Johns Creek City Council Work Session - August 25, 2025
Johns Creek City Council Work Session - August 25, 2025
The Johns Creek City Council held a work session on August 25, 2025, at 5:01 PM. The meeting focused on the FY2026 budget, multi-modal policy, boardwalk bathrooms, and Cauley Creek parking. Key decisions included adopting a 100 million dollar property tax digest growth assumption, choosing option 2 for surplus allocation, and agreeing to rent portable restrooms for the boardwalk.
FY2026 Budget Discussion
- Assistant City Manager Kay Love presented a revised budget reflecting updates since August 11, including actuals through July 31, a corrected double-counting error in permitting revenue, and adjusted COLA and jail/meals costs.
- Council debated the assumed growth in the property tax digest. Councilmember Coughlin proposed a one standard deviation model (100 million dollars growth), which was described as conservative. The difference between 70 million and 200 million growth was approximately 400,000 dollars in revenue. Council voted to adopt 100 million dollars growth, with Councilmember Stacey dissenting, preferring 70 million.
- Council discussed how to allocate the projected FY2025 surplus. Three options were presented: (1) budget amendment before fiscal year end, (2) embed in FY2026 budget as use of reserves, or (3) follow the automatic allocation policy ("meat grinder"). After a tally, council reached consensus on option 2 (use in FY2026 budget), with Councilmember Skinner switching to option 2 to break a tie.
- Due to the reduced growth assumption, a deficit of $211,988 emerged. Council agreed to reduce the land accrual account by that amount to balance the budget.
- Councilmember Bob Aramelli raised concerns about LOST revenue projections being overly optimistic compared to other metro cities. Staff explained the projection was based on a historical model and county growth assumptions. No change was made; the mayor concluded the discussion.
- Councilmember Aramelli also questioned a 50% cut in training budgets from FY2025 to FY2026. City Manager Kimberly Greer explained that the reduction was based on a five-year spending analysis, ensuring each department had more than average actuals, with flexibility for future needs.
Multi-Modal Policy
- Director Haggard presented the draft multimodal policy to identify and prioritize gaps in the trail network. Council had previously agreed to use 8 feet as minimum trail width.
- Council discussed prioritizing sidewalk gaps (only three remaining) and adding a definition for PTVs (personal transport vehicles) to include electric scooters and bikes.
- Concerns were raised about safety, trail crossings, and the need for corresponding ordinance changes and police enforcement. Staff will refine the policy and present a project matrix at a future meeting.
Boardwalk Bathrooms Alternatives Research
- Director Madsen presented three options: (1) continue renting portable restrooms (current practice), (2) purchase a restroom trailer (approx. 10-year life, break-even in 5 years for 6 events needing trailers), (3) permanent building (costly, deferred to phase 2).
- Council unanimously favored option 1 (renting) for the short term, noting that existing City Hall restrooms serve daily use and portable units are sufficient for events.
Cauley Creek Parking Lot
- Councilmember Larry discussed the need for additional parking at Cauley Creek Park due to pickleball and maker space demand. Overflow parking on grass has led to towing for safety access.
- Council requested staff to explore options (including pervious materials) and bring back recommendations. Noted that the RFP for the original parking lot design has expired, and location may change based on maker space plans.
Key Outcomes
- FY2026 Budget: Council directed staff to use a 100 million dollar property tax digest growth assumption (5-1 vote, Stacey dissenting). Approved option 2 for surplus allocation (use in FY2026 budget). Directed the $211,988 deficit be covered by reducing the land accrual account.
- Multi-Modal Policy: No formal vote; staff will incorporate feedback (PTV definition, safety considerations) and return with a project matrix.
- Boardwalk Bathrooms: Consensus to continue with rented portable restrooms (option 1).
- Cauley Creek Parking: Staff to research options and report back; no funding allocated at this meeting.
- Next Steps: Budget adoption scheduled for September 8, 2025. Cauley Creek parking and multi-modal project matrix to be discussed at future work sessions.
Meeting Transcript
Thank you, Mayor. We're recording. I would like to call this meeting of the Johnsburg City Council to order at 501 p.m. on this August 25th, 2025. Thank you. Could you lead the Pledge of Allegiance? I would say one is a good question. I'm sure we were in harmony on the word there. Thank you. With nothing under strategic priorities, the first item under ongoing projects is the fiscal year 26 budget. And assistant city manager Love is here. Good afternoon. By your nameplate is a revised document that includes a number of updates since the last work session on August the 11th. And just to highlight those, we have updated the document to include the revenues and expenditure actuals as of July the 31st after we close the books. We have updated the property tax current year amount based on the adoption of the 3.492 rollback rate for FY25 and the FY26 number is based upon that same rollback rate. In that document, you also have the property tax for current year based upon a 200 million dollar growth assumption in the digest. I know that's a topic of discussion for tonight, but just as a placeholder, that's what's in there, which resulted in about 126,000 to the positive that has not been allocated revenues over expenditures. You'll see that on your general fund summary sheet that was included as an attachment to the memo, as well as in the revised book. We also adjusted some of the 2026 revenue numbers based on our FY 2025 year-end projections, as well as corrected the double counting permitting revenue line item that we had of system era. We have corrected that. You also saw that chart that was disseminated with the July financials, so that you could see line item by line item where those changes occurred. Happy to review that as well as part of the discussion tonight is if that need to be. Then the two line items on which council have previously reached consensus has been updated to increase the COLA CPI from 2.1 to 2.7 and then to increase the jail and mate housing number by 10,500 to reflect an anticipated rate of $95 per day. But we do know that that should be closer to the dollar amount that we land on when that topic comes back around with the IGA. There were also some moves between departments that the council discussed at previous work sessions. Won't go into those, but we have um not heard anything back, so we made the assumption that everyone was good with us moving those. It was not dollar changes, but it was simply moving from one department to another. And then finally, there are a number of items that we need some direction on to finalize the budget to position ourselves to uh consider adoption on September the 8th of the budget. The first one, probably the most pivotal is going to be the uh assumed growth in the property tax digest. As I mentioned, we have a 200 million placeholder. So that conversation would be helpful first, then you kind of know what you are left with. There's also um information there related to our projected FY 2025 year end surplus. The council could choose to take action on that now. You could certainly wait. You take action on that now, then that would be an amendment um to the FY2025 budget. You could wait, and then it would be um either included in the twenty-six budget if you take that action, or it could be um allocated funding um after we close out the year. There are a number of projects that are listed in your memo related to those that have come up in discussion. Uh most of those are capital uh projects. Uh there are a couple that are more operational, such as uh restoring funding for leadership Johns Creek or a reallocation of uh Greater North Fulton Chamber Economic Development Alliance money. Uh with that, Mr. Mayor. Could we start the discussion? Yeah, we sure can. And I think that it makes sense for us to go ahead and look at that growth assumption first. Uh I appreciated the standard deviation model. And uh I would be in favor of that. Thanks, Councilmember Coughlin. He did that analysis for us. And and that is extremely conservative. So like hundred is like very conservative.
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