Those in attendance for the Council Meeting were as follows:
Mayor: Lois Salter
Council Members:
Walter Anderson, Bernie Cohen, Debbie Guthrie, Tom Kitchens and George Sipe
City Clerk- Jackie Wall
City Attorney- Dick Carothers
Citizens Present- 15
               
CALL TO ORDER
Salter opened the meeting at 7:30pm at 4043 South Berkeley Lake Road.

MINUTES
Sipe motioned that the minutes of the meeting of Feb 16, 2006 be accepted.  Anderson seconded the motion.  All were in favor of the motion. The motion passed.

REPORTS
Anderson motioned to accept the un-audited December 2005 financial statements. Kitchens seconded the motion.
 Dec_05_balance.pdf
 Dec_05_detail.pdf

In discussion Anderson asked if any one had any questions or concerns with the financial statements as presented. There were none. Guthrie clarified that some items appeared to be over budget but they should be accrued or re-classified by the audit. Salter agreed the budget had been well managed the previous year.

Anderson, Guthrie and Kitchens were in favor of the motion. Cohen and Sipe abstained from the motion. The motion passed.

Sipe motioned to accept the financial statements for February 2006. Guthrie seconded the motion.
 Feb_06_Balance.pdf
 Feb_06_Detail.pdf
 Feb_06_Summary.pdf 

Kirkus said that the group would support additional tests to rank the road surfaces for resurfacing so they could be prioritized again as the report was already two years old. He said the group was also ranking the other public works projects based on public need and best use of funds, which they would present to council.

Report from the Berkeley Lake Conservancy (BLC) Chair- Betty Covington.
Covington said that a Forest Stewardship Plan was delivered to the City last year by state forester Dale Higdon. She described some of the recommendations, not all of which the group would agree with. Some recommendations that the BLC would like to do included removing invasive privet, which would be easy to spot and remove in winter.

Reports continued.
Salter announced the formation of a new men’s group ‘BLOKES’ (Berkeley Lake Order of Knights Extraordinaire and Squires) who would be doing jobs for senior citizens and single women who need help. Citizens can contact Steve Seitz for further details.

Salter said that she had asked Connie Wiggins of Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful to add our section of Peachtree Industrial Blvd to the list of areas to be cleaned up and that Wiggins has put us on their list.

Edinger described fully the five phases necessary to build a city hall: needs assessment, programming, design development, construction documents, and construction administration.

•   Salter said that surveys were needed for all the drainage projects in the city so the City could acquire permanent easements to enable the work to go ahead once the projects were approved.

Cohen motioned to authorize the $12,305 requested to go ahead and get the surveys done. Guthrie seconded the motion, and all were in favor. The motion passed.

•   There was discussion about the problems with the paving completed by Puckett Construction and the problems contacting the company as it had recently been sold. It was decided to discuss the issue further in executive session.

Cohen motioned to authorize Salter to sign the LARP contract and to pay for the patching required for Valley View Lane not to exceed $15,000.  Kitchens seconded the motion. All were in favor and the motion passed

•    Edinger briefly described the status of the talks that the Gwinnett County Municipal Association (GwMA) is having with Gwinnett County regarding their proposed Stormwater Utility and the intergovernmental agreement. He said that the City had until June to decide whether to join with the County next year in their stormwater utility fees, as the county is billing with their property taxes. However there was also a possibility that the City may not want join the county and could make other arrangements to complete the permits as required by the EPD.There was discussion about whether to eliminate or lower the seating requirements for serving alcohol in addition to the 50% food requirement. It was noted that the ordinance could be updated over time when necessary, as liquor licenses run from year to year and this had been proved at superior court. There was reference to the ordinance that governs the same piece of property that already has some restrictions. It was agreed to require 50 % food and a minimum of 40 seats.

There was discussion about the Covenants for the property. Carothers said he would send council a copy. He said he would also review them in relation to the current sign ordinance. He said adult entertainment was hard to enforce in an ordinance due to first amendment rights but covenants were harder to break. He said that there were already provisions against adult entertainment in the covenants, and he would also ask them to make that provision un-amendable. It was agreed to discuss whether the city needed an adult entertainment ordinance at a later date.

Anderson motioned to invest a minimum of $100,000 at each of two banks or more in future. Cohen seconded the motion.

In discussion,  it was suggested that the city operating account could be moved to Peachtree Bank with whom the city has a good banking relationship. It was agreed that it was important to keep good banking relationships, and to spread the investments across at least two banks to keep the money safe.

All were in favor of the motion and the motion passed.

Sipe withdrew his postponed motion from the last council meeting regarding investing $100,000 of the 6 month CD in SunTrust bank in July.

Safety- Cohen
Cohen said that Sipe had presented his document regarding road safety to council and it had been agreed to set up town hall meetings to allow citizens to discuss the problems and hear what they think. It was suggested there should be one evening meeting and one on a Saturday. Once the public is informed at the meetings, Sipe requested that a survey be sent to citizens. There was discussion about how effective this would be and whether citizens would respond to such a survey. Sipe expressed concerns about ‘stacking the odds’ at the meeting itself. He said he wanted to see a survey sent whatever the outcome of the meetings, as the meetings would not represent everyone concerned. There were also concerns as to the wording of the survey itself and the expense of sending it out. There were no decisions made regarding the survey.  Sipe said he still thought it was a Lakeshore Drive and associated roads safety issue. Guthrie said it was a citywide issue as any solution costing money was relevant to all city taxpayers. Sipe said all taxpayers should consider the cost of any solution, and therefore it should be everyone’s concern.

It was agreed that the Town Hall meetings would be at 7 pm on Thursday 4th May and 10 am on Saturday 13th May assuming the chapel is available. All council members should be available on that date. It was agreed that citizens should be listened to, questions be answered, and discussed. There would not be cases presented for each option as previously discussed; otherwise expert opinions and costs would need to be sought beforehand. The consensus was that the idea was to gauge citizens’ opinions, and if citizens were not able to attend, they could comment other ways. Salter would also seek opinions in her ‘Mayor’s Message’. Sipe noted that other council members could add to his document. It was agreed they should be added as soon as possible as the ‘Mayor’s Message’ would be sent out before the end of the month.

NEW BUSINESS
Police- Sipe
Sipe said that the Communications Committee would like to clarify again that in the event of an emergency citizens should call 911. He said a good guideline would be that if a citizen wanted a police officer on the scene for any reason, they should call 911. In order to notify the police of anything else, as an ‘FYI’ they could call Doug McClure. It was agreed that this would be put on the web site and in the Mayors Message once again. Our officers are informed by 911 if they are in the city at the time of an emergency.

Holben’s stormwater/silt concerns- Anderson
Anderson described a meeting he had attended at Gwinnett County Planning department convened by Chris Holben with interested parties regarding the development of the parcel of land next to ‘Kinder Care’ on Peachtree Industrial Blvd (PIB), which abuts on to Holben’s property. The developer is hoping to raise the level of dirt on the parcel level with PIB- moving approximately 20-30 ft dirt over the 3 acre site (approximately 120,000 cubic yards of fill), which will eventually slope down and will drain into Holben’s pond. This is a large volume of dirt.  Holben had described his previous experiences. He said that all interested parties (the public works committee, the city, BLHA, public and private citizens) had expressed their concerns about the erosion control. In summary, Anderson said that the County had assured everyone that the erosion control measures would be enforced in the same as way as the aquatic center, and he felt the meeting had been a very positive one.  However concern was expressed that this was a potentially difficult erosion situation that all parties needed to monitor.

Cohen motioned to enter executive session to consider land acquisition and legal issues. Kitchens seconded the motion. All were in favor and the motion passed.

Cohen motioned to exit executive session. Anderson seconded the motion. All were in favor and the motion passed.

THERE BEING NO FURTHER BUSINESS, COHEN MOTIONED TO ADJOURN THE MEETING AT 11:30PM.  ANDERSON SECONDED THE MOTION, AND ALL WERE IN FAVOR. THE MOTION PASSED.

Respectfully submitted by Jackie Wall. Approved by Council on April 20th, 2006.