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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes CC - 05/09/2011 - 05-09-11 W.S. Mins (Migrated from Optiview)Work Session of the Milton City Council Monday, May 9, 2011 at 6:00 pm Page 1 of 7 i1o" This summary is provided as a convenience and service to the public, media, and staff. It is not the intent to transcribe proceedings verbatim. Any reproduction of this summary must include this notice. Public comments are noted and heard by Council, but not quoted. This document includes limited presentation by Council and invited speakers in summary form. This is an official record of the Milton City Council Meeting proceedings. Official Meetings are audio recorded. The Work Session of the Mayor and Council of the City of Milton was held on May 9, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Mayor Lockwood presiding. Council Members Present: Councilmember Karen Thurman, Councilmember Zahner Bailey, Councilmember Bill Lusk, Councilmember Joe Longoria, and Councilmember Tart. Councilmember Hewitt was absent/excused from the meeting. Mayor Lockwood: • Work Sessions are an informal setting to update Council on business items. • No votes will be taken during these sessions. • There are three (3) items on our Agenda tonight. • Public comment is allowed that is germane to an Agenda Item. • If you wish to speak you are required to fill out a comment card and turn it into the City Clerk staff. • Public comment will be allowed for a total of 10 minutes per agenda item and no more than 2 minutes per person. • Public comment will be heard at the beginning of each Item. • Once the item is called, no other comment cards will be accepted. City Clerk Gordon read Agenda Item #1. A Proclamation Recognizing Peace Officers' Memorial Day. (Presented by Mayor Joe Lockwood) Mayor Lockwood read and presented a proclamation to Recognizing Peace Officers' Memorial Day. City Clerk Gordon read Agenda Item #2- 2. Discussion of Revision to Milton's Road Privatization Policy. (Presented by Carter Lucas, Public Works Director) Carter Lucas: • We are back to discuss some of the changes to the privatization policy. We came before you in February with a brief discussion regarding roadway abandonment back in the 2010 legislative session. • Our current ordinance requires 100% approval of the affected landowners. r.. • In February, the changes in legislation may have provided an opportunity for the city to reevaluate that percentage and recommend something other than 100%. • If we looked at the laws that existed prior to 2010, the burden on the city was to demonstrate that the public had no substantial public purpose for the roadway. Work Session of the Milton City Council Monday, May 9, 2011 at 6:00 pm Page 2 of 7 • What was changed was some language was added that also said its removal from the municipal street system was otherwise in the best interest of the public. • Ken and I discussed that by adding the determination, if it was in the best public interest, it opens up the avenue to evaluate some other criteria for these roads. • You can look at it from a financial standpoint, public safety convenience, and engineering principals. • This becomes a case by case basis. • You asked us to look at other jurisdiction's privatization requests. • The cities we looked at in the vicinity all require 100% approval. • That is not to say that any of them have looked at it since the law was changed in 2010. • I know that Roswell has been considering it but I don't know which direction they're going to go with it. • As the ordinance exists right now, 100% approval is required from all of these different jurisdictions. • On this table, the HOA provisions are collector street provisions. • From an HOA standpoint, when they have the ability to act on behalf of their citizens, those ordinances do allow the HOA to make application on behalf of the subdivision requesting the privatization. • The collector street provision states that any street that connects two collector type roads isn't eligible for privatization. ^I • From our standpoint, the percentage relates to what standard do we need to look at to bring an application forward to Mayor and Council. • It doesn't say that because there is 100% approval that privatization will be granted. • We have the opportunity to look at and modify this percentage to move forward. • Some alternatives are: Leave it at 100% and move forward as it exists today; set a lower percentage rate; or use a tiered approach. • We want to make sure that there is substantial support for the best public interest. Mayor Lockwood: • Where does the HOA fall with our ordinance? Carter Lucas: • If you have less than 100% approval, which is required by our ordinance, but you have an HOA that is capable of making these types of decisions on behalf of the applicant, then even if you don't reach the 100% mark the HOA can make application for the abandonment on behalf of the residents. • They limit the types of roads that can be considered for abandonment and privatization. • That shows that there is some precedence for the HOAs to act on behalf of the residences provided they have the ability to take these sorts of actions. Karen Thurman: • I believe that an HOA should not be allowed to forgo the requirements. • I like the tiered requirements that were discussed. Work Session of the Milton City Council Monday, May 9, 2011 at 6:00 pm Page 3 of 7 rte.. • I don't think you will ever get 90% of people to agree. • I think in the 21-100 residential homes, I would think 75% would work. • Above 100 residential homes, I would think super majority of 66.66% would work. • I don't like the idea that the HOA is able to do it and most times it's only three members per community that make up the HOA. Mayor Lockwood: • I think we need to decide if we want to leave it as is, or change it. That should be our first step. Carter Lucas: • The one thing so far is we aren't sure that the 100% was the right number. • We wanted to let it be known there is the ability to change that number, try and target what that number could be, and we will bring back a complete ordinance with any further changes as far as operations. City Manager Lagerbloom: • I think one thing we need to know tonight is do we want to go towards the tiered direction, or do we want to explore giving the HOA the ability to make the decision. Councilmember Longoria: • The homeowners association wouldn't ask for privatization of roads if they haven't done their homework prior to that. • It may be appropriate for the HOA board to petition the city on the concept of privatizing the road with the understanding that if the city were to consider it, then the HOA would have to go out and petition the homeowners to see if we have support or not. • In some cases, doing the work if we have homeowner support is a substantial task. • It wouldn't make sense if there wasn't support from the council to even consider it. • I would say that we should give HOA's leeway in terms of the petition process and not necessarily render a decision or tie the decision to specific requirements. Carter Lucas: • Right now, we look at the figures with the homeowners association and we look at what they expect the increase in homeowners associations dues to be and try and determine if it is a reasonable amount for the maintenance of the roads. Councilmember Lusk: • I am more inclined to go with the tiered approach. • The issue I have is from the mathematical standpoint. • I think you can get 90% approval from a neighborhood of 20 and maybe even 80% of a neighborhood of 100. • When you get up to the 600+ homes, I'm not sure that level of substance works mathematically. Councilmember Tart: • Joe, are you advocating for the HOA to come forward to the council for privatization and get input and then go out and get the number of votes to carry that percentage? Work Session of the Milton City Council Monday, May 9, 2011 at 6:00 pm Page 4 of 7 Councilmember Longoria: • I would rather set the bar and let the HOA get over the bar, and then our questions would be answered. City Attorney Jarrard: • I think that the council needs to get some sort of preliminary feedback from staff and to suggest if it is viable at all to save the HOA from going out and gathering information. • If the council thinks it is viable, then the HOA can go out and get the information that we would require. Carter Lucas: • The standards themselves will be laid out in the ordinance when we revise it. Mayor Lockwood: • I would be in favor of looking at the tiered idea. • I want to give the citizens the ability to make the decision. Councilmember Tart: • I would agree with the tiered approach and I would agree with Councilmember Lusk also. • When you get into neighborhoods that are 500+ homes, I think no more than 67%. • In terms of figuring out the effected homeowners, could you tell me what your current thinking is on who is affected? Carter Lucas: • It's hard to come up with that answer. There really is no way to determine who the affected owner would be. • Typically, I would say that the affected property owners are usually just those within a subdivision. Mayor Lockwood: • We need to give staff direction tonight about changing the ordinance if we want to change it. Councilmember Hewitt: • I like the tiered approach and I believe we should add a fourth tier for around 250+ residents. Councilmember Longoria: • The percentage we are talking about isn't for approval, but it is to discuss. Councilmember Zahner Bailey: • Do we think that three tiers will be enough? • I think we need to make guidelines that state steps for consideration of approval for road privatization. • We need to be specific as to what those criteria would include. • We will need to find what the financial approach that needs to be evaluated from the city and from the HOA so that any homeowner understands what the true cost would be. Work Session of the Milton City Council Monday, May 9, 2011 at 6:00 pm Page 5 of 7 Councilmember Longoria: • I think that if we had 66% consensus on privatizing a road, we should consider it. Councilmember Thurman: • I don't think we need to have a percentage for the HOA to bring it forward. If we want to consider it, then we can ask for a percentage of homeowners that are in favor of privatization. Carter Lucas: • We will bring this back at the next work session. • The first reading will be held in July. City Clerk Gordon read Agenda Item #3. 3. Discussion of City of Milton Strategic Planning Staff Overview, Vision and Mission Strategies. (Presented by Strategic Planning Team) Jason Wright: • Today I have Carrie Schwimmer who is part of the strategic planning team. • Carrie works for RBC Bank and is a representative of the business community that we used for the plan. • We have a PowerPoint presentation tonight. • Everyone should have the plan that was emailed to you. • After today, we do have the input from the meetings that we have had. • The input from the boarding committee meeting has not yet been worked into the plan. • We have been working on the plan for a little over six months. • Our group consists of 15 people which includes members from staff and community representatives from low density residential, high density residential, business, and education. • Kerry has been instrumental in our plan and has been very helpful. • This plan is a three year plan for what we are supposed to do that will guide our staff time, staff priorities and budget. • The point of the plan is that with the public interaction, it will reflect the community and help ensure that everyone is comfortable with the next three years in the city. • The key stakeholders are identified by the Council for us to work on and those were families including youth, the business community, and the equestrian community. • Our core values are innovation, quality, integrity, transparency, respect, fiscal responsibility and professional development. • We have crafted definitions for each of those terms from Milton and they are listed in the packet on page nine. • On page ten, the core strategies include building relationships, to protect and preserve open ww"space, to provide responsibility and responsive government, to promote the equestrian lifestyle r�.. and structuring economic growth. • The strategic plan will answer the questions "what will or may change in our environment?" "Where do we want to be?" "How will we know when we get there?" "Where are we now?" and "How do we get there?" Work Session of the Milton City Council Monday, May 9, 2011 at 6:00 pm Page 6 of 7 • We identified the critical current and future issues for the city of Milton. • We looked at other cities to see how they have dealt with the issues that we are seeing. • The first things we looked at were the Vision and Mission statements. • The vision statement had a lot of discussion between staff and citizens and how we would define it. • We decided that the elected officials were the ones that were to set the vision. • We felt as a group that we could affect more change through the mission statement. • We tried to craft a mission statement that was tied to every strategy that we have to the stakeholders. • In our strategies, building relationships was defined as building lasting relationships that create and maintain Milton's sense of community. • We are going to strengthen public relations, boast our community collaboration, and have more citizen engagement. • We are going to start an annual citizen survey and chart the annual participation rate and city events and look at the number of new business start ups in Milton. Carrie Schwimmer: • We are going to actively promote the rural character of Milton through protection and preservation and acquisition of space. • Open space protection and open space preservation are key success measures. X" Jason Wright: • We will provide responsive and responsible government. • We define this as providing quality services in a fiscally responsible environment while maximizing our resources. • We will engage in proactive planning. • We will provide quality services. • We will seek innovative funding strategies. • We will measure this by charting the organizational cost to serve per citizen. Carrie Schwimmer: • We are going to promote the equestrian culture and community through preservation and promotion. • Structuring economic growth will create a climate of economic success. • We will do this through planning for substantial growth, promote and support local businesses, and our key success measures are going to be growth and business receipts, average scores from satisfaction surveys from citizens and business owners, the number of business permits, and the number of new business start-ups. Councilmember Tart: • Will we keep track and improve on base line goals throughout this plan? • Is our goal to increase by a specific percentage? How do we base our success? Jason Wright: 0 We will project and expand our goals throughout this plan. Work Session of the Milton City Council Monday, May 9, 2011 at 6:00 pm Page 7 of 7 • The first year's goal is to establish a baseline. • After that, we will set goals and targets based on the baseline. Councilmember Longoria: • The challenge I have for everyone, if I am the average citizen and I didn't participate in the work identifying our needs, it might take me time to get up to speed. • We need to put together an introduction section to help show why we picked what we did and the direction we have gone in. • We need a transition document to help get others up to speed. Councilmember Zahner Bailey: • We need to be sure that our citizens have the opportunity to participate in all of these. After no further discussion, the Work Session adjourned at 7:30 p.m. Date Approved: June 20, 2011. �d Sudie AM Gordon, Ci y Clerk Joe Lockwood ayor