Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Please stand if you're enabled for the
Pledge of Allegiance are remaining standing for the invocation.
Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which
it stands one nation under God in the digital liberty and justice for all.
Councillor Rice? Would you join me in prayer, please? Heavenly Father, we come before you this
evening with grateful hearts. We're grateful for the opportunity to serve this
community. We acknowledge the seriousness of our responsibilities and we do
seek your wisdom above our own. Lord, we pray that you would guide us in our
conversation, discussion and decisions. Grant us discernment and insight and help
us to lead for the good of all who call Canton home. As we face the uncertainty of
challenging weather in the days ahead.
We ask for your protection over our families, protection over those who serve our community
first responders, our city staff, and all those in our community who may be vulnerable.
We pray that you will calm anxious hearts, strengthen those preparing to serve and remind
us that you are our refuge and our strength.
We pray your blessing may our actions reflect the love of Christ this evening and how we treat one another and how we serve.
We offer this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
To call the order, our January 22nd, 26th meeting of the mayor and council.
Again, as always, with the consideration to prove tonight's agenda, are there any revisions, changes or motions?
Mr. Mayor, we need to consider adding under new business a discussion and
possible action to declare a state of emergency ahead of the winter storm.
Okay.
And that is item E.
Anything else?
Motion to approve the agenda is amended.
Second.
The motion is second.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Opposed name.
All members approve the motion.
We will begin tonight.
We have very special guests and visitors.
We have a presentation from Cherokee County School District Superintendent, Dr. Mary Elizabeth Davis.
She's going to give us an update on what's going on there.
So welcome, Dr. Davis.
And I mentioned to you earlier, I believe this is, I know the first time in my 12 year tenure position that we've had a superintendent come and meet with us.
So we really appreciate your presence and being here tonight.
Well, I love that and thank you so much for including me on your agenda mayor and members of the city council
I really is an honor to be here
Mostly because I just see so much
Opportunity that we serve a community together and that schools are essential to the service you provide to our community and
A relationship with your council is essential to how we approach
serving families. And so really this is intended to just be an update let you know what's going on in our district, I'll pay some particular attention to the schools that have
Canton affiliation and make myself available for any questions just in case there's something on your mind, except I'm not answering whether we have school on Monday or not.
That question is off the table.
So, as I get started, I really just want to recognize that as a school community and a
district, we, over 40 schools and centers, nearly 42,000 students and employ nearly 6,000
employees.
And you see a quick breakdown of what the snapshot of our school community looks like.
And we are governed by a Board of Education, seven individually elected officials who see
on your screen. But what I think is really paramount for part of my report today is to talk
about the governance work our board has engaged in. We've really embraced that a high performing
school district starts with a high performing board of education and I've got a quick timeline
of the body of work that this board of education has gone about developing in order to create clarity
about what matters most in our classrooms and how we hold the adults employed by the school system
accountable for the outcomes kids achieve.
And really what you see along this timeline is that in August of 2024 they began by establishing
core beliefs that have become the anchor of our organization, and through that they
were actually able to establish goals in English language arts and in reading.
They utilized that work to develop the superintendent's evaluation instrument, which is now available
on our district's website.
If you're curious of what I'm held accountable to, which I believe is really a transparent
of saying what matters most in our organization,
you can view that right on the district's website.
They did that work all through the fall of 2024,
and as we head into the spring,
they began to work on math goals,
really creating clarity about what achievement
and success would look like.
They, as they continued with that work
for the first time ever in August,
they were able to look at the progress
of student achievement relative to the goals
that they had set.
and each one of our 40 schools had aligned goals
to that real laser focus.
And in summary, it's just built this incredible culture
where we are committed to kids learning more,
growing more and achieving more on our watch
than they could anywhere else.
And it's all because of our board like stabilizing
and creating that laser on apologetic focus on learning.
This is really a summary of everything they have developed
and I'm not intending to dive into that.
that's like a three hour like grad school session,
but like it is a robust body of work
that now anchors the organization
and points our true north,
which is really focused on learning.
Our board has set us out to be
the highest achieving district in the state of Georgia,
and I'll talk in a minute a little bit
about what our achievement looks like.
Before I do, I want to jump into a little bit
about our financial infrastructure,
because what you see on this screen
means starts to create the context not only for the outcomes we achieve, but the value
in which we achieve those outcomes.
Let me just take you the very first column is a series of districts in the region,
Cherokee's identified as that top district and the others are in alpha order.
And you can see just in that column immediately following the total service area, the total
number of students served in that district.
And you can see we're a big district but we're of course not the biggest on that list.
You then see our per student investment, we're right there, a little over 13,000 per student.
And you can see how that compares in the region, really kind of on the mid to mid-low
end of that whole grouping.
But the next thing you see, as what's called the CCRPI score, or the state accountability
score, where the state has measured what outcomes have been achieved and what kind of quality
is demonstrated in that school system.
And you can see right there, our 87, well, it puts us third on this list,
but it has actually put us eighth, highest achieving district in the entire state of Georgia.
That's 180 districts that we have now moved to that eighth position.
But you can also see that measurement kind of talks about the value of your education based on the investment that community is making.
You can also see, if you move to the right, that the rank size of the central office in
Cherokee County is now the sixth smallest central office out of 180 districts.
And that's measured by the Department of Education and released annually to demonstrate
how your infrastructure is invested in.
And you can see some of our comparison districts have right there, Cobb at 92 and Fulton at 133.
So, if we look tired, that's because we are the sixth, which is a great, small essential
office.
But let's just get carried forward and talk about the milledrate.
Cherokee County Schools does currently have its historic low milledrate at 16.45.
It's not the lowest on that list, so of course we've got four sites behind us and pickens
behind us.
But now let's carry your eye over to the value of a mill, because this is where you really
see the investment story play out.
The value of a million Cherokee is right at 17 million, but if you take your eye down
to Cobb with their milled rate of 18.7 and the value of 1 mill is 43 million.
You can really see there's a stark distinction between those two values, and carry your eye
down to Fulton, which is 49 million, even Gwinnett at 58 million.
I really paint this picture to demonstrate how proud I would invite you to be for the teachers,
our support professionals, our school leaders, and our Board of Education for the outcomes achieved and the value invested.
And really the last part of that picture is to look at where we are leading the pack.
Now ranked number one in the region on the percent of our entire digest that is exempt from school taxes.
Of course, we're really close to Cobb who trails us slightly there.
Both having supported that full 62 and over tax exemption from school taxes.
All right, why I paint this picture is because it really matters that in Cherokee County there is tremendous confidence that when you count on your education being in one of our classrooms, it's going to have quality outcomes.
I've already shared with you that it was just released over the holiday break that Cherokee County moved from the 21st highest achieving district.
Now the A's highest achieving district based on those progress accountability measures that the state outlines.
Now there's a really important element in that score, and it's actually called progress, where the state measures how fast your students are growing compared to similar students around the state.
30 of our schools showed growth in progress and 10 of them had double digit growth in that progress area.
I mean, it really, it's just a testament to how incredibly talented our classroom teachers are and the real commitment that we see our families have in their child's education and I think it's really worthy of celebrating and sharing in that pride.
All right, so, of course, there are specific schools that are organized in zones that have an affiliation with the City of Ken.
And as we were talking earlier, some people like don't even realize how many schools across
our district have a Canton affiliation, so I wanted to paint that picture for you.
I've been able to meet with a lot of city councils and you get the most schools, so congratulations
on that award.
Here today with me is the assistant superintendent who supervises the Cherokee and Creek
View Zone, and that's Rodney LaRoda, and I'm sure he'll give you a quick way if you don't
already know him, so if you have any concerns or problems, you can talk to him.
But what I just want you to know about the achievement in your particular school is just outstanding.
Teasley Middle School was one of our superstar growth schools last year.
We are so proud of their performance and they're really just at the start of taking off.
You can also see that the Creek View Zone, we really see Creek View High School really as a standout across the state and
really posting some of the highest performance really across high schools across the state of Georgia.
And then I'd love to highlight in the Sequoia Zone.
You can see so many areas where you have a highlight.
That's double digit progress towards their goals.
And I mean, you just see tremendous work across the Sequoia Zone.
All right, I want to round it out by making sure you know
that we're conscientious of the future workforce,
that you're counting on.
And here are the career pathways that are available
at each of the high schools that have some sort of touch
to our city of can. Pretty widespread opportunities for kids to get some early career exposure, and we'll have a lot of kids that actually take a sequence of three courses in one of those areas and actually graduate either industry certified or considered a pathway completed really solid career experiences evolving in the high schools right here.
I think you might be wondering about a little construction project we've got going on.
So I do have just a couple of great graphics in case you haven't flown your drone over
the school to see its progress.
Obviously, you're monitoring that progress from 575 with me, but you've got an 88 acre site.
of course adjacent to Teasley Mental School, it'll be 473,000 square feet and it is ready
for the 3,000 students that we will move over from the current Cherokee High School
to the new facility. There will be no need for any changes to attendance lines or boundaries
because it truly is a replacement school. Same attendance zone will stay intact and we're
excited about the thousand-seat auditorium and the beautiful football stadium that has just been
named Tommy Baker Field by our Board of Education, so we will carry the legacy to the new location.
I've got a few other pictures for you. This is the main academic building and with some special
education services incorporated. You get a quick view of our CTAE building. Our welding program
will transfer over to Cherokee High School as well as our automotive program.
You can take a look at the fine art space, it's just going to be stunning and the auditorium will be
We really just a modern auditorium with really a beautiful stage for performances. Here's
cafeteria, 30,000 square feet for a cafeteria. So if you're hungry, come on by. I think we'll
be able to fit you in there. And we're introducing this grab and grow, go breakfast window. And
then here you get a quick look at that beautiful field and the athletic facilities. So I know
that it causes you to want to ask the question about our current Cherokee High School and its future.
And many of you likely know that over the fall we really can vest staff groups and parent groups,
community groups on all the ideas of what the future use of that facility could be.
3,000 individual sticky notes were collected along the way and it really emerged into nine themes.
And of those nine themes we are now doing a feasibility study on each of those themes
and really trying to understand what type of sustainability requirements would be associated
and that will bring us to being able to share more publicly later in the spring really recommendations
of those next steps.
Some of those themes are like a career academy, other themes are public private partnerships,
Lots of ideas of reopening can't in elementary school.
Themes that you've probably heard, your neighbors and community members talk about as well.
All right, a few more important construction projects.
Creekview and Creekland had an addition finished.
And since you've got some constituents who attend those schools,
I went to no, no, need for trailers at those locations anymore.
And Sequoia High School has a magnificent athletic improvement project underway.
And it will bring them their second gym.
Now each one of our schools will have a second gym, this will be our last one, and they'll have replacement concessions and Sequoia did take us pretty far into the post season with their football team, and they were pretty remarkable to watch, but our visitors had no concession stands or restrooms, so that was unfortunate, but next year they will.
And I actually already talked to you a little bit about that transition.
And at current Cherokee High School, there's been just remarkable series of events to bring
the community back together around this historical school, and I've got a few of those listed
there for you.
And then here are those common themes that I mentioned regarding its potential use.
And then really in our next steps is to do this feasibility work and develop a timeline.
And that really brings me to the end of just kind of a quick snapshot of what's happening in your schools in your backyard knowing that really our partnership in serving our community is only stronger when we do it together.
So thank you for letting me be here. Mayor, I'll turn it back over to you and I'm available. There's any questions.
Thanks.
Thank you, Dr. Davis.
We appreciate your time and updates, and Mr. Rola, thank you for joining us as well.
People, I say often how important, and it's obvious how important our school assist
and the quality of learning in our community is to our success and ongoing success.
And we congratulate you on all the achievements you had.
We appreciate you, the staff, the team, our teachers, our Board of Education, and we appreciate
partnership we have with you guys and I think we have discussed and we know there's ongoing
discussions about the future preservation adaptive reuse of the current Cherokee High School.
I think you know we want to be a very integral partner in that and believe you know where
our interests are there and we wanted to best serve the community and I know you do as well.
So we'll look forward to the feasibility studies and how we can work together to ensure the
best community outcome there as well so we appreciate I know you've had a busy week
and you've been reporting a lot and we appreciate you taking time this week and I know the
council got your entire presentation I know we asked you to kind of rush through that
so we appreciate your attention to the time there and we can follow up with any questions
Is there any questions for Dr. Davis tonight?
Just a comment really.
Between my wife and my sister, they have 47 years
in the school system, those teachers.
And they wanted me to make sure, and we talk about it a lot.
Obviously, it's a conversation at dinner anytime.
Just everybody's job.
But they really wanted me to really recognize the fact
that the increase in student achievement
that we've had in the school system is a direct reflection of the accountability measures that you guys have put in place
From the school board all the way down to the classroom, and I just commend you on that. That's what I mean. Well, thank you for sharing that
I'd really say it's probably their talent coupled with the clarity
The team effort team effort so you need anything else
I was just coming from the net and having one in teesley and one that will be going to the high school year.
Certainly, certainly very, very exciting to see this.
Two quick questions.
Number 23, page 23, that was the old ziller agent, correct?
Are you looking at Creekview or are you looking at Cherokee?
That's Creekview, sorry about that.
And that is Creekview's auxiliary.
Okay, and then the starting salary, 57, 6, 93, that is a certified starting teacher salary.
Yes.
Welcome right out of college, ready to work.
Welcome right out of college.
So last year, I shared publicly in a lot of public forums of the significant gap in teacher
salary that existed in Cherokee relative to our region.
As a matter of fact, like on this day a year ago, it would have taken $32 million for us
to catch Cobb's salary schedule.
It would have taken $12 million to catch Fulton, $8 million to catch Bartow, and $4 million to catch Forsyth.
So last year, in the budgeting season, our board invested a 3% increase on top of the already existing salary schedule,
which got us to surpass Forsyth and Bartow.
And this year we really are aiming to catch Fulton.
Cobb remains a little out of reach at this time, but we had a pretty significant gap $15,000
gap at many of the levels along the scale.
So our starting teacher salary has gotten within range.
After that investment of the board, we've got a few other points on the salary schedule like
at year 10 and year 14 where we still need to do a little better, but I see a path to doing
that, and our board is focused on that.
Because really the quality of the classroom is dependent on the quality of the of the professionals and and so pretty committed to that
Definitely and again, but are you interested in teaching? Is that I mean if the line of inquiry is
Suggesting I could turn us into a recruitment event. I'm eager to do that too
Well, we'll have it soft to all educators. I can't get my kids on the bus
And I guess with the increased salary and any staffing needs for the for the do
are we understaffed or where we need to be?
Yeah, I love that question.
You know, the National Average is 74% staffed on day one
and we were 99.9% staffed on day one.
Our biggest gap is for some of those
in the highly specialized areas like speech language pathologists
where we do see those as hard to fill roles,
but our classroom teachers have a solid retention rate
and we were 99.9% staffed.
And I believe had about 20 certified teachers
who were on a personal lead for whatever reason,
but we were filling that with a certified substitute.
So really solid infrastructure for teachers.
Awesome, thank you so much.
Yeah, good.
Ms. Bjorn?
I just wanted to, there's one area
that is near and dear to my heart.
Many people here may know.
My dad was the automotive teacher at Cherokee High School
for many, many years.
and so vocational is very near to my heart and I am very pleased to see the range of offerings
and that you all are continuing that tradition at the new school and I'm just gratified
to see it because we need it.
Well that's encouraging. We're going to start to set out on designing a long range strategic
plan but given the amount of community input that I've sensed over the last six months or so I
I really actually see workforce development
being one of our major themes in the future.
Really starting to ensure that those middle school years
are highly formative and purposefully exposed
to the variety of ways you can use high school
to get yourself set up into a career.
So I do think we have a great portfolio of options.
I think we even have more work we can do.
Definitely.
Well, we're definitely proud of the,
to have not only the most number of schools
in the city of Canton but the best schools and again applaud you on on on your
performance and moving from 21st to 8th is no small. It's very impressive. We're
here to help you continue that climb to number one and so we appreciate your
updates and look forward to working with you very closely in the future so. Thank
you. Thank you so much. I'm just a phone call away if you ever need anything. Thanks
for being amazing in your public service. We appreciate you. Thank you so much.
So
our January 8th meeting? Are there any changes or revisions or motions?
Motion to approve the minutes. Second. Motion to second. All in favor say aye.
Aye. Aye.
Opposed nay. All members voted for the motion. We have one informational item this evening.
That is a review of the monthly financial report for September 2025. Mr. Luckett.
Good evening, Mayor Counsel. I'm here this evening to present our September monthly financial
report which also serves as a preliminary year-end report for our recently
2025. Before I get into the details of the report I wanted to highlight a
few things about the overall process for closing out our fiscal year. First
the report we're going over tonight is preliminary and it includes many but not
all of the year-end adjustments that are required for us to adhere to our
generally accepted accounting principles for government. We are currently in the process
of working with our outside audit firm, Rustin, as they review our financial statements to
ensure they are accurate and a fair representation of the city's funding. As we work with the audit
team, we fully expect that the numbers that you see this evening will change, although we don't
anticipate major changes. As has been the case in previous years, we do expect to bring a final
a budget amendment to the mayor and council in February or March for your consideration.
The budget amendment is something that is developed in conjunction with our audit team and
will include recommended revisions that are needed to effectively close out the previous
fiscal year.
Just as a reminder, governments are required to complete their annual audit within 180 days.
And we expect to meet that deadline without any issues.
So with that, we can get into the financial report, and I'll hit some of our major funds as we go through this.
Page one of the report gives you an overall picture of the city's cash and investments as of September 5.
So you can see that totaled about $44.5 million.
that was down about 11 million compared to a year ago and that's directly a
result of the spin-down of our 2021 bond funds related to the water pollution
control plan. If we move on to page two this is our general fund and I will
start with a revenues at the top. So our revenue budget for the general fund was
is $24.6 million, we collected $25.3 million,
which is a positive variance of about $700,000.
That's primarily attributed to increases
or increased collections in our property tax,
franchise fees, as well as our business
and occupation taxes.
I will point out too that the city did
through our investment efforts earn about $379,000
interest income over FY 2025. Moving down the page to expenditures just to kind
of give you the big picture first so overall our expenditure budget in the
general fund is $27.8 million. Actual expenditures for FY 2025 were $27.5
million so that was about $300,000 below budget. Most of our departments were
well within their budget. We did have a few outliers and I'll kind of highlight
that as I walk through this report. So we'll start with the general government
section there under expenditures. So you can see our general government buildings
function. That was about $265,000 above budget for the fifth square and so that
was primarily related to two events. The water events that took place, the water
damage events that took place at the public safety building as well as here in
auditorium here in City Hall. Moving down the page, you can see for our police, our police
department was about $100,000 above the budget and that was primarily attributable to our vehicle
leases that are currently on hand as well as fuel. And as you might remember, in the budget that
you all approved for FY 2026, we did right size those budgets so we don't anticipate seeing that issue
going forward. For public works, the public works expenditures for FY 2025 were about
345,000 above budget and again those were primarily related to repairs and
maintenance for vehicles and equipment and again as you might remember you all
approved quite a bit of funding in splice for FY 2026 to replace some of those
larger pieces of equipment so we anticipate seeing a decrease in repair and
needs going forward. Other contributing factors to that variance were electricity for our street
lights and our traffic signals and again that was adjusted in the budget for FY26 as well as overtime.
Page 3, I'm getting into parks and recreation. Their expenditures were about $70,000 above budget. That was primarily related to materials and supplies that were needed for maintaining the parks, as well as personnel salaries and overtime related to specific events. In our theater department, expenditures were about $40,000 above budget. And that was primarily related to personnel and contractual services or contracted services.
services that are pertain to the number of events that we have at the theater.
And then finally, I wanted to highlight our economic development department.
It was about $48,000 above budget, primarily related to the software purchase of a place
or AI that we use for economic development purposes, as well as, in addition to sponsorships
related to the Chamber of Commerce.
So overall, as I mentioned, the expenditure budget was about $300,000 below budget.
So we will be making some adjustments between departments to cover those overages.
And I will point out on the last line of the general fund here at the bottom,
you can see that we did use about $1.7 million.
We were budgeted to use about $2.4 million.
So we use less fund balance than anticipated because of those revenues that came in above the budgeted numbers
So that's our general fund and you can move on to page four for our water and sewer fund
So I'll start with revenues
Our budget for revenues was 20.2 million and we collected about
19.1 million so a below budget by about 1.1 million and that's really tied to the sewer tap fees that came in less than expected
which are also tied to the amount of development going on in the city.
The total expenditure budget for the Water and Sewer Fund is 40.9.
And actual expenditures were 29.4 million.
So about 11 million less than budgeted, that is directly related to a
couple of capital projects that were not completed that are carrying forward into
FYI.
So overall for the Water and Sewer Fund we
We added to fund balance by about $1.3 million.
Moving on to the next page, our stormwater fund.
I'm going to kind of move a little bit more quickly here, but we'll be glad to answer
any questions you have.
In our stormwater fund, we had revenues of $400,000.
This is on page 5.
We had expenditures of $447,000.
So we used about $47,000 of fund balance in our stormwater, which we were budgeted to
to do. Moving on to page 6, our Sanitation Fund. We collected 525,000 and when you factor
in our transfer from the general fund that was about $651,000 in revenues, we had about
$665,000 in expenditures, so that will be one of those closing adjustments that will need
to make us part of our closeout process. On the next page on page 7, these are the
funds, so we officially doubt the use of our ARPA funds in FY 2025, so that is complete
and we'll be going away at the end of this year, at the end of the close-up for FY 25.
Page 8 is our tax allocation district fund, so we collected $196,000 in revenues with
no expenditures at this point. Page 9 gets into our hotel motel tax fund, and so here we had
total revenues of 1.2 million in total expenditures of about 827,000. So we
added to fund balance in this fund by about 444,000. So those funds will
carry forward and as you might remember those are restricted funds so we can use
them for basically the purposes set out by state law. Tours and promotion,
tours and product development as well as some unrestricted funds that we can
using our general fund.
Page 10 gets into our rental car tax fund. We collected $204,000
in revenue and had about $54,000 in expenditures. So in that fund, we also added to fund
balance by about $150,000. Page 11 gets into our municipal court fund. So this fund is
different in that any excess funds get transferred to our general fund. So this fund,
the revenues collected from fines go to pay for the expenditures, anything excess gets transferred
to our general fund. So in this fund we had about $300,000 in revenue to cover about the $300,000
in expenditures. The next page is our Impact fee fund. So here we collected about $1.1 million
dollars in revenue and had expenditures of about $800,000. So we added nearly
$300,000 to fund balance in our impact fees. And as I'll mention for each of
these capital project funds, remember we had about $46 million in investment in
capital projects for FY26. So a lot of this the excess funds that you see here have
been programmed for use in FY26. Splas7 is our Splas that is completed. We're trying
to finish up using those funds. We did have some grant revenues in that fund of about
$391,000 and we had expenditures of about $2.1 million. So we used about $1.7 million
of funds. We have about $1.2, $1.3 million in fund balance remaining. And then finally,
page 14, we have our Splas 8. So we had total revenues of about $8.5 million. That included
We've included $7.3 million of actual splotst revenues.
Total expenditures were $3.5 million, and so we added to fund balance in this fund by about $5 million, which again,
programmed for a lot of different capital projects that were included in the approved budget for FY26.
So this is the preliminary report.
If you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer those.
I appreciate the updates and the year information.
We'll look forward to those final budget resolutions.
I didn't want to know you mentioned and highlighted a few departments that were slightly over budget.
Didn't highlight the ones that were under, but again, just make sure I have this right that overall in general fund we brought in almost 700,000 in revenues above the budget.
and we spent 300, 301,000 below budget, correct?
So net net, we're in positive there, so awesome, awesome.
And then on Splos 8, just if I'm reading this correctly
on the new Splos, it looks like that
is generating substantially more revenue
than we anticipated.
Is that the way?
Am I reading that correctly?
Is that, which is good?
Yes, we budgeted $6 million in revenue
for splotced revenues, tax is just the splotced tax itself, the sales tax, I'm
in collected $7.3 million, about $1.3 million higher.
Great, great, great news.
Any other questions from Mr. Luckett at the moment, Mr. Johnson?
Just for clarification, I wasn't sure, under licensing and permitting, that Apple
Visa, that a new, you have to apply for a new license with the remodel, is that what
that's for?
This is related to like,
and do we, is there, I didn't see anything about reserves, is there
report for that, how are we doing with that? So I don't have a comprehensive report. So basically
as I, when I went through each fine and mentioned we're adding or you used home balance, so that was
kind of given you an idea of, you know, did our fund balance increase or did it decrease as a result
of our activity this year, we will have a final number for you in terms of reserves when we finish
our audit, which will be in March.
Anything else?
Mr. Water?
When we have certain line items that are variable, so utilities,
you mentioned electricity, as well as fuel for the police department's vehicles,
how do we account for that in the next budget?
What we just do in CPI or, you know, is it a standard 3% increase?
So basically looking at historical actuals and spend insurance, kind of using that information
to help us inform, you know, what we anticipate for the following year.
We definitely would factor in some type of inflationary increase if we saw that we expected fuel
prices, for instance, to substantially increase.
But overall, it's probably more based on historical actuals.
And to go back to the electricity piece, you mentioned, I think, streetlights.
How much of that was just related to the actual cost per kilowatt hour versus actual asset
that we took ownership of, I guess.
So, that I'd have to dig into a little bit more. I don't have that information off the
top of my head, but would you definitely take a look at that?
But there is a difference. It's just not the actual cost of electricity. That's causing
the variance.
It's the actual assets that we've brought on. Would you say there's a difference
or is it just solely the cost of energy?
I don't know that we've added any street lights recently.
I know we have some occasionally.
We accept this street.
There may be a few in there like that,
where we've accepted the right-of-way on the street
and taken over those bills.
I imagine the majority of that in this report
is just to increase the cost of George Vauer
for electricity that we're all realizing at home as well.
And I mentioned to you on the street lights, one of the tasks that we had for Schneider as part of our agreement was an audit of all of the streetlights because historically we could not get the data from Georgia power to substantiate which lights we were actually paying for on which roadways.
So that included coordinates for every single street
wide in the city so that we can track that matter.
That's kind of like where that's where I was going to see.
And how is that progress?
Is that study complete?
The study part of it's complete and we're working on a process
now with our mapping group to figure out how we can upload all
that coordinate data into our own mapping profile.
And one comment too, I would make about fuel, especially in the police department, we're
at 100% stacking in the police department, which is something we have not historically
been in many cities around us with data to have that opportunity.
And when you're fully staffed, you're using more fuel.
And we also added a caption at mid-year last year too, so that was a new group that went
into the budget and while we knew that we had that group going on there were some cost
associated with that that weren't at the start of the year. I see that as a multi-variable
you can't you're not going to put a you're not going to be accurate because your
officers may drive more or the costs will go up and down so. That's exactly right.
not. Yeah. We there's there's five or six key items in the budget that vary that we don't really
know when we set it up fuels one electricity utility charges or one health insurance is one
because we don't do our renewal until midway through the year you know so we have to do our best
guess estimate and we always give ourselves some wiggle room our percentage of wiggle room historically
it might be 3% 5% up to 10% per health insurance and some years were good and we can do it within
that amount and some years we just can't based on the market but we can't we can't tell our police
officers to turn their vehicles out. No yeah.
The last last question I feel within the last two years
I may have heard a reference to this when this forest was here, but do does this city have a subscription to do plaques for pricing info?
I'm sorry, do you say plaques?
plaques, like S&P?
No, we do not currently have a subscription.
Okay. Okay. That typically will give you forward indication of what some of those variable
pricing products, but I feel like you mentioned that at some point, but maybe I heard
wrong that we just don't have it. And I'm familiar with something like that. We've
used some like Moody's data in the past to help with inflation forecasting and things like
that. We can definitely look into that.
The grand scheme is not a big variance, so I'm just curious.
Sure.
Yeah, really quick on the sewer tap fees.
So they were down considerably.
How do we or you guys go about determining
how to budget that?
Do you just look at several years of what we've had
or is it just a?
So I can't speak to the past, but in terms
of the 26 budget, that was kind of historical trend, seeing that we did see some decreases
this year kind of helped inform, we did reduce that budget for FY 2020 sketches.
And one of the things on that particular item, it's normally a good conversation between
the finance department, the building department and community development, knowing what projects
have put in applications, what projects have met with us, what approvals have been done
on zoning or whatever. We try to forecast as much as that as we can. But you may have
somebody who's had a project they've already put something forward, you know, for us to
review and design and then project installs. And something we thought was going to occur
in that fiscal year did. We try to reach out groups like Northside Hospital and get it.
We get a hand-alone, you know, we're there out on their specific projects. That's sometimes a project that you think is going to happen in one fiscal year may catch us the next. That's what I was kind of getting at. I mean, there's so many projects that are entitled now that just have not come off the ground so you can't rely on what mayor may not be passed for 26 because that'll be 27. So that was just kind of my, you know, the economy has a lot to do with as well as whether they're starting a project. That was it. Thank you.
We hear often a lot about growth, of course, is that fine balance of revenue and growing
that revenue and knowing what we could anticipate as far as the development, but also I think
people see things that have all come out the ground that were approved six, seven years
ago, maybe longer.
But when you look at this year, if I'm reading this correctly in the statement and tap these
or new development, I mean this council has been pretty responsible about what they've approved
and there's not a lot on that list, so it makes sense to me that it that would come in less than we may have
that dissipated and anticipating, you know, growth of that nature, so. And I'm encouraged that, you know,
the areas, the departments that were over and I think you mentioned on all those occasions,
the due diligence going in that and we factor that in to this year's budget, which
We appreciate that, also appreciate the financial team and staff and the work on the return on the investment for full is very impressive and to be commended there.
So appreciate that, always appreciate the updates.
Thank you very much.
Do we have any announcements this evening?
Okay,
we'll have our ten minute public input.
Again, we'll call your name, come to the podium, state your name and address, and we have one resident, Mr. Taylor still.
Thank
you, Mr. Mayor, members of Council, Dr. Davis, thank you for being here this evening.
Would you like to say thank you for all the hard work Cherokee County School District
does for our students and the continued partnership for the City of Cam.
Mr. Waterman, thank you for bringing up the street lights that's something I'm going to discuss
this evening.
I've discussed it in a prior meeting, but the lack of street lights across from the new Cherokee
high school and down Bluffs Parkway and that certain corridor talking the Martin Luther King
Boulevard Bluffs Parkway. That corridor in particular has no street lights. I think
we all know the importance of that. There was an individual struck and killed on 92 earlier
this week, largely attributed to unlit area. I just wanted to put that out on the radar one
more time given it was discussion of the financials with Mr. Lockett and the importance of it
that's been previously discussed, I want to make sure that that's on the radar, but that's all I got to see.
Thank you so much.
Okay, thank you.
We will move into old business at this time.
We have one item, item A, discussion and possible action on engagement with Granicus
to upgrade the SCIA Canton website platform, Mr. Ingram.
Thank you, Mayor and Council.
You had in front of you a proposal from Granicus.
they are our existing website provider. We have been notified by the Department of Justice
that all government entities must be ADA compliant with their government website. Since we are under
the population of 50,000 individuals, we must comply by April 26th of next year.
This grant
It's going to do more than just bring us up to speed and it applies with ADA.
It's going to have a lot more accessibility for our team, make it a little bit easier for us to make changes on the fly, etc.
But the communications in our IT departments are anxious to get started on improving our city's website before the April deadline.
The proposal in front that you have in front of you is at a cost of about $30,000.
It will take them about nine to 12 months to complete.
So we wanted to get started on this project and afford us ample opportunity and it's completed.
So if you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer those or we have members
of our team that may help in answering those but we are asking for action and your hopeful
support and approval so that when you started on this project tonight.
Thank you, Mr. Ingram.
No, we have discussed this, and we know that ADA compliance is mandatory, but we also
know it's the right thing to do, but also taking the occasion to enhance our website,
make it more functional, make it easier to use and navigate by our citizens and others.
It's a great advancement in that.
So, any questions for Mr. Ingram on this?
Mr. Ingram, we're trying to find a way to frame this.
We are going to place where place are, can G.A. to make it more accessible.
We also have, how many other services, I guess, do we pay for outside of that?
So we have Guamma, as well.
Sure, great.
So, that is a separate cost.
Yes, sir.
How many other platforms do we have, as far as software platforms throughout the city, we
We have our ERP with taller technology, LOMA, just to name through Granicus, Ledgestore.
And then we've got a number of other smaller software.
The ones that are community facing.
So as a resident, I can log on to LOMA.
I can go to KNGA, how many of those sites, because I'm sure we have internal systems as well.
Yeah, they're public facing and we're soon to have a portal for our residents, our utility customers so they can monitor their
assumption real time. We're soon to have that. You mentioned Lama, Granicus, maybe Legistar. I'd have to get an accurate
response to you in the future because exactly what software is community facing.
So if
there was an ever an opportunity to have a provider that aggregates specifically
for municipalities or that on a state organizations, I'm sure that's been probably evaluated.
But I just want to throw it out there and it hasn't been.
So, you know, I recognize that there may be confusion, I can go to a website, but then I have to log onto another portal for X, my utilities, my permits, licenses, and so on.
But, yeah, I figure they're all accessible.
This is the parent and everything else is the sub of the overall website.
But to your question on those public facing portals, yes, we do need to do our due diligence
to make sure that we're providing a service that's not too complicated, it's easy to use.
And this is obviously one of the major public facing software that we use.
But again, just going to put a public-facing platform is all accessible through www.cantanjade.com.
Correct.
Anything else?
Mr. Owen?
Does this also include Explorcan?
No, it's required to do any work on that website or is it already?
It is separate, and I believe that is supported by Kent Tourism in large part.
And I do know that's something that they are taking a look at as well.
So it's a great deal, it'll be forthcoming.
Mr. Mayor, if there are no other questions, I would like to move that we take action on
the engagement with Granicus to update the City of Kent's website platform in the amount
of $30,513.
Second.
So motion the second, any further discussion?
All in favour say aye.
Aye.
Opposed nay.
All members voted for the motion.
Thank you.
We'll move into a new business at this time.
Item A, discussion and possible action on task order 8 to practical design partners for restricted crossing U-turn our cut at the new Cherokee High School in the amount of $34,000.
Ms. Watson.
Thank you.
So, staff is proposing an ARCA at the divided roadway at Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard
at the new Cherokee High School.
I have drawn up a very amateur drawing of what this may look like.
This is the existing intersection as it is today and this is the proposed intersection.
It would allow for a left turn only into the school.
Any left turns out of the school would not be allowed.
You would have to turn right, and then if you were wanting to go back towards Bluffs Parkway,
after turning right, you would have to do a U-turn at the red light there at Ron Hart College Parkway.
The northernmost lane on Martin Luther King, Junior Boulevard would also be a dedicated
related turn lane into the school which will have dual lanes so it would accept the left
turning eastbound traffic and also the westbound traffic each would have their own individual
lanes. It would maintain two through lanes. Our cuts are generally considered safer than
signalized intersection. It does take a little bit of learning curve for new
drivers and for people who aren't used to them. You've probably seen if you've
driven down Highway 20, there's quite a few arcots that G.DOT has utilized in
their new extension. I'll be happy to answer any questions. We do need action to
not because we are wanting to get this done before school starts and so we
need to get started on design because they're expecting about 12 weeks to
finish the full design. And I would just mention that we met with the school
district, school police, our police department was in the room,
Georgia Department of Transportation and talked about traffic planning at the
school and the ARCUT was what G-DOT felt like was the best option for this. It forces that
afternoon traffic when it leaves the school to get back on to Roundhark College Parkway,
which is a restricted access roadway because it has a median and has less opportunity for
conflicts, drivers, and intersections. Then Riverstone Boulevard does, which is not a
And also, coming there are two other access points to the high school, including a dedicated
bus access point that would be coming through the Teasley entrance, is that correct?
Correct.
This intersection is just expected to be car rider.
And maybe will high school parking be using this too?
They will have access to this one, they will also have access to the bus area on the backside of the school, and they'll also have access to the ride in, ride out and run, or college, parkway.
One of the things to remember is the current high school really only has one major interest.
There's a secondary cut that's a little bit further down that doesn't utilize to accept for certain parts of the day.
and then everything else has to funnel through Bowling Park, which no one wants
to make a lap down Bowling Park. In this particular layout there's three
different ways for students to get out of the school in the afternoon. The other
advantage to this is by pushing the traffic around Heart College Parkway. If it
does get back to Riverstone it has a longer area to queue up before the
the interstate, and if it got off at Reservoir Boulevard, so it tends to be a better fix.
Definitely.
And then again, based on recommendations from G. and my understanding is also the surrounding
signals would be synchronized and adjusted for these new traffic patterns.
And then actuality, when the school is open and the patterns turn out to be something differently,
we can modify and adjust at that time.
Well that was one of the conversations we had with everybody in the room is that, you
know, we have to figure out these traffic patterns moving forward because today if you
have a student who's at Cherokee and a student that's at Teasley, your drop off is going
to be very different than it will be with the new Cherokee at this location.
Now you have to decide are you going to drop off at Teasley first and then get on one 40
down to Marietta Highway to get to the high school, or are you going to go to the opposite
direction? At this point, a parent is going to drop off in one area within one complex
as opposed to getting on all those additional roadways. And the steel population changes
every year. So we don't really know what the traffic pattern is going to be.
But we do know that when school opens in August, the city will have done the best it could on the roadways. Our police department along with school operations and school police department are going to be working out there those first few days to help deal with any issues that arise and we may have to make some changes. Now we did also hear that it is up to the principal of the high school to determine the traffic patterns with
in the school footprint so you know as we approach this we'll be going back to the school district
and saying here's here's what the afternoon traffic pattern is going to look like the morning traffic
pattern will look like on city streets they'll have to make all of the changes or determinations inside
the footprint of the campus. I really appreciate the thought that's gone into this and all the partnerships
recommendations from GDOT and as we discussed earlier, it's all working together to ensure
safety, not only the students there and professionals at the school, but also the general public
and that uses that that that the referers will and I mean again the good news is that the
infrastructure around the new high school is much more advanced and you know the current one
access point that that's the current location so. Any questions?
Just a question. Is there any concern with so those the people that are into that left
turning lane to go across any concern with them crossing back over MLK with traffic coming
in the other direction and sometimes people just don't pay attention. So if you're turning
and left, off of MLK into the, I guess back to the school, the cars that are still coming
this direction, is there any concern with that joint rent?
Yes.
I mean, there is always a concern when you're crossing traffic, but it actually has less
conflict points than a standard intersection would because you're not allowing cross traffic
to come back across.
So, yes, those people would have to be aware of the traffic going straight through the intersection instead of turning into the high school.
I don't think that we're going to have a significant amount of traffic that's doing that because anybody that's going to the high school is going to use that turn lane to turn into the high school.
They're not going to bypass this intersection to go to the next one.
or I don't know if they might, but I don't foresee that this is a heavily trafficked area
at 8.30 in the morning where it would cause a significant backup issue or anything, but
those people would have to be aware of what cars are going straight.
But with the dedicated, right turn lane, the cars in those through lanes will be going straight
through, they can't turn into the high school as well, so there shouldn't be, it would just
be normal traffic, flow issues that you would have, but it's always a concern, but if someone's
driving properly, it shouldn't be an issue.
No, all of us is the drive properly, so you can't pay attention to that.
Anything else?
And as I said, it will be a learning curve because not everyone is used to our cuts, but I think
that if we can get it done early enough and maybe even put out some information on how
it works, you know, at the beginning of every school year, we get a new map about how
carpool line works, so I'm sure that we can incorporate this into what the school sent
out to explain how this archive works.
Well, historically any traffic pattern changes, we try to do as much education as possible,
Mr. Roch. Mr. Mayor, if there's no further comments, I'd like to make a motion to approve
Task Order 8 to practical design partners for restricted crossing U-turn or ARCUT at
the new Cherokee High School in the amount not to exceed $34,000.
Second. We have a motion, a second. Any further discussion?
discussion, all in favor say aye.
All members voted for the motion, thank you Ms. Watson.
Item B, discussion on the ward of task quarter nine for the Transportation Improvement Project
Highway 140 at Ron Hart College Parkway intersection improvement project design to Michael Baker
International in the amount of $710,651 and 39 cents.
Thank you.
So, as we've discussed previously, Michael Baker is working on our project at Highway 140
in Ronhart College Parkway.
We are on the task order for this project.
This final professional engineering task order is for the completion of the final construction
plans, right away acquisition, some utility coordination, some environmental documentation
in some required studies that require some updating.
As a reminder, this $710,000, 20% of it is paid for by the city.
And then the remaining 80% is paid for with federal funds.
Of the 20%, 34.2% is paid for with impact fees and
the remaining is splashed.
I'd be happy to answer any questions.
And again, you'll be bringing this to the next meeting for approval.
And between there, between this meeting and at that time, can we just get an update on the overall project
while I was anticipated and budgeted what the costs and change orders have been?
And I believe there have been some additional funds dedicated to the project or the grants to just see where we are in that mix.
Yes, yes, I'll be happy to do that.
For this project in particular, I will be bringing a resolution
for some additional funding that we're requesting
in this year's TIP application.
I've already submitted the application,
but they do have to have a resolution by March 31st.
So you will see that next month.
And with that, I will update those total costs
that we're at. With the other project, I will also bring an update on that one as well
at the next meeting. But if you'll recall, we did do a tip application the year before
last for additional funding for that project that we were awarded. So for this one right
now we're around the 4 million range. We're going to be adding an additional 3.3 million.
And then the other project we have, a little over 10 million that has been approved.
But again, I will lay it out nicely and bring you an update at the name of it.
I appreciate it.
And I know it's a major investment, it's a major improvement.
And I think it's always good to communicate to our residents who are always concerned about traffic on the air, that we are investing in that, but also what cost of that is going to be.
And I'm also the increased support and you're in the team's efforts to get additional funding for that.
So, Mr. Mayor, I would make a mention on something that Ms. Watson commented on on the additional money for this portion of the project.
A lot of that is being driven by G.DOT's desire to go with the roundabout as opposed to the Florida T that was the original project plan when the funds were awarded.
because there's a lot more right-of-way acquisition required for the roundabout design.
So they're driving those costs.
As well as when these original cost estimates were done was in 2017-2018, so as you know
everything has went sky-recorded, so that's another reason why the costs have gone up.
We just pretty much the big picture there and I think just that we can communicate it properly so yes there awesome. Thank you.
On this.
I them see discussion and possible action on the intergovernmental agreement IGA with the city of ball ground regarding a 2004 to F-550 bucket truck.
Mr. Ingram.
Thank you, Marin Council. Please recall in November of last year,
Marin Council approved this position of this vehicle, a 2004 to F-550 bucket truck as 156,000 miles on it.
The reason we approved that was we received a replacement and that replacement vehicle is up and running its end service at this time.
Shortly after we approved that, our associates at Ballground, they came to us and they said we really need a bucket truck.
with the city entertain disposing of that to us.
So Mr. Peppers and I, we talked with our city attorney
and said, what are the possibilities of doing that?
What is that in tail?
And they said that would require an IGA
and then the Mayor and Council would prevent IGA
to transfer that asset over to a sister city, if you will.
So you have in front of you a proposed IGA from ball ground.
They're asking offering $3,500 for that vehicle.
but here's an added benefit to this versus us posting it to
gov deals or auctioning that vehicle is, is we will be able to use that vehicle
for up to two years, should something happen two hours. As you need, as you know,
the bucket trucks are unique, they are very useful if you don't have one, you have to have one,
you know, to do some work on your lights, street lights, you know, to do some of the decorations
regulations and flags and whatnot around the city.
So I think that's a very valuable proposition
that Bob Brown is offering.
So I put this in front of Mayor and Council
and ask if you all consider approving that.
One of the reasons why I haven't listed for action is
because we've already technically disposed of the asset.
We have discussed this in the past.
So if you're amenable to take action tonight,
I certainly would appreciate it.
If not, we don't have to take action.
so we can put it on the next agenda.
So I'm here to answer any questions that you may have
or make any changes or anything that you changes
or comments that you see regarding the IGA.
Thank you, Mr. Ingram, I think we're already disposing
of the asset any way to be able to keep it
in the community and help our neighbors out
is always a good thing.
Maybe we could put some decals on there
like, you know, CD-Can, helping to lift bulk ground up, but anyway, I think it's a good
solution. We're happy to help out our neighbors there, and any questions or thoughts on that?
Mr. Trill?
Mr. Chairman, what measure did you use relative to the age and the number of miles on the
vehicle in terms of the price that you arrived at?
In the value that is a value that's a true offer from them. We didn't go to them and say here's what we expect of it
I will admit I did some research on my own. I know the other team members can't team members did as well
And so yes, I can give you my idea of what I expected from it at auction
But I did not give that number to them. I said yeah, but make an offer and they did their research. It came back
that with 3,500. Again, that vehicle has 156,000 miles on it. It has given us a number
of problems. Now, we were, they came down and inspect the vehicle and we were 100% transparent
with them. We went over the vehicle, told them issues that, you know, we've had with
it and let them know that, you know, obviously no warranties exist on it. You're buying it
as is and here's some of the issues that you may end up having to deal with. So, I'm sure
consider that in their offer of $3,500. Could we potentially get more afforded auction? I think we
could. How much more that's a big question. But again, I go back to say that it is an asset. It is
nice to have that ability if something were to happen to ours. Even if it's a recall and it had to
be in the shop for a couple of weeks to be, hey, let us borrow that and have that ability to do that.
I know you're always looking out for the city's best interest so just one
little explanation on that. Thank you sir. Yeah thank you. Anything else?
Mr. Mayor, if there are no other questions I will make a motion to approve the
Intergovernmental Agreement with the City of Ballground regarding the 2004-F-550
Bucket Truck. Second. The motion is second. Any further discussion? All the payers say aye.
Aye. Opposed nay. All mirror voted for the motion. Thank you, Mr. Engels.
Item D.
Discussion of the Reservoir Manager position at Hickory Law Creek Reservoir.
Good evening, Mr.
Maher and Council. There are two documents that govern the Reservoir Project. One is a joint
project agreement between Cobb County,
Marietta Water Authority and the city and the other is Reservoir Management
Plan that is controlled by the City of Kenton. The joint project
agreement outlines the staffing for reservoir operations, the cost sharing on
the operations and the allocations of the resources within the reservoir. The
Reservoir Management Plan outlines the use of the reservoir and the impacts from
adjacent properties on the reservoir. So think of operations being joint project
agreement, think about the space, the location, being the reservoir management plan.
We currently have a reservoir superintendent, which handles the operations at the reservoir.
That is an employee of Cobb County, Marietta Water Authority, who is jointly funded through
the project agreement by the city of Canton and Copcany,
area of Water Authority. At their other reservoirs,
they have reservoir managers.
But they can't have a reservoir manager because we control the reservoir management plan. The current staff out there, they are trying to get that individual up to the same level as all the other reservoir managers in their system, but they can't without some of the duties associated with the reservoir manager under our reservoir plan. It's very confusing, right? Bottom line is this, we control the reservoir management plan. And that includes things like
permits for people to do things on the reservoir. It's related to the land around the reservoir
and the buffer and inspections of that. And those are things we would not want to give up to
Cobb County Mary out of Water Authority. But we have a really excellent reservoir,
superintendent out there right now. And we're okay with that person helping us with that process
and maybe delegating some of that responsibility to them to the extent that we still get to
control the oversight of it. Our current Reservoir Management Plan is not set up
that way. It's really set up for the Reservoir Manager to be a staff person of
the city and it's not a full-time job. So what I am suggesting to counsel is that
we consider drafting a policy under a Reservoir Management Plan that
allows us to name the Reservoir Superintendent as our Reservoir Manager with
some additional conditions so that the city still gets to sign off on permits and applications
and those decisions are not being made by an employee of Cobb County Mayor of Water Authority
but in consultation with the city of Ken. So it really is a win-win for us to be able to handle it
that way. Now the other part about that is as I said we have an excellent reservoir superintendent
right now who's been involved with that project almost since the project started. Lots of years out
their lots of experience loves working in that particular area. If that person
left we may want to claw that back because their reservoir superintendent may
not be somebody that we want to give those duties to. So I bring this to you
because I wanted to bring it to you as a thought and discussion on them. Get your
questions or any feedback you might have before drafting a policy and bringing it
to you. If you say to me no the reservoir manager really needs to be a city
employee that I'm going to designate somebody to be the reservoir manager.
There's just not a lot of daily duties associated with it.
The reservoir superintendents out there all the time, they have their boots on the ground,
they're more likely to see an issue that might pop up around the reservoir, so giving them
a little bit of that authority is probably a benefit to the city and the law.
So the IGA would allow us to name that person as the manager or superintendent manager, but it wouldn't be a default, like it's always that person, that's correct.
So we'd have the position, I mean, after that person leads retire, we could bring the staff person back in house if we wanted to correct.
And it would not be drafted as an IGA.
It would simply be a policy that we add to our
Reservoir Management Plan that would allow the city manager to name the Reservoir Manager
which could include the reservoir superintendent.
But if it is the reservoir superintendent, the following additional conditions exist.
So still gives us authority over permits and decisions there, which I think is certainly important going forward.
And we had that conversation in December.
We had a meeting, a regular board meeting,
and there was some conversation about that
with the executive director
as part of a personnel item that we discussed.
And I told them that I would be bringing that to y'all
as a potential idea because we want to work
through that process.
We want to help the guy that's out there.
He does a phenomenal job.
But we still want to have our own control
over the final study on applications and permits.
And if we did have somebody out there
that was not doing the phenomenal job,
we would want the ability to pull some of that back.
So, and I think it's, you know, it's a good move
in listening to one disagrees here,
but you would draft that IGA for us to actually review
and then be able to look at that detail.
I believe that's going forward, so.
Yes, ahead of the next meeting.
Any questions on that?
If not, we'll look forward to that, J, and appreciate that recommendation.
We added item D, which is a discussion on possible action on decoration of the state of emergency
and preparation for winter storm burn, I believe, if he are in.
That's correct.
So, under the city's code of ordinances in Section 2633, it gives the ability for the declaration
of an emergency by the mayor.
We have typically had a situation where the mayor has had to declare that, and then
we've had to come back to the council to get that ratified after the fact.
Basically, in stating a declaration of emergency, there's some flexibility that's provided to
the city manager in case we have to procure equipment or additional manpower or resources
related to a potential storm. The state of Georgia issued a declaration of emergency and
what that means for us is by keeping track of any of those expenses that we have, we may
be able to seek recoupment for those expenses after the fact. So we did this last year when
we had a winter storm, Kora, it was coming through the mayor declared a state of emergency,
winter storm Kora never really it fizzled out before anything happened at the city so
we didn't have to use it and then we didn't have the mayor and council ratified at the
next meeting because we didn't have to use any of those emergency powers. So to not always
be asking for is for the mayor and council to vote to allow the mayor to declare a state
of emergency ahead of Winter Storm Furn what a wonderful name better be safe than
sorry and again I want to thank our staff that said in the past two days the
police department and the city managers and staff on storm briefings with
with the state and I know we have another one scheduled for tomorrow so I
appreciate the advance preparation again hopefully we can declare these emergency
The power is again, but not happy to use them, but we're all fingers crossed, things are looking omnisled a little bit at this point, but again, we'd rather be prepared and have our staff have the ability to act and protect our citizens as much as possible in case of the pending storm.
So any questions on that?
Did I understand you to say that the state of Georgia has already declared a state of emergency.
The governor does that so that it provides him the executive ability to go and call up members of the Georgia National Guard, which is already put some on notice, to move equipment around the state, it allows, it allows the executive to be able to utilize personnel that might not be frontline personnel to join in on specific efforts, if they need to go rent equipment or if it gets rid of some of the procurement issues that might exist in the state.
in an emergency.
Mayor, if you don't mind, I'd like to make a motion to allow the mayor
to issue a deck of state of emergency for the city of Penn. Second.
Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye.
Opposed nay. I'll may have floated for the motion. Thank you, Mr. Peppers.
All right. Well, I will give you an update on the winter storm. As the mayor mentioned,
and we're preparing as best we can for that.
The weather event was officially named Winter Storm Furn
and is expected to move into the Canton area on Saturday.
Based upon the weather meeting that we had at 2 o'clock today
with the National Weather Service
and other members of local and state government,
we anticipate that it will start moving
into our area of the state Saturday afternoon.
likely began to rain, turning into freezing rain between noon and 6 p.m. Our
team participated in the National Weather Service calls. Yesterday, again
today, there'll be another one tomorrow. Some of the highlights from today's call
is that Canton is in a...
Canton is in the current winter storm watch that includes
all of North Georgia Metro and down through the Grange. At this time there is a
50% chance that can't we'll see a quarter of an inch of ice and a greater than 30% chance we
could see a half of inch of ice. At this time snow is not in the picture. The actual watch area
calls for a quarter of an inch to an inch of ice and one to two inches of sleet between Saturday at 1am
and Monday at 7am. The concern is compounded with wind gusts ranging up to 30 miles per hour.
For our residents, plan to get off the roadways after lunch on Saturday, do not plan to get
out on Sunday at all, and know that temperatures that may go up a little bit on Sunday in the
afternoon and though anything out will plummet on Monday morning and re-freeze everything.
The city is releasing a weather statement this evening, I think it went out at 6 o'clock.
it's got a lot of information in there about the city our operations and what
we're doing. We will operate our emergency operations center at the police
department starting on Saturday morning and we'll have public works utilizing
Brian truck tomorrow into Saturday morning. We have all of our equipment which
include 25 four wheel and all wheel drive vehicles in the police department.
Three plows and four spreaders through public works. We'll have all of those
working for us. We will only be adding brine solution to the major bridges and roadways
in coordination with GDI. We also have several tons of aggregate that we've spread and we've
stockpiled in different locations across the city and we'll use that as the storm comes through.
Ic issues can lead to down trees, broken limbs and power disruptions. It is imperative that people not
try to remove limbs or trees from power lines. Just because the power may be out at your home does not
mean the power on the roadway is out. Our plan is to have hourly updates from the field and we'll be
able to update all that information from the public on our social media and also on our website.
We will continue to monitor this. We may make a few changes tomorrow when we get the next update
from the national weather service. I will tell you that from yesterday to today, the degree of certainty has increased.
As you can see on the map on the screen, Cherokee County is kind of half in that major and half in that moderate area.
It's all going to depend on timing.
We have what is interestingly called a fancy wedge for Northeast Georgia, a CAD, a damning
area where they don't know what's going to happen with the warm air as it hits that wet
air and cold air on the eastern side of the Appalachian.
So we'll see and we'll do our best to inform you and the public of what's going on.
best case scenario. Don't look at the weather on your phone. You know we were
going to get six inches of snow earlier this week according to my phone. Best
places to look for weather are always going to be your metropolitan news
channels, the National Weather Service, and you can also find a lot of information
from Chair County Emergency Management through social media. The calls that we
participate on are made public. They are recorded to a YouTube channel from the
national weather service so anybody can go and watch those and get up to what's going on.
So I didn't want to update you on that. On some friendlier news, Jackson Jordan was named
our team member of the month. Jackson is a fire inspector in our building and safety services
office. He's just a really friendly guy. He should be because his mom is Karen Jordan who retired
as a city clerk up in ball ground. If you ever dealt with her, you know how friendly she was.
Jackson is just an offshoot of her in friendliness. He does good job for us, has good attitude and is always willing to help out.
Has a pretty good sense of humor as well. When he received his award, he was told he had to come down and meet the city manager and all of his colleagues upstairs were afraid for him.
When he went back upstairs, he had an empty box with him because he was trying to play a joke on him.
I mentioned in our last meeting about the Health Insurance Renewal, we do have a record
mark three to talk through that discussion of the Health Insurance Renewal.
The initial renewal statement we got from Anthem was in the ballpark of a 28% increase and
we've been working with our agent of record to try to bring that down, but also look at
other options should we have to go another way. City Council retreat, the Mayor and
Council will have spring retreat, March 26th through the 20th Rilla, which is a
mixed use development side in Fayette County. Citizens Academy, we have a new
program that we are launching that starts in February that is, can't, can't
there's a citizenship academy where over a period of weeks you learn about the
operations of the city and what it takes to make the city work. Applications are still
being accepted at this time. We have about 20 issue applications. Now some people think
they live in the city limits and don't so they may not be eligible so we're going through
that list. Our first priority of course is our city residents.
That's the last thing I-
Any update you own is an item that was before the Board of Appeals. There was an appeal to a decision by the community development director based upon a zoning case for the Riverstone retreat. The Board of Appeals upheld the staff's position on that. And so the applicant has requested an appeal before the city council.
So the appeal application from the applicant's attorney did not come in until after we had
already set the agenda for this meeting.
So that request will be on the next agenda for you to consider hearing the appeal.
If you choose to hear the appeal, we'll schedule the date for that appeal with the applicant
so that they can get in here and make that appeal to you.
If you choose not to hear the appeal, they would have the opportunity to make an appeal
to the Superior Court.
That's all I have. Anything from you? Any questions I can answer or any questions from Mr. Chair.
Okay. Thank you Mr. Repres. Thank you.
Just double checking on Council introduced items. Good.
Just have a couple things here.
I do need to make an appointment to the Canton Building Authority.
As you may know, Ms. McGrew was a member of the Canton Building Authority, and of course Mr.
Ross has taken her position, so I'd like to point Councilor Rice to fulfill Ms.
McGrew's form of position on the Canton Building Authority, and I'd like to have a second to
that appointment.
Any discussion?
All in favor?
Say aye.
Aye.
I'm going to put you to
work.
I will put you to work.
I will remind everyone.
Next Thursday night, we will be
convened for the annual state of
the city address.
We look forward to speaking
everyone.
We are going to begin at five
o'clock I believe with a little
reception in the room so we can
mingle and mix and before the
address and then I will try to keep it under three hours and the state of the city
we have a lot to talk about a lot of review and a lot of exciting things to talk about going forward.
So look forward to that address next week. And again, I wanted to thank our staff and management
police department, public works, communications department, everyone who is participating
In preparation for the winter storm, as Mr. Peppers mentioned, Val look has gotten a little bit more competent and a little bit more ominous.
It's not a lot we can do about I suspicion those amounts, but I know we've got the right team in place and advancing at preparing in advance as much as possible.
And our communication team will be doing a great job of communicating what is happening.
I know the police department will be and the emergency operations center will be
communicating on an hourly basis and so again I just want to urge citizens to
prepare in advance, prepare for the worst, I hope for the best and again if
if ICE does develop as it's anticipated and predicted please stay off the roads
and don't get on the roads if you don't have to and
And go also remind our citizens that the mayor is not a meteorologist, so I don't know if it's going to snow, if it's going to ice or rain or anything.
But please go www.cantanga.gov and we'll be channeling all the information through that.
And again, our social media platforms as well.
And we'll be trying to share the same information as soon as we have that.
So communication is key and that's about everyone please stay safe and again prepare for the worst hope for the best. So
With that I'll entertain a motion to adjourn
Motion to adjourn
All in favor say aye
Pose name
We are adjourned. Thank you everyone