Norcross City Council Policy Work Session – September 21, 2026

Countered for we'll move down to item B, which is citizen input.

We will uh afford uh three minutes for a citizen that wants to um speak on any issue that is on

the agenda.

Well it's kind of out of the way.

We already have physical point uh walking trail around the lake, which is beautiful.

Johnson D.

Park, watch it on pretty basic, but uh very nice, and uh and then the report uh for for short term they said we need to

do

uh uh bridges, and it was like 200 bridges, and they put in there like $500 a bridge.

Now I might be crazy, but when they did the bids for the Cochrane Bridge, it was 44,000 for one bid or 68,000 for another.

So how are you gonna get a those uh 200 bridges for 500 eight?

Uh I'm not probably small, but again, safety-wise, and that's the other thing the uh uh you know safety for the community, and then you got whatever you put in there, you got to upkeep.

And I can't imagine what the price will upkeep is in that area in that amount of time.

So uh I would like to know, and I could do a pretty good information or somebody to just tell me how much you pay for the report.

So that would be interesting.

Not I know it's not just the reports, all the readings and so forth, but I'd like somebody to let me know what that number is just so that's

big

degree of service to North Ross.

Anyone else?

Okay, so you know the board moves down to uh board updates.

Do we have any board updates?

Share moving forward to general updates, historic ordinance update.

Thank

you, Mayor.

So I um I wanted to give you you all an update on where we are with the historic uh preservation ordinance, the rewrite that we have.

You'll remember that we uh are subject to a moratorium, which will expire the first of November.

Um staff and I have been working um to get a draft put together uh so that hopefully in the next couple of cycles we can get that to you all.

What I wanted to do tonight is just kind of run through what we're thinking, have the opportunity to hear if there's any other direction you guys uh want to see, and then I will pass email you all a copy of where we are now with the ordinance.

I had print-offs, but they are sitting on my desk uh at the office.

So uh essentially what one of the things we want to do, and we heard this from council is we want both kind of carrots and sticks, or we want incentives uh for people to to make investments in historic properties, and we also want the ability to uh use code enforcement to enforce against uh people that are not doing that.

Uh so what we have done is uh give the historic preservation commission a bit more uh power and authority to help applicants as they work through uh taxing tax incentives that are available to them through the state uh to take advantage of state money that we have.

Um thing that um David has been working with with uh uh DCA is to make sure that we are a certified local government so that we can get grants, those grants could be allocated and be assisted through uh historical preservation.

Um interesting thing that we've seen other jurisdictions do is use their HPC to buy facade easements.

What that does is essentially preserves facades uh for

uh

benefits, it's essentially a historic easement or conservation uh on particular properties, um, and that allows that the city to have some oversight over what gets done to particular to very important kind of historic buildings.

Um so uh we've also been looking at um in particular, and this is what facilitated this is the certificate of appropriate process and the demolition permit process, and uh what we've are are leaning towards is a process where we would essentially have three tiers of historic properties.

Those uh would would work like this.

One we delegate uh historic districts.

We already have historic districts.

We do need to make some changes to comply with DCA's uh regulations, but we would have a historic district.

That historic district would have an inventory of houses that contribute that have historical importance, historical significance, and non-contributing.

We will probably find a less uh offensive word for people's homes.

Uh but but homes that don't necessarily have the same historic value.

Those homes with uh uh that are non-contributing, uh those would be kind of the lowest level of scrutiny for HBC.

Really looking at what is the improvement, is the improvement help uh bolster the um uh historic district, is it consistent with the historic district?

Uh contributing structures have intermediate scrutiny, so they are going to be looking at what are they doing, how is uh the change consistent with the historic district?

Are there other alternatives?

And the highest level of scrutiny would be designated historic properties.

So these are the properties that go through uh a specific process and are designated as historic.

They're going to have a highest level of protections to in order to get a demolition permit for a historic property.

Um the applicant is going to have to show that they've gone through all the incentives that we work through the ordinance, and there is no ability for this property to rehab.

Uh they will have to go through an administrative process where they actually walk HBC and ultimately council through the process, show why the building can't be restored, and then it's economically infeasible to do anything else with the property except for demolish it.

Those are only for specific historic properties that have to be designated.

HPC will have a report for each of those properties.

Those properties will go back in front of you as they have kind of in the past.

Although the library was one example of the historic property that we designated.

Um

certificates of appropriateness kind of working under the same uh regulations that we have now, but is it better tied to the state statute and more consistent with general best practices across the state?

Then