst in a way, but that is the way it is. It is not debatable, it cannot be amended. This is important - the point of order is decided by the chair. In many cases probably the mayor will defer to the City Attorney as the parliamentary and ask him to rule for him. He thinks as the Mayor gets better at this, he will probably start doing it more by himself. However, one of the things that you need to understand is that the next motion that we talk about is the motion to appeal the ruling of the chair. If you do not agree with his or the City Attorney’s call through him, you can appeal to the rest of the Council and they can overrule. You can interrupt for that, it requires a second and it is debatable. As you can just imagine it has to be, it cannot be amended, requires a majority vote only, and it can be reconsidered later. A motion to suspend the rules – we could suspend Robert’s Rules, we could suspend the rules of procedure that we adopted earlier tonight, and he is sure that the City Manager does not want to see that happen very often, but you could do it. It is like a hall pass. You are not allowed as student to be out in the hall between classes, but if you have a hall pass you can do it. A motion to suspend the rules is the same sort of thing. Motion to object to the consideration of the question – he alluded to that earlier. You can interrupt to do this, no second is required, it is not debatable, it cannot be amended, it requires a 2/3rd vote against considering the question in order to sustain the objection. That is a pretty high threshold and, of course, it is something you are probably not going to use very often because he thinks your fellow councilmembers would probably appreciate it. But under the right circumstances, it can be an important tool. Motion to divide the question – this can be an important one. He does not think we have dealt with this issue before or had occasion to, but if a pending motion covers more than one item in which you feel should be divided into two (a good example of that tonight is Councilmember Zahner-Bailey’s motion with those amendments) clearly there was not Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 32 of 34 supported for both amendments. So, it failed for lack of a second. But, if somebody had seconded it and somebody else felt they did not want to vote, they could have made a motion to divide the question. At that point, we would have had the motion to approve. It could have been fashioned it in several ways and one of them would have been the motion to approve the ordinance as written, another one could have been to approve the ordinance with one of the amendments, another one could have been to approve the ordinance with one and without the other. The main motion itself, the one amendment or the second amendment either to join together or not at all. This cannot be interrupted, requires a second, is not debatable, can be amended, requires a majority vote, and cannot be reconsidered and that is an important one. Motion to consider by paragraph – what this reminded him of is when we went through the Sign Ordinance paragraph by paragraph and there will be times when we want to consider by paragraph. Staff may suggest that and it can certainly be presented that way. Motions related to nominations – we have been through nominations already with the vote for mayor pro tem, you can interrupt, it has to be seconded, it is not debatable, it can be amended, it requires a majority vote, and can be reconsidered if it is a negative vote to close nominations. Generally, you do not want to move to close nominations because it is not in order, (this is a point for the chair and the mayor). It is never an order to make that motion as long as someone still wants to make a nomination. So it is not something you should do, it is not an order to do it or to cut somebody off. Frankly, that is probably when most people would try to do that to cut people off. Motions for requests to be excused from duty – that is sort of a different situation we have not had yet. If somebody’s been basically appointed as a subcommittee chair and they say they cannot continue doing it, you could use that. Motion for a parliamentary inquiry – at that point you would say, Mr. Mayor parliamentary inquiry please and they will respond to councilperson would state their question. At this point, the question would be asked and it is not subject to an appeal, unlike a point of order because it is a question and not a ruling. It is sort of a watered down point of order, not quite so forceful. A motion for point of information – he thinks Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams made a point of information tonight. She did not phrase it like that, but that’s OK, we are all learning. She was talking about how Alpharetta had dealt with some of these issues and she could have simply said if that is what she wanted to do, point of information, this is what Alpharetta did. So if you really wanted to sound like a Robert’s Rules doer, she could have done it that way. In the future we may want to start doing those things. A lot of it is how professional we want to sound and he thinks we do want to sound as professional as possible. A request to withdraw a motion – we dealt with this from last week and we did have to look it up in Robert’s Rules. A movement determines after debate that their motion was a bad idea or otherwise wants to withdraw the motion on their own. Remember, once the Mayor has restated the motion, for example Councilmember O’Brien’s motion, at that point he has to request to withdraw. The chair can either put the question to a vote, in which case it could be defeated altogether as opposed or withdrawn, or there could be a second, or the motion can be withdrawn with the permission of the chair so long as nobody objects. So if one of you says I object to this motion being withdrawn, I want to see it go to the vote and see if it be voted up or down, you can do that. You can interrupt in order to do that, it does not require a second to request permission to withdraw, it is not debatable, it cannot be amended, requires a majority vote, can be reconsidered later if it is a vote to modify a motion or negative vote under the request to withdraw. Motions bringing the question before the assembly – these are allowed and considered do-overs, which is a popular term these days. A motion to reconsider – has to be made on the same day and it can only be made by a party prevailing on that vote. So, this might be a parliamentary maneuver to consider. If you believe that your motion, for example, if one of you left for a moment to take a phone call or something, you had a family emergency or had to go to the restroom, and one of you up Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 33 of 34 there knew that now you did not have the votes to get your motion approved or something that you really wanted to see passed, you could vote on the other side, opposite view points, and once the person comes back, say I move to reconsider and then get it passed if you then had the votes to do it. Some of these are fairly complex parliamentary maneuvers, but these are things you may want to consider doing at some point. You never know what situation will present itself. Motion to rescind or amend – a motion to rescind cancels the motion altogether as if it never happened. A motion to amend something previously adopted changes by making simple changes substituting something else. There is some discussion in the book that he did not go into about the way you can amend motions. You can do motions to substitute language; you can do motions to strike language, that sort of thing. A lot of the time we will just say I move that this be taken out or needs to be substituted. You can do it in different ways. We do not have to be that technical here. A motion to discharge a committee – if we have committed something to a committee which has either failed to act or report as instructed, we can allow the committee or we can basically discharge, fire the committee, and bring that issue before the body itself. A motion to take from the table – and that goes back to what was discussed earlier, the proper method of a table is when something else comes up and you need to hear from somebody else while a motion has been debated. Then you would take it from the table. It must be still made while you are doing unfinished business, which we have that section for, and must be at the next regular business meeting after the prior motion was tabled. So, you have to be there, you cannot interrupt, it must be seconded, it is not debatable, and it cannot be amended, requires a majority vote and cannot be reconsidered. City Attorney Scott more or less followed the book in terms of its formatting and he thinks that it is an easy format to use. He has tried to do it as a checklist form with what he calls mechanics of all these motions. Certainly you can read up on either using the outline, which is kind of a condensed version, or buy the book for yourself and take a look at it. He feels we all are going to get better with these things as we get more experience with them. He hopes he did not take too much time, but he thinks, especially after last week when we were not quite so sure of ourselves, was worth while to discuss how to do it better. He thinks that we have all seen some examples of what we have done well, what we have done fairly well, and what we have done poorly that we can improve on. We can all get these things and resolve to be a little sharper on parliamentary procedures. Councilmember D’Aversa–Williams stated that she would be more than happy for City Attorney Scott to continue to enlighten everyone after what we have heard today. She would urge that we continue to do that. It does not embarrass her and she does not think it embarrasses anybody else. She would much rather we do things right and learn. City Attorney Scott said that he did not want to insult councilmember D’Aversa-Williams and she said that he wouldn’t. Councilmember Zahner Bailey stated that she had a question as we continue to refine our procedures individually but also as a team, did she understand correctly we are also going to have, whether it is in a Work Session or separate from a public meeting when we are obviously taking the time of our public and citizens, are we going to have some additional opportunity to further refine some of this other than in a session such as this. She is just looking for more opportunities to be able to practice maybe even together as a team and to have some scenarios. She thinks that is always the best place to refine our skill. She suggested maybe spend 30 minutes in a Work Session, not reviewing this, but maybe having some examples, basic motions, and then amending those motions. She thought she had read from staff that we were going to have that. Councilmember Thurman stated we could do that either at a retreat or at a Work Session. Regular Meeting of the Milton City Council Thursday, January 18, 2007 Page 34 of 34 City Attorney Scott stated that they could even do some role playing if she liked. It could be constructive. City Manager Bovos stated he had to real quick things to finish up with the meeting. Fulton County did this week adopt and approve our intergovernmental agreement for both police and fire and he wanted to be sure everyone is aware of that. We have one final in our governmental agreement that needs to be adopted which is respect to the 800 megahertz radio system that is tentatively scheduled right now in February so we will be working with Fulton County to get that done. On our side it is completed. Then lastly, speaking of the retreat, it reminded me that we do have a councilmember who is unable to attend the 12th, 13th, and 14th retreat in February that is scheduled at Lake Burton. We are looking at having to either postpone or reschedule those particular dates to accommodate schedules; however, we do have February 1st and 2nd still scheduled. Everybody is confirmed for those and we will be moving forward very diligently on that. You will have an agenda hopefully very quickly. He is working with the facilitator to finalize that. After no further business, Mayor Lockwood requested a motion to adjourn the meeting. ADJOURNMENT Motion and Vote: Councilmember D’Aversa-Williams moved to adjourn the meeting at 8:44 PM. Councilmember Mohrig seconded the motion. There was no Council discussion. The motion passed unanimously. Date Approved: March 15, 2007 __________________________________ _________________________________ Jeanette R. Marchiafava, City Clerk Joe Lockwood, Mayor