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Full Minutes May 17, 2007 |
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COUNCIL MEETING
CITY OF BERKELEY LAKE
4043 SOUTH BERKELEY LAKE ROAD
BERKELEY LAKE, GEORGIA 30096
Full Minutes for
May 17, 2007
Those in attendance for the Council Meeting were as follows:
Mayor: Lois Salter
Council Members:
Debbie Guthrie, Walter Anderson, Tom Kitchens and George Sipe
City Administrator – Leigh Threadgill
City Attorney- Dick Carothers
Citizens Present- 8
CALL TO ORDER
Salter opened the meeting at 7:30 pm at 4043 South Berkeley Lake Road.
I. APPROVAL OF OR CHANGES TO THE AGENDA
Salter recommended the following changes to the agenda:
Add Public Works Committee report as (vi) under Reports.
Add (k) under new business to set the millage rate meeting.
Add (l) under new business for Miramont Resolution.
Add (m) under new business to discuss bids for patching Lakeshore Drive related to LARP.
It was consensus of council to add these and to remove the Special Guest Speaker agenda item II and remove (a) under New business, Partnership Gwinnett Request.
Guthrie inquired about whether the Carol Christa report should be removed. Consensus of council was to keep that on the agenda.
Guthrie asked whether we should remove Occupational Tax and Regulatory Fee Ordinances because at the last meeting council had agreed that they wanted to look at other ordinances and she wasn’t aware that there were any new ordinances available for review. Anderson suggested leaving them on the agenda for this meeting.
Kitchens asked to make a statement about BLEMA. Salter asked council to add this as (vii) under reports.
Salter acknowledged consensus of those changes to the agenda.
II. SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER – Nick Masino, Mayor of Suwanee
Mayor Masino was not able to attend.
III. MINUTES
Anderson motioned to accept the minutes from the April 9th, 2007 Special Called council meeting. Guthrie seconded the motion.
Sipe raised concerns that the meeting wasn’t conducted under the rules specified in Chapter 3. He stated that the minutes reflected that someone other than the Mayor called the meeting to order and adjourned the meeting. Salter stated that she didn’t make an issue about it, but that she had in fact opened the meeting and then turned it over to Barbara Carroll and closed it at the end. Carroll, who was in the audience, agreed that this had happened.
Sipe stated that the meeting starting time should be noted at the top and the Mayor should be noted as having opened the meeting, turned it over to Barbara Carroll and adjourned the meeting.
Anderson modified the motion to include those modifications. Guthrie seconded. All were in favor. The motion passed.
Anderson motioned to accept the minutes from the April 19th, 2007 meeting. Kitchens seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
IV. REPORTS
a.) Police Report
Salter noted that Council had received a report from the Police.
b.) Financial Statements
Salter noted that Council had received the financial statements for March and April 2007.
Guthrie motioned to accept the unaudited March 2007 Financial Statements. Kitchens seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
Guthrie motioned to accept the unaudited April 2007 Financial Statements. Kitchens seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
c.) OEO Report
Salter noted that council had received a report from the Ordinance Enforcement Officer.
d.) BLC Report
Salter noted that the Berkeley Lake Conservancy had submitted a report and that Rebecca Spitler, 3825 Berkeley View Drive, was in attendance to answer any questions.
Guthrie asked if Spitler had all the information from prior committee chairs about feedback from council in the past about the site management plan. Spitler answered affirmatively and reported that she is attending a seminar next week to discuss response to emergency events and help with disaster preparedness and management.
Salter noted that the BLC was recommending Spitler to be the GOLT representative, and council would need to vote on that later.
e.) P&Z Report
Salter noted that Frank Lombardi was in attendance to give a report from the Planning and Zoning Commission.
Frank Lombardi, 20 Lakeshore Drive, newest member of the Planning and Zoning (P&Z) Commission, came to talk about the pros and cons of regularly scheduled monthly meetings. One pro of regularly scheduled meetings is that residents can anticipate meetings and plan to attend. When Lombardi joined P&Z he was more in favor of having a regularly scheduled meeting. However, he said that now he understood the impact of having a fixed deadline for application submittal that citizens may have to wait two months to get a variance heard. Lombardi stated that P&Z can be a lot more responsive to the residents if they call meetings when variance requests are made. Last year there were only five P&Z meetings to hear variances. A lot of the variances are administrative and processed by Bob Herb, the Commission Chair. Lombardi noted that the question about how to schedule meetings is about how to be more responsive to the residents and scheduling meetings as needed is successful in doing that.
Kitchens asked about how the citizens are impacted by not knowing when a meeting will be held in terms of having to round up all the commissioners to meet. Lombardi said that he understood from Bob Herb that for most of the meetings last year, at least 4 of the 5 of the commissioners were there. He acknowledged that the citizens couldn’t as easily anticipate when a meeting would be held, but that the flip side of that is being able to respond to variance requests more quickly.
Sipe asked if the meeting schedule was talked about at the last P&Z meeting. Lombardi responded yes. Lombardi said that the last meeting was his first meeting. Sipe asked if anyone on P&Z was in favor of having regularly scheduled meetings
Lombardi said that unofficially P&Z is leaning towards having meetings on an as-needed basis. It has been done this way for 12 years. Do we need to fix the process or the ordinance to match how the process has been working?
Guthrie asked if we should move consideration of Chapter 3 up to be considered with Lombardi’s report.
Consensus of council was to consider agenda item (c) under new business O-55-07 Chapter 3-601 with Lombardi’s report.
Guthrie stated that one of the problems is how people view the role of P&Z. If P&Z is just there to hear variances, then she agrees with holding meetings as needed. Guthrie stated that she sees the role of P&Z more broadly. She sees their role to include providing feedback to council on changes to ordinances, etc., which is why it would be helpful for P&Z to have a regular meeting schedule.
Lombardi stated that it was discussed and that council business would be handled by P&Z in the same way, as needed. P&Z can be responsive to other business besides just variance requests. He noted that the last P&Z meeting, his first, was just to attend to business and not to hear variance requests.
Guthrie stated that months and months have gone by in the past while council waited on feedback from P&Z. Guthrie stated that we are the only city in Gwinnett County that doesn’t have regularly scheduled P&Z meetings and that she had come across a document from the Atlanta Regional Commission about P&Z meeting schedules across the 10-county region and all of the cities within the 10-county region listed appeared to have regularly scheduled P&Z meetings except Berkeley Lake. It is common for councils and P&Z to work hand in hand on things. It would be helpful to council if they knew when P&Z would be meeting so that they could request that business items be added to the next P&Z agenda. She added that she had taken feedback from the city administrator who has a background in planning and emailed comments from the city attorney recommending monthly P&Z meetings into consideration.
Guthrie stated that she didn’t feel like it was efficient to have the City Administrator, Threadgill, ask for a P&Z meeting to get business handled. She thinks that responding to residents is everyone’s goal, but that there is a bigger picture here.
Lombardi suggested that residents in other cities may have some heartache regarding having missed the application deadline.
Lombardi stated that he didn’t know why in the past P&Z hadn’t attended to council business in a timely manner. This issue may need to be addressed. He suggested that it may have been a communication problem in the past and that P&Z didn’t perceive that there was urgency associated with whatever the council business was.
Sipe stated that he can’t believe that the P&Z would not hear business that council was interested in them hearing. It could only be explained that there was a lack of communication. Sipe described some differences between Berkeley Lake and other larger jurisdictions. There isn’t sufficient business in Berkeley Lake to require a monthly meeting schedule for P&Z. He suggested that as-needed meetings allowed P&Z to be more responsive and that is the important point. He disagreed that the P&Z isn’t functioning as professionally as it should.
Anderson stated that there were a couple of ordinances that council waited on and Guthrie had the driveway ordinance that it took months to get feedback from P&Z on.
Threadgill included information about the new ordinance prepared by Municode that needs to be adopted and could have been reviewed by P&Z earlier than it will be because there is not a regularly scheduled meeting. She added that she had emailed the P&Z chair once to remind him that a meeting needed to be scheduled to handle this. The P&Z chair planned to wait until variance requests came up before scheduling the meeting, but when no variance requests came up, a meeting was called to handle this business, although the meeting to handle it is scheduled to be approximately 3 months after the last P&Z meeting.
Lombardi suggested that if council has something that P&Z needs to consider, then they should communicate their needs to the P&Z and give P&Z a deadline for getting something done for council. Lombardi stated that if P&Z is not responsive then they could be reprimanded for not having delivered upon a council request.
Guthrie would like for P&Z to broaden the work that they do with council. She indicated that the mindset needs to be changed so that city business isn’t just tagged on to variance hearings.
Lombardi doesn’t see why P&Z can’t be as responsive to council as they are to the residents.
There was further discussion.
Sipe stated that in some cases council is just looking for some guidance that P&Z could just discuss in email as council sometimes does.
Salter stated that we do have an ordinance to vote on for first read so council could choose to make a motion on that ordinance, or council could choose to wait a while longer to see if things will work well enough after this conversation.
Guthrie is in favor of waiting to take any action on O-55-07 and giving P&Z the opportunity to respond in a timely manner to Council requests when given deadlines on city business as suggested by Lombardi, but she is personally interested in hearing feedback on business items from all of the P&Z members.
Sipe disagreed because P&Z has a chairperson to speak for the members of the commission. Sipe indicated that Bob Herb has enough integrity to represent others’ opinions honestly.
Guthrie emphasized that she is personally interested in hearing feedback from P&Z as a whole.
Anderson stated that as with committees, chairs should be representing the collective opinions of their members.
There was further discussion.
Salter asked that Lombardi carry the message from council back to P&Z and that the P&Z would continue to meet as needed.
There was further discussion.
Sipe asked Lombardi to please tell Bob Herb that if the council had failed to communicate when we needed something we requested from P&Z, then he should ask council for clarification.
Anderson added that if Lombardi is presenting an opinion from P&Z then his understanding is that what he has stated is representative of the entire P&Z and not his personal opinion.
Salter confirmed that that was the intent in having Lombardi come to deliver a report to council.
f.) Public Works Report
Salter noted that Randy Kirkus was in attendance to provide a Public Works Committee Report.
Salter suggested council consider bids for patching of Lakeshore along with Kirkus’ report. The lesser bid has been recommended to us. Kirkus stated that he hadn’t seen the other bid and so he had no idea if the scope was the same. Kirkus said that he knows that the bid for $19,800 is complete because he was involved in that bid. The LARP 2007 designation is about 350 feet from the intersection of Lakeshore Drive and Ridge Road back toward Little Ridge Road. The GDOT came out and marked the areas that they wanted removed and patched back so that they can pave it when they come back later this year.
Kirkus stated that it has been a bit confusing and that he has been dealing with Harold Mull, the district engineer for Gwinnett County. He had understood that GDOT has just awarded the contract for the paving for all of the state. There was originally an April 20th deadline and Harold Mull said that there really was no deadline, but now we’ve heard that there is a May1st deadline.
Salter stated that we needed to go ahead and get this done as soon as possible and her recommendation is to go with the $19,800 bid which is the one that Randy Kirkus has researched and is also the cheapest.
Anderson stated that he was concerned that there are no specs contained in the bid, including no materials information. Randy Kirkus stated that he doesn’t personally have any specs. The Georgia Paving bid is to remove 2” of pavement and replace 2”. The Farmer bid is to remove 5” of pavement and replace 5”. Randy stated that the Farmer Construction bid is excessive and more than what the state requires. Kirkus can ask the state to make a determination about the bid that we are considering to be sure that it meets with their approval.
There are two concerns, one about the specs of the materials being used, which is an issue that has come up before and the other is that they have exempted reflective cracking that may occur, which seems significant. Kirkus responded that cracking will always occur when the roadbed is unstable. Anderson said that he thought you could backfill the cracks, but Kirkus responded that with the instability of the roadbed there is no way to prevent cracking.
Kirkus asked if it was possible to go ahead and approve the bid with the condition that additional information be provided or if council would approve this by email when the information was available.
Salter stated that we need to move on this because the state has put us in a bind by giving us a fairly unrealistic deadline. We would lose the paving from LARP if the state came next week to do the work and the road wasn’t prepared.
Kirkus stated that we have no control over what the state does.
When they paved Valley View Lane, they did an inadequate job. Sometimes they leave our roads in worse conditions by doing this.
Kirkus stated that he is not a proponent of LARP anymore after having been involved with public works for the past two years.
Salter asked Kirkus if we should go with Georgia Paving and let LARP do the work, or should we just not worry about possibly losing the LARP work. Kirkus stated that he is comfortable having Georgia Paving do the work, and Site Engineering recommended them to us.
Salter recommended going with Georgia Paving.
Anderson stated that we do need to be sure that whatever council authorizes is sufficient to meet the requirements from the state.
Kirkus said that if council will approve the bid tonight, he will contact Harold Mull to see if the contract is adequate and then get whatever is necessary from Georgia Paving to include in the contract. Kirkus will provide council with Harold Mull’s response.
Funding was discussed and whether SPLOST could be used. It was thought that SPLOST funds cannot be used because this is considered maintenance. It was discussed that the budgeted amount for the LARP project was not as much as the bid.
Anderson motioned that we request that Randy Kirkus obtain additional specification information from LARP on subsurface preparation to ensure that we have appropriate specs for the Georgia Paving contract to meet the state’s preparation requirements and to allocate an amount not to exceed $19,800 for Georgia Paving to do work to prepare for LARP. Kitchens seconded the motion.
Anderson amended the motion to include all of his previous motion and to add that Council authorizes Mayor Salter to sign the contract with Georgia Paving if the contingencies are met. Kitchens seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
There was further discussion about where the funds would come from. Threadgill was asked to check the budget before the next meeting to be sure that we would have enough money for this project
g) BLEMA Report
Kitchens delivered a report from BLEMA. He stated that BLEMA recently met with Rob Carter of PrepareFirst for our Emergency Management Program for the City. As a result of that meeting there was a 113-page colored document. He noted that Anderson provided nice, colored copies to each committee member for them to be able to review the report and provide recommendations. Kitchens expressed his appreciation to Anderson for his good work to this end. Kitchens asked that the city reimburse Anderson for producing 8, 113-page color copies.
There was further discussion.
Consensus of council was that this could be handled through the regular reimbursement process with the City Administrator.
Anderson noted that he had a copy of the report here.
Guthrie asked if BLEMA would have feedback for the June council meeting. Kitchens responded that they would be prepared to give a report to council at the next council meeting.
V. MAYORS MESSAGE
Salter submitted a written report to council, which said the following:
“I have driven our arborist around the city and directed his attention to multiple problem trees that were suggested to me for inspection by council members and HOA presidents. Thanks to Dale Higdon of the Dept. of Natural Resources for his time and valuable advice. He reminded me what a rare treasure we have in our trees in Berkeley Lake. His area of responsibility includes quite a few counties in Georgia, but he said he doesn’t see many places like this.
The infrastructure repair project is nearing completion, in spite of unforeseen difficulties with the Miramont project, which, as you recall, the subdivision residents are paying for separately. When Site Engineering got into the pipe they found timber supports inside it, which is not a good thing. No one knows who put them there, or when or why, but they provide an obstruction which catches debris and could cause a blockage. Miramont has considered their options and decided to pay a great deal more money to change out the whole pipe. They would not be required to do this, but it is clearly the best option for us all in the long run. I appreciate Miramont’s interest in the community at large and Rebecca Spitler’s leadership in resolving this difficult issue. When this project is completed, the pipe near Wayne Mitsch’s house will then be cleaned out and partly replaced if necessary. When all this is finished, Rich Edinger will give the contractor a “punch list” and follow up on it. He is also planning to survey the entire area where Farmer Construction repaired the road shoulders before recommending payment of the bill we have already received from them. Lastly, I have begun to talk with Rich about what projects we might consider in a new SPLOST should that become a reality. If you have any thoughts about that, please feel free to share them with me.
Regarding our new ordinance forbidding overnight parking on the Right of Way, please advise anyone who observes violations to contact City Hall.
I have made the following appointments to a new committee on Building Process Review: Wayne Mitsch will serve as chair and George Sipe as liaison. Members include Irvin Gunter, Bob Herb, Randy Johnson, and Bill Smith. Here is the charge I have given them:
Building Process Review Committee - This is meant to be a temporary committee, created part way through the year at Council’s request. The members are asked to study and refine our system as a citizen would encounter it in building something within Berkeley Lake. That would include forms, procedures, costs for permits, ordinances, remedies for violations including fines, variances, expiration dates and time frames. If you find any room for improvement, please make recommendations for me and the Council to consider. I would hope to receive these recommendations in writing through email so that I could forward them on to Council in the most expeditious manner for their consideration prior to a council meeting. Please work closely with our city staff on this. Their input regarding the building process will be very important, since they work with it daily and receive lots of citizen comment in the process, which they can relay to you.
We are approaching the time of year again when we must set a millage rate. Leigh has met with county officials in preparation for this and we await information from them that we will need to consider. You will recall that there is always a very short turnaround and as usual we will have to have some extra meetings. We will let you know as soon as we are able to schedule those.
The nice young men who were doing community service under my supervision have completed cleaning the road signs and have picked up a lot of trash. One of them continues to work on the latter and on removing the netting along the roadside that Greg Harris was concerned about as a potential problem for his mowers. If you have other requests, please feel free to let me know.
I called the Gwinnett Co. Fire Chief and requested their participation in our July 4th activities. He has arranged to send a large fire engine for kids to see and 3 to 4 firefighters who will have some activities for children and a fire safety presentation for BLEMA members and others. They will be with us for about an hour and a half unless there is a fire emergency elsewhere. If anyone would like to help on July 4th with this or other activities, please let me know.”
At the meeting, Salter added that the culvert near Wayne Mitsch’s property has been completed and that the contractors had replaced a 10-foot section of that, and that she had invited the workers from Site Engineering over for lunch and was extending an invitation to council to join them. She noted that there would be no city funds expended on that.
Guthrie asked if Salter would be making committee appointments. Salter explained that council didn’t need to vote on that and that they would be in the record because the entire Mayor’s Message is in the record.
VI. OLD BUSINESS
a) City Hall Planning – Consideration of LEED Construction and Answer regarding SPLOST payback of lost interest
Salter acknowledged that Carothers had responded in email that we should not pay ourselves back with SPLOST money for lost interest, even though it technically may be legal. In Carothers’ communication with the county he learned that no one else does it and the county auditor and county attorney don’t recommend doing it.
Salter asked for Carothers’ recommendation. He suggested that we not do it.
Council agreed that it was too risky to try to do this.
Salter noted that Eric Bosman of Urban Collage has communicated some questions to council, and Barbara Carroll is in attendance to answer any questions from council.
Guthrie asked to add consideration of questions from Eric Bosman of Urban Collage to the millage rate meeting council is planning to hold next week. Carroll stated that she would be available next Tuesday afternoon and evening.
Salter urged council to review the questions from Urban Collage and to think about their own questions to prepare for the meeting next week.
Guthrie asked whether council needed to go ahead and move forward with the decision about LEED. Carroll responded, yes, council does.
Anderson expressed that he was strongly in favor of doing as much with LEED as possible.
Salter suggested that we make previous LEED building experience a strong preference in the RFP so that more points would be awarded for that.
Sipe asked whether there couldn’t just be a contractual agreement that the final product would be LEED certified. Sipe stated that he thought it was important that the City Hall ended up being LEED certified.
Anderson stated that there are different levels of LEED certification.
Carroll shared information from the meeting that she attended with the LEED builders from Savannah.
Guthrie stated that she didn’t feel as strongly that we necessarily have a LEED certified building, but that she is interested in having green practices implemented in the building.
Sipe stated that at the Town Hall meetings there were a lot of citizens that were interested in seeing the City Hall be LEED certified.
There was further discussion.
Guthrie agreed that we should just ask for LEED building experience versus requiring LEED certification in the RFP for the architect.
Anderson motioned that we tell Eric Bosman that we want as part of the RFP that architects give us information about their experience with LEED building and that points be given for that in the evaluation of the RFP. Guthrie seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
Carroll asked Salter to state what questions Urban Collage wants council to answer, which she has referenced in this meeting and emailed out to council. Those things are
1) that council provide the number of the people on the architecture selection committee to review proposals;
2) that council provide direction on whether the cost proposal is to be included with the RFP or to wait to get cost proposals from the firms that make the short list; and
3) that council decide whether to hold a pre-proposal conference for the companies that are interested or just direct them to Bosman or Threadgill for questions they may have about the RFP.
Guthrie asked Carroll to find out Bosman’s recommendation on how many people should be on the architecture selection committee and whether a pre-proposal conference is his recommendation and what the cost would be to hold that.
Guthrie asked if we could go ahead and handle the question regarding the cost proposal, about which Eric has already provided a recommendation.
Guthrie recommended that we go with Eric’s recommendation that the cost proposal not be included at this time in the RFP until we have a short-list for the interview stage.
Sipe asked Carothers if it is alright to do it this way. He said we may be picking the four firms that we like best, none of them may be the cheapest, and that we won’t know if we have the lowest bid except among the four that we pick that we like best.
Guthrie states that the others will be weeded out because they don’t meet the qualifications.
Council agreed to go with Bosman’s recommendation and there was a consensus among council to not include the cost proposal in the RFP until the short-list.
b) Update from Carol Christa regarding progress at 830 Valley View Lane
Salter stated that Christa, due to her broken arm and surgery, does not have any progress to report on this issue and there is no further information about when she may be able to come up with a report on the progress. Salter asked council to give some direction on what we wanted her to do so that we could tell her what is expected of her.
Anderson suggested that we should tell her to get well and heal quickly and to come to council next month to let us know how far she’s gotten.
Sipe stated that there has to be a date certain as to when Christa provides information on how this will be resolved because this has been dragged on for far too long already.
Anderson stated at the last meeting council decided to delay taking action on the building inspector’s report until next meeting, so council will have to do something next meeting, either act on it or provide her additional time.
There was further discussion.
Sipe wants her to understand that council is motivated to have this done, and that we need to keep the 60-day deadline to act on the building inspector’s report.
Guthrie stated that council should communicate that the 60-day deadline still stands.
Anderson stated that council should hold to the 60 days, but if we get to that mark and she has been physically unable to do what we asked her to do at the last meeting, then he will not necessarily feel obliged to have the City take action in accordance with the building inspector’s report.
Sipe stated that she should be able to make some progress just by calling an architect to find out what, if any, of the structure can be salvaged in accordance with our code. Sipe doesn’t want the message to her to be that council will be extending her deadline again after next meeting.
Salter suggested her response to say that council is sorry about her injury; however, the 60-day deadline still stands, and we expect her to contact an architect and have something back from her at the next meeting. Council confirmed that this is what they want to be communicated.
Guthrie asked if the code says anything about how long council has to respond to the inspector’s recommendation.
Salter responded that it did not.
Kitchens agreed with Sipe that she should be able to make a telephone call to make progress on this.
There was further discussion.
Sipe stated that we have delayed action on the inspector’s report in the interest of our citizens, but we can’t delay it forever.
c)O-48-07 Chapter 4-103 Occupational Taxes (for poss. 2nd read)
d) O-47-07 Chapter 32-101 Regulatory Fees (for poss. 2nd read)
Guthrie stated that if what Carothers has found is not all that different than what we have before us, then we should consider making a motion to put both on second read with Guthrie’s changes incorporated, but not to adopt.
Sipe stated that if this is the best we can do, then we should really be thinking about whether we want to do this at all. He went through some of his concerns and that he didn’t see that there was a benefit to it.
Anderson said that there is some useful information that will be provided by enacting this ordinance. It will provide information on our businesses in the city. The only people who are really going to be affected are those in the commercial areas. Anderson stated that the City has a need to know that the businesses in the city conform to our ordinances.
Sipe said that we will know what businesses are in Berkeley Village. He stated that this ordinance would apply to home-based businesses. There was further discussion about the impact on home-based businesses.
Salter discussed the trouble with enforcement without ordinances like these. Sipe argued that this doesn’t actually help with enforcement.
There was further discussion about enforcement.
Anderson stated that it would help with enforcement on commercial property and that it will generate some revenue.
Guthrie stated that she shares the concern about the impact on the home-based businesses. She is also just as concerned about not asking for any kind of a license from the commercial entities, and they will end up wanting one. Salter agreed that businesses are already asking for a license.
Salter stated that we’ve tried a letter. Guthrie previously recommended providing a voluntary license so that people who needed and wanted one could get one. She stated that we need some sort of licensing requirement for the commercial property.
Sipe would like to find some way for it to be clean and straightforward. He is concerned about a license being required for people who are working on someone’s house.
Anderson stated that the ordinance now reads that as long as that business is licensed somewhere then they wouldn’t have to have a business license here.
There was further discussion.
Guthrie asked Carothers if he had ever heard of anyone having a voluntary business license. Carothers indicated that he didn’t know of a situation like this.
There was further discussion.
Salter said that she has heard from multiple citizens that they want more control of the businesses by issuing licenses so that if there is someone who is repeatedly breaking city ordinances then their license could be revoked and they couldn’t work in the city.
Salter asked Carothers if we could revoke a business license because someone has repeated ordinance violations. He indicated that there would probably need to be some civil appeal mechanism, notwithstanding the code citations, but he thought it could be done.
There was further discussion about how to withhold or revoke licenses for people who were in violation of city ordinances and what the consequences of that may be. Carothers stated that he didn’t necessarily know all of these answers.
There was further discussion about what kind of information we would try to obtain prior to issuing a license and the difference in the voluntary license and the licenses described in the ordinances here.
Guthrie suggested that we put this discussion on the back-burner for another meeting.
Sipe stated that he would never vote for this ordinance as it is.
Anderson said that we’ve been considering this for 8 or 9 months, and asked Sipe to make specific wording suggestions if he has any.
Sipe stated that he has made suggestions when it has come up in discussion. He asked what we are trying to accomplish with these ordinances. Anderson responded that this would give us knowledge about what businesses are located in our commercial areas, gain some revenue for that and it gives some enforceability on other ordinances regarding our businesses.
Sipe stated that he didn’t think there was much financial value for us and that it would be a tremendous amount of work for the City Administrator. We are so small commercially that it is hard to justify building this infrastructure.
Guthrie said that we need to see some of these suggestions from Sipe on paper for council to review.
Anderson motioned to postpone consideration of Chapter 4-103 Occupational Taxes and Chapter 32-101 Regulatory fees until the June meeting. Guthrie seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
Guthrie suggested that the two items that Rebecca Spitler, 3825 Berkeley View Drive, was waiting on be moved up to be discussed at this point in the agenda. It was the consensus of council to do so.
l) R-31-07 Miramont Stormwater Resolution
h) Council’s Election of GOLT representative
Salter suggested that Spitler take a moment to read the Miramont Resolution. Salter began explaining the Miramont Resolution for stormwater repairs. Miramont is heroically stepping up to the plate to pay a lot of money for stormwater repairs, which were originally going to cost $30,000 and is now going to cost another $23,400. There have been the usual questions about who should pay for this because the city had approved the construction originally. The options were for Miramont to pay Site Engineering directly with their own contract. Site Engineering refused that because they deal with municipalities because that’s their business model. Carothers has come up with a resolution to authorize Salter to enter into an agreement with Miramont for them to pay for the stormwater work that Site Engineering has already done and will do. The City will have to make an additional addendum to the City’s contract for them to do the additional work required in Miramont. If council authorizes the resolution, then they will be authorizing Salter to sign a contract that Carothers will draft and that Miramont will also sign agreeing to reimburse the city for the cost of the whole amount for their project.
Sipe stated that the resolution was ambiguous and offered some alternative language. He suggested adding “paid for by the city” after “Miramont Pond.” Sipe stated that it was confusing because it isn’t clear who is paying who.
Guthrie asked if the amount of money needed to be specified. Salter responded that the amount would be included in the contract.
Salter asked if Spitler was all right to move forward with this because Miramont would have to sign the contract too. Spitler stated that it was important for Council to agree to add the addendum to the city’s existing contract. She stated that there will be an additional contract between the City and Miramont that would have all the pricing on it for the Miramont work.
Guthrie asked about the term for the repayment. Spitler said that Site Engineering bills the city and the City Engineer has to approve everything. The City would then bill Miramont for the amount that we are to be reimbursed. Guthrie asked how long Miramont has to repay us. Guthrie recommended that the term for repayment be included in the contract.
Carothers suggested that we should provide as short a time as possible so that we aren’t losing interest on general fund dollars.
Spitler said that Miramont already has $30,000 for the first project in the bank. The new amount, $23,400, for the work that was just brought up has caused Miramont to have to figure out how to fund it. They are expecting to have to pay within 30 days after being billed. Spitler said that a one-time special assessment may be imposed on everyone in Miramont. If that is required, then some additional time would be needed so that they can collect all the money from the homeowners.
Guthrie suggested that they be given 10 days to pay for the first project, which was $30,000. Spitler also asked if they could pay for the second project in installments.
Salter suggested $30,000 within 10 days, 50% of the balance within 30 days, and the remainder in 60 days. Salter asked that Carothers include this in the contract. Guthrie also suggested that whatever event would trigger when Miramont would be billed should be included in the contract. Threadgill would need to send a bill to Miramont once the City Engineer signs off on the punch-list.
Anderson motioned to approve R-31-07 with the following modification so that paragraph 1 is modified to insert “paid for by the city” after “Miramont pond” and before that comma. Guthrie seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
Salter noted that everyone appreciated how much work Spitler had done to resolve the stormwater issues with Miramont.
Salter asked for a motion regarding GOLT representation.
Anderson motioned to appoint Spitler as the city’s GOLT representative. Guthrie seconded the motion.
Sipe asked if there was someone who may have more experience that would be willing to serve in this role. Spitler responded that she had asked other members, but for various reasons, no one else was able. Sipe asked about anyone who served in the past that may be interested.
Guthrie suggested that we should have someone who is currently serving on the committee serve as the GOLT representative.
It was noted that Spitler is the representative that BLC recommended.
All were in favor. The motion passed.
e) O-53-07 Chapter 45 Conservation Subdivision (for poss. 2nd read)
Sipe motioned to put on second read and adopt O-53-07 Chapter 45 Conservation Subdivision. Anderson seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
f) Council consideration of funding GwMA Executive Director Position
Anderson stated that there was no discussion about this at the last GwMA meting but only a vote to gauge city interest in moving forward with this topic. The vote was 13 For, 1 abstention and 0 against. Anderson voted in favor of the GwMA Executive Director position based on sentiment that he had heard at the last council meeting.
Guthrie asked if this vote was binding. Anderson said that it was not binding and that his understanding of the motion was that it was meant to gauge interest in the executive committee pursuing this further. Anderson stated that he had requested that discussion be entertained on the motion at the GwMA meeting, but this was denied. No questions or discussion was permitted.
Guthrie stated that it doesn’t sound like they were asking for our financial commitment.
Salter stated that her understanding is that they are moving forward with this and expecting $2 a head. She guesses that that will be a bill for dues sent out next year.
Guthrie asked if there would be an opportunity for us to choose to participate or not, or if the vote indicating interest would result in everyone just being assessed.
Anderson said that he could share some additional information. There are 118,000 people based on the 2000 census and that they may be bringing in more money than they will need.
Threadgill gave a synopsis of the discussion regarding this topic at the last GwMA legislative committee meeting.
Guthrie asked if council needed to make a decision tonight. Salter said that she didn’t need that information now, but if council was sure they didn’t want to commit to $2 a head then she would like to take that information back to GwMA.
Salter stated that she believes our city needs the GwMA connection more than big cities. Guthrie responded that if we were going to take a vote then she would be in favor of committing to the funding and participating.
Sipe asked Carothers if we could commit a future council to paying this money to GwMA if this council voted to participate in the funding of this. Carothers didn’t know the answer. He responded that we could spend the money now, but he acknowledged that we couldn’t commit future councils to spending this money. What we can do now is give them a feel for our commitment to this initiative.
Anderson, Guthrie and Kitchens were all in favor of supporting this, but Sipe had some reservations.
Salter stated that she will report to GwMA that a majority of the council would support $2 a head based on the 2000 census. Salter said that she would also include that we would rather spend less money.
VII. NEW BUSINESS
a) Partnership Gwinnett Request
It was agreed not to discuss this tonight because Mayor Masino could not attend to deliver a presentation on this topic.
b) O-54-07 Chapter 22-201, Permanent Buffers; 22-702, Violation and Penalties; and 22-703, Appeal
Kitchens asked where this ordinance came from. Threadgill responded that this was in response to Guthrie’s request that we correct Chapter 22 following changes to Chapter 3 so that both ordinances were consistent.
Guthrie motioned to put this ordinance on first read. Kitchens seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
c) O-55-07 Chapter 3-601, Planning and Zoning Commission
This had been moved up to the reports section to accompany the report from Lombardi.
d) R-30-07 NIMS Resolution
Kitchens motioned to adopt the resolution. Anderson seconded the motion.
Sipe asked if there was any burden to us to do anything with regard to this.
All were in favor. The motion passed.
e) Discussion about the direction of staff and attorney by individual council members
Guthrie asked council to discuss and address these issues, but acknowledged that if everyone was too tired this discussion could be postponed.
Consensus of council was to postpone discussion until the next meeting.
f) Discussion regarding council member access to City information
Same as agenda item e above.
g) Advanced Disposal Commercial Contract
Carothers had some concern about construction and demolition waste removal. Duluth is currently in a lawsuit with Arrow who exclusively does C&D removal. Snellville has also been notified by Arrow about this.
Carothers recommended excluding the collection of C&D waste, regardless of the container, from this contract with Advanced Disposal to avoid being sued.
There was further discussion.
Guthrie motioned to authorize Salter to sign the contract with the removal of all the references to C&D materials. Sipe seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
Salter asked Threadgill to modify the contract and send it to Steve Edwards for his approval and then forward it on to her and Carothers.
h) Council’s election of GOLT Representative
This agenda item had been considered earlier in the agenda.
i) Septic Extension Requests
Guthrie motioned to accept the requests as presented by the City Administrator. Anderson seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
j) Discussion regarding Road Safety Issues (Anderson)
Anderson explained that he brought this up because of the use of dumpsters in the right-of-way and roadway and the safety issue that poses, especially when there are no cones or other markers. He noted that our parking ordinance doesn’t apply because a dumpster is not a vehicle. He also reviewed Chapter 20, and it didn’t appear to him that it adequately handled this either.
There was discussion about hazards to traffic and pedestrians.
Sipe noted that there just might not be any other place to locate dumpsters.
Anderson noted that in this particular case he didn’t note that there was a much better place to put the dumpster, but that it still should be off the roadway and have safety cones or other devices to warn vehicles and pedestrians.
Anderson asked if council should consider any other recommendations for how to deal with this. Salter asked council to think about this issue for the next meeting.
There was further discussion.
Salter suggested that we may want to begin issuing permits for this kind of thing.
Threadgill was instructed to develop language to change the ordinance and come up with a permit application for encroachments on the right-of-way.
Anderson also discussed the biking issue in the City and the safety concerns associated with that. He recommended that we ask Doug and our police officers to keep an eye out for any violations, motor vehicle, bicycle or pedestrian in nature. In addition, Anderson asked if the police would also talk to pedestrians who are in violation and any safety issues about pedestrian activity.
There was further discussion.
Sipe gives priority to our own citizens who are biking and walking on our roads as opposed to those who come from outside the city to use the roads here.
Salter stated that Doug is uncomfortable giving deference to our citizens if they too are in violation. Carothers agreed that it would be illegal to enforce laws selectively against non residents but not against city residents.
Salter has instructed Doug to ticket any bikers who are in violation. She hasn’t instructed him to ticket or talk to pedestrians who are in violation or in danger.
Council agreed that Salter should instruct Doug to talk to pedestrians who are in violation, but that they aren’t asking for the police to necessarily start ticketing pedestrians.
k) Schedule Millage rate meeting.
Salter asked council’s availability to meet at 3 P.M. or later on Tuesday, May 22nd, for this meeting. It was determined that the Special Called council meeting is scheduled for May 22nd at 5 P.M.
Salter instructed Threadgill to advertise the meeting.
The agenda will include the other two questions from Eric Bosman about City Hall.
It was determined that Carothers was not needed for this meeting.
l) R-31-07 Miramont Resolution
This agenda items was considered earlier in the meeting.
m) Discussion regarding bids for patching project related to LARP
This agenda item was considered earlier in the meeting with the report from Randy Kirkus, Chair of the Public Works Committee.
VIII. CITIZENS COMMENTS
There were no citizen comments.
IX. EXECUTIVE SESSION for consideration of legal issues
Guthrie moved to enter executive session at 10:30 P.M. Anderson seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
Guthrie motioned to exit executive session at 10:45 P.M. Anderson seconded the motion. All were in favor. The motion passed.
X. ADJOURNMENT
THERE BEING NO FURTHER BUSINESS, GUTHRIE MOTIONED TO ADJOURN THE MEETING AT 10:45 P.M. ANDERSON SECONDED THE MOTION. ALL WERE IN FAVOR. THE MOTION PASSED.
(Respectively Submitted by Leigh Threadgill, approved by council June 21, 2007)
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