Johns Creek City Council Work Session – October 6, 2025
Johns Creek City Council Work Session – October 6, 2025
The Johns Creek City Council held a work session on October 6, 2025, at 5:01 PM. The meeting included discussions on a proposed Special Event Policy for volunteer-led cultural events and a revisit of Public Safety capital requests. The council also entered an executive session to discuss land, legal, and/or personnel matters before adjourning.
Discussion Items
Special Event Policy (Volunteer-Led Cultural Events)
- Director of Recreation and Parks Erica Matson presented the draft policy, which consolidates existing practices for cultural events and committee responsibilities. The Arts, Culture, and Entertainment Committee was supportive. Council feedback included:
- Tracking event revenues and expenditures via sub-accounts; staff confirmed this is already done with specific codes for each event.
- Exploring whether surplus funds from successful events (e.g., Diwali) could be carried forward or credited to the next year rather than returning to the general fund. Staff will consult with finance on possible encumbrance mechanisms.
- Ensuring volunteer attendance and performance standards; staff agreed to add attendance requirements to the policy.
- Encouraging at least 40% of vendors and talent to be from Johns Creek, giving local providers first priority.
- Clarifying that the city makes all purchases (not reimbursements) and addressing conflict-of-interest rules for volunteers who may also be vendors.
- Securing marketing materials to prevent unauthorized modification; staff will investigate technical solutions.
- Staff will incorporate all feedback and share a revised draft with highlighted changes; the policy will not be formally adopted by council but will be used going forward.
Revisit Public Safety Capital Requests
- Councilmember Skinner requested that the fire and police chiefs present on their unfunded FY2026 capital requests, response times (including AMR data and ChattComm), and vehicle accruals, using part of a projected $4 million surplus discussed at the September 8 budget meeting.
- Debate ensued over timing: some council members wanted presentations at the next work session (October 20), while others preferred after the November election to avoid politicization. The city manager noted that the police chief is out of town on October 20 and the fire chief may be on leave; deputies could present but some council members opposed that.
- Council also discussed whether to hear from all department heads or only public safety. The city manager explained that the surplus amount will not be known until December and that the budget policy (60% to fund balance, 15% capital, 15% infrastructure, 10% millage stabilization) governs surplus allocation unless council directs otherwise.
- Council consensus was to direct the city manager to schedule presentations from both chiefs as soon as they are jointly available, with a broad scope covering FY2026 requests, any additional needs, and a departmental overview. No date was set; the city manager will coordinate.
Key Outcomes
- Special Event Policy: Staff will revise the policy based on council feedback and share highlighted changes; no formal council vote was taken.
- Public Safety Capital Requests: Council directed the city manager to schedule police and fire chief presentations at a future work session when both are available, to inform any allocation of the projected surplus. The city manager will also consider a broader plan for other department head presentations if council desires.
- The council moved into executive session (land, legal, and/or personnel matters) and later adjourned out of executive session and ended the work session around 6:00 PM.
Meeting Transcript
Thank you, Mayor. We're recording. Just like to call this meeting of the Johns Creek City Council to order this October 6th at 5.01 p.m. Thanks. Would you please lead the pledge for us? I believe the leaders to the flag of the United States America. Mayor's remarks? None, thank you. Thank you. The first item under ongoing projects is our special event policy. And we have Director Matson for presentation this evening. Good evening. I'm here tonight to um present the draft policy for cultural events and committee responsibilities. But does provide it in a consolidated format per request by council. We did present this policy to the Arts, Culture, and Entertainment Committee during their September meeting. They were very supportive of the policy. It does, as I mentioned, represent how we are currently doing business in alignment with this practices and city policies. ACE had a few uh comments for us, a little bit of feedback, mostly minor things, um, incorporating uh even the members into the um conflict uh I'm sorry, into the uh resolving conflict section. And also uh just some modifications for clarity, because not all our committees have all the subcommittees listed here in. Um we also shared this policy with our current volunteer committees, um, so that would be Douali, Lunar New Year, and Juneteenth. Um they did not respond with any additional feedback, uh, although they did get it. So again, this does represent kind of the current way we're doing business. Happy to take any uh feedback from the body on this, and then we will um integrate that feedback and keep on rolling or pursue other direction. Thank you, Erica. Thank you, Erica. It definitely helps to at least provide a framework for volunteers. A couple of questions, I know. City will manage all the finances, but uh do you think it's good to have a finance subcommittee too? Just so that they can track it. We certainly can uh if the committee is big enough uh to staff all those committees, I say staff, you know, volunteer staff all those committees. We certainly can't. We can add something in there like that. The budget is really top of discussion for every committee meeting. So it's like here's where we are, you know, here's what we have left, things like that. Um so I that can be integrated. I can definitely put into a lot of time into this one. So another question, maybe not for Erica, but maybe for Kimbali. So in the past, like all the uh sponsorships and uh the revenue from the vendors coming in was going into the general fund. Is there a way we can have a sub-account and uh keep tracking those like that maybe exactly no like on the PNL event specific or maybe even all the events together? Somehow we can track those. Yeah, actually, so I'll let Erica add to this response. One of the things that I know her and her team and the finance team have worked together on is to create a more uh detailed means to be tracking any sponsorships or revenues specific to events that are coming in. And I'll since it was her team that worked directly with finance, I'll let her answer. Yeah, we do actually have um within our accounting system, we do have little codes set up for each specific event to track both expenses and um revenues from both you know vendor revenues from the tents and things like that, as well as sponsorships. So we do we are doing that. Okay. So if you really want to go back and look at a specific event, we can look into that and see where we stand on that, right? So going back in time is a little more complicated. I'm talking about but moving forward, absolutely, for the 2026 budget, that is something that we have already started and set up in place for operations to make sure that to meet the ask that has come from the council in the past that we're able to more readily answer with the details you guys are interested to see on both the revenue side and the expenditure side. Perfect, because it's the right time from October 1st when we start the new fiscal year.
openpublica.com