Good evening, good evening, everyone, and welcome to the City of Roswell, Mayor and Council meeting for Monday, March 9th, 2026.

I am Mayor Mary Robishot, and I would like to introduce my colleagues and council members present.

Mayor Pro Tem and Councilmember Sarah Beeson, Councilmember Aaron Brumley, Councilmember Christine Hall, Councilmember Jennifer Philippi, Councilmember Alan Sells, and Councilmember Chris Zack.

I will now turn it over to Chief Administrative Officer and City Administrator Randy Knighton to explain how the meeting is run.

Mr.

Knighton.

Thank you, Mayor Robichot, and good evening to everyone.

In accordance with section chapter 3.70 of the city code, the city council shall hold regular public meetings, and the purpose of these city council meetings are for the public to participate and speak on agenda items, which do constitute formal decisions by the elected body.

These items are listed on the published agenda, which can be accessed via the city website prior to the meeting.

Public comments and questions are essential for Mayor and Council to consider as they contemplate each decision.

If you wish to speak on an agenda item, we do ask that you fill out a comment card.

We have staff members in the back that will take those comment cards or provide those to you.

So if you do wish to speak on an agenda item this evening, we do ask that you would raise your hand and receive a comment card.

That comment card will be provided to our city clerk Nancy Long and will be received in the order that they are received based on that specific agenda item.

Five minutes will be provided to each speaker on the respective agenda item.

And we ask that you if you must have an independent conversation that you do exit the rear doors to the vestibule area.

Thank you, Mr.

Knighton.

I would like to now invite senior pastor Lee Jenkins from Eagles Nest Church to come forward and give the invocation.

So tonight we give thanks and we thank you for the leadership of this city, the mayor, the members of the city council, and all the others who are in this room who serve this great community.

And may we be a bastion of hope for others to emulate.

May your wisdom give us peace today as we make decisions, and may your grace sustain us.

So again, we ask your blessings on these people and this city.

In your precious holy name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Pastor Jenkins.

If everyone would stay standing, I would now like to invite Cup Scout Troop 87 and Cup Scout PAC 199 to leave the pledge and present the colors of the United States.

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

So thank you to Cub Scout Troop 87 and Cub Scout Pack 199.

Next is the recognition of the 2025 Roswell Fire Department C Shift Award recipients, service award recipients.

Chief Troche, please come forward to present the awards.

Again, another great night for the Roswell Fire Department as we uh present the C Shift Award recipients for 2025.

And it's worth repeating for those that are unaware.

There's a we work 48 hours on, 96 hours off, and there are three shifts A, B, and C.

So we recognized uh the previous shift.

Today is C Shift.

And these awards are selected by the peers.

So I'll be bringing each one of them up here.

We could uh recognize them, and then afterwards, we'd love it if you join us for a picture.

So, first member of C Shift that we'd like to recognize is the firefighter of the year, and that would be Kyle Phillips.

Some of what uh Kyle Phillips peers had to say was firefighter Phillips consistently demonstrates strong performance during both fire and EMS emergency medical services incidents while contributing to a positive and dependable crew environment.

He is known for providing outstanding customer service, including assisting early elderly residents with safety needs and helping citizens beyond the initial response.

Mayor and Council, just like the previous uh shift and including today, one of the things that you're going to continue to hear is the word care.

And it's super important to us because we provide a service in the city of Roswell as a fire department, uh, emergency medical services or fire services, but care is a component that's expected, and the members that you're going to hear about tonight, you'll hear that word often.

Next, we want to recognize fire apparatus operator of the year, Nick Leslie.

FAO Leslie delivers dependable operations, strong patient care, and excellent support to his crews.

He actively participates in committee work and consistently provides thoughtful, respectful service to the citizens during both emergency and non-emergency calls.

Next, we have the EMS provider of the year, the emergency medical services provider of the year, and that is John Montehu.

Captain Montahu provides steady leadership and strong clinical decision making during high-risk incidents, including a critical officer involved response this year.

He also contributes to peer support and critical incident stress management efforts, helping strengthen resilience and readiness across the department.

Something important to note here with uh Captain Monohue is he actually developed a program for the fire department where all members of the fire department have an application on their phone that they can access if they need any type of peer support or mental health assistance.

And he spearheaded that with a group and was able to provide that for the entire department where we have it in our hands at any time.

Next we have yes.

Uh full-timers that we hired during the department's transition.

Captain Bailey stepped into leadership at a pivotal moment in the department's development.

Captain Bailey faced a pressure of joining the organization during a period of significant transformation.

He quickly earned his team's trust and establish a strong productive environment.

Captain Bailey consistently stepped forward to support critical projects and helped the department transition to full-time operations.

Captain Bailey's also spearheaded our self-contained breathing apparatus program, which is critical.

So this was uh state level recognition of uh this chief officer, battalion chief David Buck Rogers.

Battalion Chief David Buck Rogers exemplifies the very best of the fire service through his steadfast leadership, professionalism, and dedication to others.

With more than 30 years of service in both the Cab County Fire Rescue and the City of Roswell Fire Department, Chief Rogers has devoted his career to advancing the mission of the fire service, shaping organizations, and inspiring those who follow in his path.

As one of Roswell's first full-time battalion chiefs, Chief Rogers played a central role in one of the department's most critical transitions, moving from part-time model to a full-time staffing model.

Perhaps one of Chief Rogers' greatest contributions has been his mentorship.

Having served as a battalion chief longer than many in the profession have served at all, he has become a trusted source of wisdom, guidance, and encouragement.

Again, Chief Rogers, state fire chief officer of the year.

They're all leaving us.

So next is the consent agenda.

City Clerk Nancy Long, are there any speakers on the consent agenda?

Mayor, there are no speakers for the consent.

Does council have any comments regarding the consent agenda?

Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Councilmember Mayor Pro Tembeeson.

Do I have a second?

Billy Councilmember Philippi.

All those in favor, please raise your hand.

The item passes unanimously.

Next is the regular agenda.

City Clerk Nancy Long, please read the first item on the regular agenda.

Yes, this is approval to add Juneteenth to the City of Roswell twenty twenty-six holiday calendar presented by Trisha Redfern, Director of Human Resources.

Trisha, thank you.

I'm not Trisha.

But while she's pulling that up, I'll introduce the item.

So the item being presented to you tonight is consideration of formally recognizing Juneteenth as a city holiday.

As you know, there have been several discussions about this here in Roswell for the past couple years, most recently in December, when we approved the mayor and council meeting, uh, the meeting schedule for 2026.

Um, as you know, Juneteenth has been recognized nationally since twenty twenty one as a federal holiday, and many jurisdictions have adopted it, um, such as the state of Georgia and also Fulton County.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Trisha for a little more background uh on the item.

Thank you.

Good evening.

So just to give you a little bit of history on Juneteenth and why we're bringing this item forward today.

Got it.

Um, so the proposal is to add Juneteenth to the city's holiday calendar to align with federal and state calendars and formalized city recognition of Juneteenth.

History on the day, it commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States, marking June 19th, 1865, when it was enforced in Texas as the final end to slavery.

It is recognized as a federal holiday and has been since 2021.

It is also recognized as a state holiday, and we've seen many municipalities, not just in Georgia, but throughout the country recognize and adopt this holiday as well.

Here's a look at our current city holiday structure.

So we have the twelve observed recognized holidays, plus each employee gets one personal day to use.

So we have we looked at Fulton County cities, we looked at the greater area, state of Georgia, federal, Fulton County, and of course we looked at some of our closest cities as well.

A comparison by population.

So these are the top 15 cities in the state of Georgia, and which of those cities recognized Juneteenth today.

Paid holiday status for eligible employees.

If this is recognized and adopted, it would fall in line with every other holiday we currently recognize, which would mean city office closures on June 19th, but public safety and other necessary employees would still come into work.

The budget impact would be about 75,000, while the total cost of holiday pay is about 195,000.

This would be the additional pay above and beyond for those employees who would still have to work and would see the additional eight hours of pay.

So by valuing our people, we feel that observance of Juneteenth would align with that top place to work strategy.

It does enhance employee morale and engagement, and then of course demonstrates our commitment to recognizing American history and aligning with federal and state observances.

Councilmember Hall.

Thank you.

And thank you for the conversations we had during the week about this.

I just wanted to bring a little bit of history on uh how we got here.

So in December of 2020, December 11th of 23.

Uh if you bring that holiday schedule back up to what the uh cities, the the the one before that, please, with the uh number of holidays each of our sister cities has.

So in dec on December 11th at that meeting, uh we did bring the city of Roswell up to have an equal amount of holidays as the state, as Georgia state.

And that was in 23.

I believe uh Governor Kemp did uh recognize it in 21, making 22 maybe the first year that it was observed.

I'm not sure if it was observed in 21 at the state level or observed in 22.

So this was a little bit new.

Uh it was a newer holiday.

So what Roswell did on December 11th, we basically added two holidays, and we had a discussion around June 19th, and the discussion at that time was to leave the floating holiday.

Uh, so we bring the employees up to the level of the state holidays at 13 and let the employees have the flexibility.

And and it's certainly if if we want to, if the employees want to have it recognized as an observed holiday, um, that would be I I would support that, but I can only support that is if we remove the floating holiday, because if we don't do that, we're at 14, which is although it's nice from a umployee side to have all 14 observed holidays.

It it doesn't fit in the fiscally responsible side when we are looking at at running a city.

And it does the cost of adding this is the cost of the wages.

So correctly, probably 195 to 200,000 plus the 75,000.

So if we added it in 2026, that's an additional cost of doing business of the city of close to 300,000.

Uh, during our committee, uh, council member Zach uh suggested that we do go to um to just take this out and go ahead and make it an observed holiday, and I believe it was in 2027.

So I would be in support of doing that, but I am not in support of making uh 14 observed holidays, paid holidays at a at cost of doing business of about 300,000 to the city.

Yeah, just I believe the additional cost above and beyond what's already budgeted, the the net budget impact's 75,000.

That is the net budget impact, but the cost of doing business impact is 300 because that's the amount of salaries for one day.

Yep.

Just to be clear.

Thank you.

Any other council member?

Councilmember Beeson.

Could you go back to the list of holidays?

So just wanting to point out too that this was not a topic of conversation when I brought up Juneteenth and December 2023, when two religious holidays were added.

Spring holiday, flying air quotes.

It's good Friday.

And Christmas Eve.

So there was no question about financial impact when we were recognizing two very specific religious holidays.

But however, when we're recognizing a federal holiday, a state holiday, and a holiday that specifically celebrates black emancipation.

Now suddenly it's a fiscal concern.

I'm good with moving forward with this, keeping this as a holiday, and not only beyond that.

Any other council member?

Claire.

Councilmember Hall.

Thank you.

So Councilmember Beeson, just to be clear, your you would want to add it in 26 and not remove the floating holiday to have a total of 14.

And would that be the plan for going forward for 27?

Can you go to the uh list of municipalities and their total number of holidays?

In keeping with Fulton County, so this would align us with the county level of 14 paid holidays, which is 13 plus the floating, correct, Dr.

Panino?

That is correct.

So in keeping with Fulton County, which we're a part of, um, and recognizing Juneteenth as a state holiday, which Georgia State does recognize.

I'm good with moving forward of adding this permanently as a holiday without removing the floating holiday.

I say this as somebody who oversees operations and recruitment for a small business here in Roswell.

Being able to have a competitive advantage over, I realize they're not technically competitors, but when you have folks with um municipal experience, you want to be able to have a competitive edge over surrounding municipalities.

And I think this is a way that not only can we keep and satisfy employees, but it shows that we can treat our employees better than the surrounding area.

So I'm good with moving forward with the 14 any other comments from council.

City Clerk Long, are there any re Roswell residents who would like to speak on this item?

There are no speakers for this item.

So do I hear a motion to pass it?

Would I be able to amend the motion beyond the recommended motion?

So the current recommended motion is motion to approve adding Juneteenth of the City of Rosal 2026 holiday calendar.

But in the interest of moving forward, especially as we begin to recognize budget season, we're gonna start getting into that budgeting process in about July or August or so.

Um, in the interest of moving forward to councilmember Zach's point and committee, I would like to recognize it moving forward.

So other council members feel free to amend my motion.

I would like to motion to approve adding Juneteenth Juneteenth to the City of Roswell holiday calendar calendar for 2026 and all years moving forward.

Do I have a second?

Councilmember Bremley.

All in favor.

Five opposed one motion passes.

Thank you.

Yes, Mayor, this is approval of Z use 12250003, 1050 Holcomb Bridge Road.

Quick trip conditional use with concurrent variants presented by Jeannie Payton, planning and zoning directory.

Welcome, Jean.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Well we get someone to help to assist Ms.

Payton, please.

Let's give it a moment.

Here we go.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

My name's Jeannie Payton.

I'm the planning and zoning director.

The item I have before you tonight is a conditional use approval for 1050 Holcomb Bridge Road.

The applicant is requesting a conditional use for a convenience store with fuel pumps with concurrent variances to the build two zone.

Additionally, the project includes a 23 foot modular retain block retaining wall.

This map shows the site at the corner of Holcomb Bridge Road and Dogwood Road.

You'll recognize it as the former Red Lobster site.

And it is just adjacent to the summit building.

The subject property is approximately 3.1 acres on the corner of Holcomb Bridge and Dogwood Roads.

It's zoned CC commercial corridor, and the 2040 comprehensive plan recognizes its future land use as commercial commercial mixed use.

The applicant is proposing a 6400 square foot convenience store with eight fuel pumps under one canopy.

They are also meeting, in addition to other regular all the regulations of the code, the landscape open space area, the amenity area requirements, and the parking.

This shows the surrounding zoning of other properties, also zoned commercial corridor with some residential further beyond old Holcomb Bridge and on the opposite side of Holcomb Bridge Road.

Again, the item in front of you is a conditional use for convenience store with fuel pumps, the concurrent variances to the build to zone, section 2.2.9b for corner lots, section 4.3.9 F 4% in the primary street built-to zone, 4.3.9 G, 4% into the side street built to zone, and mayor and council approval of the 25 23 foot modular block retaining wall.

The retaining wall is proposed on the north.

I'll point it out here.

It's on the kind of southwest corner of the building.

So here's a site plan of the site with the proposed building, the fuel canopy along Dogwood Road, the front of the building where you'll enter, is kind of to the rear there, and the Holcomb Bridge side will have kind of a finished look to it for our design guidelines.

The retaining wall is down there in the lower left corner.

Again, pointing out the retaining wall, where the fuel tanks will be located, and where the entrance conversation is about with transportation.

This is a elevation of the retaining wall again in that lower left corner with the highest point at the corner of up to 23 feet, and it reduces each direction.

Um between Holcomb Bridge Road and the site, and it acts kind of as a buffer with um kind of an overgrown undisturbed landscaped area between Holcomb Bridge Road and the retaining wall.

Staff recommended to the planning commission that they approve with conditions that they recommend an approval with condition with two conditions suggested.

The land disturbance permit may include minor modifications of the site plan to meet the transportation conditions of approval and to meet all other conditions of approval that were brought forward during plan review from building stormwater engineering fire tree and planning and zoning.

On February 17th, the planning commission recommended approval with those staff conditions.

We have any questions.

We have Dakota Carruthers and Brian Moira with Um QT.

Good evening, everyone.

As Jeannie mentioned, I'm Dakota Cruthers with Parker Poe, and this is Brian Mora with Quick Trip.

I will not bore you guys going over anything that Jeannie's already been over.

But I do have a couple of slides and just some clarifying points so that we can answer any questions that you might have.

Maybe.

All right, what are you?

Are you attempting to use the overhead?

No, it's a different presentation.

Oh, there we go.

Okay.

Awesome, it does.

Thank you, Jeannie.

Um again, I'm not gonna bore you guys going over too much of the same information, but again, this is the former uh property formerly Red Lobster.

I believe this has been vacant since May, March or May of 2024.

Uh, and we're looking to redevelop this.

This is a commercial corridor property, and I'll point out too, right kind of across what's labeled there as Roswell Summit Parkway from the police station uh and along Donwood Dogwood Drive and Holcomb Bridge Road.

This is our site plan that is our latest and best version.

We have been over this and several times and made many modifications, going through comments and revisions with I believe all city departments, and this is our latest and greatest that we've come up with.

Uh, we did add a turn lane over here that comes out of the property.

That's a write-in ride out from the south side.

Uh, we've got our landscaping and open space, and we are kind of coming right up against that stream buffer, making sure that we're staying out of that.

I believe that's Big Creek that's over there on the side.

So, out of that 3.1 acres, we've just got about a 6,000 square foot building plus the gas canopy and using roughly half of the property.

This is just to give some visuals, and I think Jeannie had this in the staff report as well.

The existing red lobster property, this view from the street shows a little bit of the grade change and that G dot strip that is fairly wide.

Once you get onto the left side of that photo, that's where the current red lobster is further back.

We are trying to come further into compliance, although we cannot come all the way into compliance with the build two zone by bringing that building further to the front.

These are our renderings in this Quick Trip.

Brian and the whole team have been very excited about these because this is the new Gen 4 look of Quick Trip.

And this, I believe, still will be the first location in Georgia for this new design and one and about a handful across the country.

So brand new.

We have been to the design review board, got a couple comments, and we will still go back to the design review board as part of this process following approval of this conditional use permit.

And so there could be minor changes based on that.

But this really shows you know a lot of transparency to the building.

They actually have a walk-up window, if you can see in that middle elevation there on the left side of the building.

Uh so really excited about this design and happy to answer questions about that as well.

These are a couple of just different angles of the property.

This is off Dogwood on the side street.

And oh, you're right.

That's from the hotel property that's next to us.

And then this is from Holcomb Bridge Road, and then this one is from Dogwood from the street, kind of from that same Laquinta corner.

And then again, as Jeannie mentioned, we are requesting a variance or it's kind of a grouping of variances to the build to zone.

I believe a planning commissioner stated it as we would have to shape our building like a pizza to be able to meet that portion of the code, and we'd have to have three times the building length to meet that portion as well, just because the property itself is so large, it's such a large acreage that we couldn't meet it.

But we are working to come further into compliance, and in that bringing the building closer to the front with that grade change, we've added that retaining wall along the side, which as Jeannie stated at the highest point is 23, but does taper off as you get get closer to the intersection.

And then as far as the conditions, uh Jeannie has added one to the list.

So there's number one and two, and number three that was added in response to some of the planning commission comments.

We are completely fine with that new comment.

I just didn't have a chance to add it on here.

Uh but we are requesting one change to condition number one.

And this, to be honest, is out of an abundance of caution on my part, uh, language wise.

One of the transportation conditions involves adding another turn lane.

And I'll go back and show it.

You can see it a little bit here.

But on the right side, as you're coming from Holcomb, turning right onto Dogwood, and then going into the property to the northern drive, there is a turn lane requested.

We don't have the space on our property, so we've been in conversations behind the scenes of some things that are just unknown yet.

We have to have conversations with further with the city about right of way, conversations with GDOT and simply develop civil plans.

So that's where that condition amendment request has come in.

And then I believe my my last one was just to make sure that the retaining wall over six feet was approved.

I think the way that Jeannie has uh stated it in the approval works for us, and we are good with that.

I'm gonna leave the rest of our time.

I'll put the site plan up.

I'm gonna leave the rest of our time open for questions for discussion.

We're happy to answer any anything you have.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Yes, Councilmember Zach.

Question of curiosity.

Yes.

When selecting a place that sells delicious donuts and delicious coffee, did you just so happen to decide to build it next to a police headquarters?

Nothing to do with our decision.

I asked Brian that same question.

Any other questions or comments from council members?

City clerk meets I'm sorry.

Council member I saw things.

Not to you guys.

Of course.

I'll leave you this rock.

Hey.

A couple questions.

One is you know, uh on that left turn.

I know we're working with this with the uh summit, as it were, right?

With summit property.

Um would you would you cannot waive that in uh the land disturbance?

Is that correct?

Or can you?

Could you wave that?

So the applicant can work with transportation to achieve a solution that resolves the issue with transportation.

Um can you describe the issue just a little bit what what transportation's beef is with that?

I think that thank you, Dakota.

Put a good slide in here.

Yep.

Um, this is the solution that is existing right now.

So uh transportation approved the plans with the condition that QT provide that left turn lane.

There's still some engineering of the site that needs to be done to us to kind of establish how that's fully resolved.

Um, the city does own the property just adjacent to that, and there is um, I think 60 feet of right of way.

So this is the proposed plan that uses some of the city property and turns left into the site and provides a safe um place for anyone turning left not to back up the traffic onto Holcomb Bridge.

So you can see if people are coming off of Holcomb Bridge and turning into that lane.

We don't want this the people waiting to turn in to back up into that other traffic.

That's for stacking essentially, right?

And yes and clearing that road.

Yep.

We do have someone here from transportation.

Um, the transportation director is here.

Andy, he can maybe answer more questions about, you know, there are many ways that this could be resolved, and they are not, we're not to that point yet, but they have to meet that condition of approval.

Okay, and there was something else.

I'm sorry, this is uh sort of sticking in my mind, and I just want to make sure I'm clear on it.

This the stream buffer issue and the la the the we're not doing a a variance for that.

What do we do?

How what's our plan around that?

Could you describe what that issue is and how we're dealing with that?

So this plan, in fact, this plan probably shows it better.

You can see um where the building is, the lower left-hand corner, there's a small bit of wall that goes into the impervious setback.

So this is the big creek buffers, and we're a hundred and fifty feet off of Big Creek at this point, and that is a very minor encroachment.

So at this point, um, the engineering staff has determined that a stream buffer variance is not needed because of that minimal encroachment.

They'll have a second look at this in LDP.

If the encroachment enlarges, it gets to the point where it would trigger a stream buffer variance, the applicants would have to go to the BZA as the authority to grant that.

And how big is the how big is the encroachment?

Right now it's around 30 square feet or seven feet, like kind of straight in linearly.

Okay.

So so I guess my my concern is that I want to make sure that those things that are reserved for council remain reserved council, and these kinds of variances seem to me to be of that type.

Am I wrong about that?

Correct.

Yeah.

I am wrong or correct.

I am wrong.

You are correctly wrong.

That's so affirmative.

Am I married to you?

You might want to.

Um so that authority is granted through our engineering division and to the Board of Zoning Appeals.

So we have two ways of doing stream buffer variants.

Sometimes they qualify for administrative variants, sometimes it has to go for a public hearing, and that authority is um BZA, and David could maybe speak to whether that power can be transferred to mayor and council, but it's not my we've we generally handle them separately, especially because at this stage, we don't know the full encroachment.

The site has to be engineered for the LDP documents.

A lot is to be discovered.

Usually site plans end up generally um the same as what they're being presented, but there are tweaks, and we would want that fully flushed out if a stream buffer variance was needed.

But at the time of review, the minimal encroachment in that entire 150 foot impervious buffer was deemed not needed.

Just to be clear though, this is our this is our trip to the plate as a council.

This is we won't we we not will not revisit this issue, correct?

Correct.

Okay, so so I just want to make sure that I understand what the limits of the waiver around what we approve is, and that we are thoughtful about that.

So that's just why I'm asking these questions.

Sure.

So tonight, what's under consideration is a conditional use.

Mayor and council have the authority to grant a conditional use.

If a use is not permitted, but it's been deemed conditional, it has to go through this hearing process with a recommendation from planning commission, and then come finally to mayor and council for that final approval to say yes, you can have a convenience store with fuel pumps in this CC zoning district.

The second item that's before you are the three um variants is to the build to zone, and our build to zone requirements in the code require the building to be located kind of street-centric and push the parking behind.

That's not appropriate for a gas station.

It also doesn't take into account um a property with so much frontage, the 500 feet.

So it it becomes near impossible for them to reach that 60% requirement.

Again, that's to push buildings up towards the road, put the parking behind, create kind of a city feel, and um we have quite a few requests for variances to that section of the code.

Happy to um discuss it more if you have questions.

And the third item that comes just to you and not to the planning commission is the um approval of a wall over six foot.

So those are the three things you're granting.

Everything else, it's not as if you have a say or not, it's just done at the staff level as the project moves forward.

I just yeah, the East Village experience is still right in my mind.

And and uh, you know, it's sort of it didn't end up a whole lot like what we people thought is my impression.

So uh I'm a little worried about that, and I just want to make sure that we as council are clear on our instructions and what the limits of your authority are.

Thank you.

Sure.

Um, I also want to point out I added that second condition of approval, which requires planning and zoning staff to go back to those conditions that were made at this review stage and ensure that those those items are met.

Often they're things that are pointing to the LDP process, and so that's a second layer of protection for those type of things.

Thank you.

Any Chris Councilmember Hall.

Thank you.

Just a couple of questions.

And I was at the PC meeting and and had had conversations about this.

So my concern is is that this there is no turn lane on this document.

And once it goes to LDP, just so the public knows, it is behind closed doors at that time.

I mean, nobody it's like behind a wall, no public, no council.

And I'm a little bit concerned about the language of if there's a minor minor change, we can adjust this in LDP.

Well, who's to decide what's minor?

If you take out a turn lane or if you change the term lane substantially where it impacts traffic, I mean, we're gonna hear about this when traffic's backed up on Holcomb Bridge Road.

Um so it's a little bit outside of our process to bring it forward this way, and I believe the applicant was amenable to uh bringing a site plan showing the um the turn lane uh to council.

So I I would be inclined to be to ask for that document.

Is this is this this is the proposed plan as it sits, and again the transportation directory is here to discuss the particulars of it beyond um the planning and zoning understanding, but this is the currently proposed plan.

So this is I I I was looking at the other document that was called the site plan.

So this is just a close-up because I did not see that on the original site plan.

Yeah, this document came in after our process as transportation began to work with the applicant.

Okay.

Um and I I I would like to have him come up and and discuss this in the turn lane because I think it's very, very important because that's gonna be a very, very busy intersection with everything that's going on with the diverging diamond, that we are very, very clear on what we are approving and and what has latitude.

Thank you.

Andy Flyer, Department of Transportation.

The left turn lane right now, we're still working with the applicant on exactly how we fit that in, where the curb lines will be.

But my understanding is they are agreeing that we will have a left turn lane uh trying not to um back up traffic into Holcomb Bridge Road.

It's fitting it in there without affecting the curb radius on Holcomb Bridge, which would require them to have GDOT permission to change that.

So we're trying to fit it in with how do we make this work with the existing curb radii and on Holcombe Bridge and Dogwood.

So can you just explain to me if this is the site plan, how you're saying that you're still working on it, but it needs to be built to this.

Is that correct?

This is the first I've seen this drawing.

We have been discussing, we sketched it out saying push the push the third lane over to the right, that is um city property to the right.

We discussed with legal that we can give them that right away to push it over.

Um now it's a matter of the taper links that are required based on the speed limits on the on that roadway.

How how quickly can you push that lane over with with the traffic at the speed limit?

I excuse me, I have a question for oh, go ahead, Mr.

Knighton.

No, if may I mayor?

Okay, thank you.

Um so I think this this question of the turn lane is a significant question, and I want to make sure that you know, as we go through these processes when they are in LTB or LTB L DP, land disturbance permit, or they're being reviewed for permit purposes, there will be substantial conformance to what is presented in meetings such as this to ensure that these things uh followed through.

Now the left turn lane.

Is that any condition of zoning for this application?

Yes, the first condition covers the left turn lane item.

There are two ways that the applicant can resolve that.

One would be to shift the building and take land from their property to dedicate to that left turn lane.

The second, and the most desirable for them would be to use city right of way and property to be able to achieve that.

As Andy stated, we met with legal, we discussed that matter.

We see no reason why they can't proceed in solving the left turn lane matter, which would mean no significant change to the site plan, the building sits sitting, anything um related to the stream buffer encroachments, none of that would be effective with the solution that is being sought after now.

Right.

So if for some reason this upon review, if this were to be approved tonight, and upon review, there was not a left turn lane, that would need to come back to mirror and council for approval, correct?

Correct, because they would not be meeting that condition.

Okay.

Thank you.

Just follow-up questions.

Um when you say in LDP, you can make minor calls on this.

What would you deem minor and what would be past minor?

Um we do have a section in chapter 13 of the code that gives a list of what is major versus minor examples are stormwater ponds significantly changing.

Someone proposes an underground stormwater pond.

Specific to this turn lane.

A significant shift in the site.

So if the building begins to shift more into the um stream buffer, um you know, like the entire site.

I guess I need to go back to the I'm sorry, I'm talking about the turn lane.

If there's any changes to the turn lane, I I want to know what those changes are.

Yeah, so the potentially lane could significantly alter the site.

If they can't resolve it on the right side of Dogwood, they would resolve it on the left side, therefore shifting the entire site plan.

Which if they start to move too far into any of that property that includes stream buffers, they would a significant change.

And you're asking what what constitutes significant.

Um, we have we've been burned, so that's why I'm asking these questions.

The public's been burned.

So the applicant proposes to solve it without a significant shift to the building.

The condition was written so that should such a shift have to happen, they would have to come back to Mayor and Council for the change in the site plan.

Okay, thank you.

Because really you're uh council member Zach, please.

Please please be recognized first.

Did you have a comment?

Uh anyone else on council have a question?

City Clerk Long, are there any Roswell residents who would like to speak on this item?

Yes, Mayor, we have one speaker to Merryweather.

Excuse me.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Taya Mayweather.

I have been a Roswell resident for over 20 years.

Um I was at the meeting last month, and one of the concerns that I presented was the traffic.

Um right now on Holcomb Bridge Road, without the QT there, traffic backs up as people are trying to turn right onto Dogwood or or on Dogwood Road trying to turn left onto Holcomb Bridge.

Um, even tonight, I still feel like as a resident, I don't have any answers as far as what will the traffic look like on Holcomb Bridge and Dogwood Road with the QT band placed there.

Um I believe, and correct me if I'm incorrect, there's gonna be an entrance to the QT off of Dogwood Road.

Um so I'm just wondering with the left turn and lane, what about the uh drivers that are trying to get around that?

Will there be additional lane on the city's property to the right?

Will they be two lanes on the left as well?

So I think there's just still a lot of unanswered questions for me being a resident about the traffic, and that does concern me.

Thank you.

Would you like me to speak to that?

So the applicant is proposing three lanes turning out.

This is Dogwood Road to orient you, and Holcomb Bridge is on your left.

So when you come out of the QT site, there are three lanes, one to turn left, one to go straight, one to turn right.

Right now, the site plan that's included in your packet includes one lane with a left turn into the QT site, but this applicant is required with the condition from transportation to add a left turn lane into the site.

So when you come off of Holcomb Bridge Road onto Dogwood and need to turn left into that second entrance of the QT site to enter it, there will be a dedicated turn lane.

The matter about how that is resolved is what is the matter of discussion, whether it would take land from maybe the median, some of their property, or if it can be all encompassed in city property and right of way.

And that is to ensure the traffic flow.

Sorry.

Thank you.

City Clerk Long, are there any other residents to speak?

There are no other speakers.

Do the council have any more comments or questions regarding this item?

Just one just one thing.

On the on the picture you're looking at right here.

So just so it's clear because it is a little confusing.

Uh there's essentially starting on the left where the FELI is right there.

That is a continuous lane that moves to the moves down, basically curves down and goes straight.

So there's still a through lane for traffic on Dogwood headed to old Roswell.

And we are inserting a stacking lane in the middle, uh, which is that up arrow in the bottom to turn in basically down there past the uh the the two arrows coming out, right?

So that's what we're talking about.

So there the through traffic on that street will continue unabated, I guess is the best way to put it.

Thank you.

Councilmember Beeson.

My only request with that is um I assume this would be handled by R Dot for the lining of the roads for this or Dogwood Road, correct.

So my only request to city staff is um in the event this passes, um, having a box to keep that inbound ingress open.

Um similar to how we have like on Crab Apple, there's a couple of places where it's just you don't block the box so that way it doesn't overstack and go into Holcombe Bridge Road, um, if especially during morning rush hour when folks are trying to get to 400 on old dogwood.

Um so just of a painted box to not block the intersection.

That's a other council member that's what I was gonna say.

Councilmember Hall.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um back to the retaining wall.

So uh seven feet of the wall is in the stream buffer.

Is that correct?

Um seven linear feet, yes.

And is um the height is on the site plan of the wall, is that correct?

Yes, yes.

Um, well, it is on the plan that is the retaining wall plan.

Um, I can try to switch back to it.

Would you like me to?

I would just like to be clear in the condition what the height of the wall is and not to exceed, and I also have some other language that I'd like to um be sure that we include in the conditions, and I can actually go through that now.

Maybe if we need to address it, that um any variances that we're granting are stated uh specifically, and that no implied variances like no other, and we talked about this at Planning Commission that no other variances from the requirements of the Roswell United uh unified development code UDC are approved, granted or deemed waived by this site plan approval and have that have not been expressly granted concurrent with the site plan uh approval.

I would I I know that they had discussed maybe having that stamp on the site plan.

I think it's on the final plat, usually.

Um generally, yes, that had been discussed as part of the preliminary plat document.

No, I I certainly would like to have that as part of the conditions if if we move this forward, and um believe that's that's on my comments right now.

Go ahead, David Councilmember Souths.

I was just David and I were having a sidebar.

This is something we can add, and I think you're saying that we should.

Is that what you're saying, David?

Yes, I think this should be added to everything going forward.

So I think this was a good good suggestion.

Thank you.

Yeah, and it would be added to the motion.

Sure.

Councilmember Hall.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, the traffic study, is that publicly available somewhere?

Um, yes.

I mean, we can make it publicly available.

I did not put it place it in the packet.

Okay, because I have not seen it document.

So, and I think maybe the public would like to see it.

Could we put it up on the website or make it somewhere where it's available or part of the packet?

Sure.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council?

And and I do want the public to also recognize while this is for this QT station, we also have to understand there's going to be some major construction going on on Holcomb Bridge and the 400 interchange, some of it coming all the way involved out to this area too, which is not something right now we have full information on as those are G dot projects.

It is our understanding that the all the construction with that project will stop just shy of Dogwood Road.

I know.

I wait till we see the final sorry.

So council member Hall, do you want to make a motion to add your condition for the item first?

Yeah.

Okay.

Do I hear a motion?

To amend a point of order.

You want to amend the item, right?

Jeff.

That's what I thought you want to interview the item.

You can just make it amount.

You can make it as part of the motion.

Yeah, just make it as part of the motion.

Me.

I'll defer to you.

Oh, perfect.

David, help me out here, brother.

Where am I?

Number two.

Number two.

Only number two.

I would like to uh make a motion to approve the uh approval of Zeus 1225 503 1050 Holcomb Bridge Road quick trip conditional use with concurrent variants as amended by Mr.

Davidson to include the requirement that the uh variances or any further variances would be brought back to council.

Yeah, and no other variances are implied.

I can read that language if you'd like.

Something like this.

Thank you.

Okay, with with the added language of no implied variances that uh basically states no other variances from the requirements of the Roswell United Unified Development Code UDC are approved, granted, or deemed waived by this site plan approval that have not been expressly granted concurrent with this site plan approval.

Do I have a second that was the motion?

You were the first.

She just added in.

Councilmember Philippi, second.

All in favor.

Unanimous motion passes.

Thank you.

City Clerk Long, please read the third item on the regular agenda.

Yes, this is approval of a text amendment to the unified development code, Article 14 definitions, section 14.2s.

This will be the first reading.

Also presented by Jeanie Payton, planning and zoning director.

Good evening.

Once again, this item is um a text amendment related to data centers.

So recently, I'm gonna excuse I'm gonna interrupt you for a minute.

Uh City Councilman David Davidson needs to please was gonna read the ordinance first.

City attorney, not city.

I'm sorry.

You took voted.

Thank you.

This is an ordinance to amend chapter 14 of the Unified Development Code of the City of Roswell regarding defined terms.

Chapter 14 definitions of the Unified Development Code of the City of Roswell, Georgia, is hereby amended by modifying section 14.2, defined terms, the text of which shall read as follows, and if approved, this is the first reading.

Thank you.

So recently, Mayor and Council approved a moratorium on data centers.

Um the the right now fix is an interim fix to some definitions in the code to not allow kind of a loophole or a misunderstanding of what we do allow in our office use for data processing.

We will be coming back with the comprehensive moratorium data use center language and um proposals related to that.

So we proposed two text amendments to data and digital storage center, a light industrial use, a building or complex of buildings in which substantial portion of the gross square footage is dedicated to the housing of computer or data equipment or systems, which primarily engages in digital data operations, including but not limited to storage management and or transmission of digital data and housing computer equipment, network equipment, systems, servers, appliances, and other associated components related to such data, digital data operations.

The second item we proposed to define was computer or data processing, a office commercial use, and refine that as facilities where electronic data is processed by employees, including without limitation, data entry storage, conversion or analysis, subscription or credit card transaction processing, telephone sales and order collection, mail order and catalog sales and mailing list preparation.

We took these items to the planning commission, and they voted to recommend that we strike the data or digital storage center definition.

They want it to be developed and proposed at the time of the use regulations for data centers and bring brought forward then in the interim, they feel like the language in the moratorium will serve to define what a data center is.

And so they would not recommend adding that.

Additionally, they propose to strike the language that we propose to them for computer or data processing and change it into the following language.

Facilities where electronic data is processed by employees, including without limitation, data entry storage, conversion or analysis, subscription and credit card transaction, processing, telephone sales, and order collection, mail order, catalog sales, and mailing list preparation, but shall not include any building structure or facility or any portion or complex of the foregoing in which any substantial floor area is devoted to operating data processing, computer equipment for commercial computer applications or services, such as developing, running, delivering, or transmitting computer applications or services, or for storing and managing the data associated with such services.

By way of example and not of limitation, such computer applications or services described here in may be related to cryptocurrency mining, data mining, cloud computing and storage, and artificial intelligence.

And in the meantime, continue to work on the data moratorium.

Questions.

City Clerk Long, are there any Broswell residents who would like to speak on this topic?

There are no speakers for this item.

Does council have any comments or questions regarding this item?

Do I hear a motion?

Councilmember.

Motion to approve uh 10244 approval of the text amendment to the unified development code, Article 14 definitions, Section 14.2s.

This is the first reading.

Do I have a second?

Councilmember Brumley.

All in favor, raise your hand.

Passes unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

City Clerk Long, please read the fourth item on the regular agenda.

Yes, this is approval of a resolution to update locations in the city of Roswell to designate paid or restricted parking areas and approve the staff recommended initial implementation plan.

Presented by Jeff Leatherman, Deputy City Administrator.

Mr.

Latinly.

Thank you, Mayor and Council, for the opportunity to bring this item forward.

We've been discussing and uh tackling the uh parking conversation for quite some time here in the city of Roswell.

Um I will do my best to provide some background to how we got to the recommendations we are here tonight for, um, and then provide some additional information based on some questions that we've heard since our February 13th meeting, uh, where we spent quite some time, about three hours talking about parking as our leadership retreat uh report out.

What this is one of the major topics that we discussed during that meeting.

Um, just as a reminder, uh parking inventory analysis and history.

Uh parking has been a challenge and an opportunity in and around the downtown corridor for several decades.

Um part of the challenge has been created really over the last 15, 20 years as we've started to amend our unified development code for parking requirements in our downtown corridor.

That caused and created opportunities for economic redevelopment in and around the downtown area, particularly around Canton Street, where we essentially limited the number of spaces that would be required for businesses to operate in our downtown core.

This is not uncommon in historic districts, and particularly where you have a lot of buildings close together, not a lot of historical parking in those areas.

Cities are challenged with how do we provide and create opportunities for the community to create business and do business in our city without the requirement or changing the requirements for parking that you would normally see in the built environment and other areas around our city.

We've done a number of parking studies really, even over the last 10 years.

I've been here for eight.

I believe the 2024 parking study was the second that I'm aware of.

The DD, or excuse me, our visit Roswell team, I think, along with the DDA did one early on.

We came behind them in 2024 and looked at the parking in and around the downtown area to see what has changed over time, what opportunities did we have.

And that led into the conversation around the bond for the parking deck.

On the left hand side, you see some of our analysis that we created back with our original parking analysis.

We saw that there was essentially about 83, 837 parking spaces that the city controlled.

There were some additional spaces at Magnolia and the Green Street lot that created around a thousand parking spaces in our downtown area.

The risk was that those parking areas were not necessarily either adequate, meaning there weren't enough, or they weren't all 100% controlled by the city.

And so that created some risk for the city that if some of those parking spaces like the Green Street Gravel Lot or what is known as West Alley were to go away, we would start to potentially lose parking spaces, or we would have additional businesses that would require additional parking.

And so we have more constraint in and around our downtown area.

We in 2019 started some control around the downtown area where the council at that time passed some fee schedules for Canton Street, Elizabeth Way, and East Alley, where we would charge for parking.

As we've discussed many times, I think myself included at this dias and in some of our work sessions, the enforcement of that parking, meaning the issuing of citations and continuing to turn those parking spaces over since 2019 has been loosely enforced.

We did, I would say, an enforcement pilot program this last summer where we issued warnings and then stopped issuing those warnings after a couple of months just to see what the effect of turning over parking in and around the downtown core would be.

What we found when we started issuing those warnings was that people moved out of the spaces and found other spaces to park because we saw a lot of long-term parkers, meaning people that were there for four or five and six hours in those high priority areas along Canton, Elizabeth Way and East Alley.

And so it continues to be an evolving challenge that we have in and around our downtown area of how do we provide for parking.

This is gives you a map.

This is an updated map that is not in the packet.

Be happy to provide this as one of the attachments of the areas that we've been discussing in and around the downtown core.

I will say that there's uh one noticeable difference that is not included on this map, which is the West Alley lot.

Um, because we don't own that lot is currently in an agreement with the DDA.

I didn't highlight it as a managed area, even though we do provide free parking there at that location under an agreement.

We don't intend to change the status of the use of that lot.

Um, so I did not highlight it as a paid or a managed parking location.

But on the table for discussion is how do we tackle uh the downtown corridor?

We see Canton Street, Elizabeth Way, East Alley, and the East Alley lot there, right in the center of the map.

Uh the Green Street Gravel Lot is there to the top, and of course the new parking deck all the way at the very top of the map.

Conversations around City Hall have been ongoing for the past year.

We have the new parking deck, which is down at the very bottom center of the map for Hill Rose.

Uh, and then some portions of the Cultural Arts Center are also faded in a light pink as part of this discussion today.

We did announce um at the Green Street uh deck uh groundbreaking that uh the parking 395 spaces at that time.

We announced in the summer of 2025 that parking would be free for residents.

The challenge is that we did not model that uh specific policy decision that was announced at that time, so we didn't know what the fiscal impacts were at the moment and time in which that was announced.

The additional challenge is, um, and I've heard a couple and seed a couple of questions that we did not know exactly how we would implement a technology solution.

We knew that it was technically possible to distinguish residents and non-residents, but we didn't know exactly how that would work here in the city of Roswell.

And we spent a few months working through that process with our technology providers, came up with a handful of solutions that could possibly work.

And we discussed that at our February meeting, um, the challenges associated with distinguishing a resident and non resident population.

I'll provide just a quick summary of our probably about 45 minute discussion around the resident to non resident scenario.

A couple of things.

If you use driver's license as a way to identify people in an incoming, you could scan those driver's license at a pay station.

The challenge that we have is we have Roswell residents that have driver's license that demonstrate that they are in the city of Roswell, but they also we have licenses that are in the city of Alpharetta and they are Roswell residents.

That happens on the east side of town.

And so we can't necessarily distinguish by the city because we also have people who live in Cobb County but also have a Roswell resident address.

So that was one challenge as we started to look at various solutions.

We also started to look at solutions where we would create a registration system, and that was really where we fell to our most viable solution where every resident that wanted to be considered in the city of Roswell for free parking under that scenario would have to register with the city.

They would have to enter into a database voluntarily.

That database would have to be processed by somebody here in staff, and then that would have to be managed on an ongoing basis.

So anybody that was considered a resident, they would need to register.

But anybody that moved out of the city, we would have to find a way to figure that out, take them out of the registry, but not take them out of the registry if in fact they were still a Roswell resident.

And so it became very problematic to understand how do we manage a Roswell resident registry when you potentially have multiple drivers.

Myself, I've got five drivers in my house right now.

I have a couple that, or at least one that is at college.

I have one that soon will be at college, and then I have a 16-year-old plus my wife and I.

We consolidated all of those operating costs down here into this budget in 2026 so that we could see again the true cost of providing parking for our downtown community.

What that resulted in on the bottom left-hand side is a $376,000 general fund contribution in 2026 to support our parking operations, even with the revenue assumption of $422,000.

So we are using general fund dollars that could be used for anything in our community to supplement and support our parking operations in the downtown core.

This is an important piece because I want to highlight uh what we can and can't do with the bond.

I'm gonna ask Mr.

Godshaw to come up and give us just a quick uh commentary around the rules and regulations with our general obligation bond for the Green Street Deck, because I think it's an important piece of information for both the council and the community to understand the limitations that we have as it relates to both capital and operating on the Green Street Deck itself.

Mr.

Gotchall.

Thank you, Mr.

Lethem and Mayor, Council.

Thank you.

Uh I just wanted to uh touch I talked with Jeff earlier today, and I reminded him under the Georgia law for general obligation bonds, uh, which we raised in 2022 onto tranche A in 23 uh and tranche B in 2025.

Uh the parking deck bond is covered by those uh rules and regulations, and they prevent the expenditure of any proceeds raised under that bond to be used for operating items.

You can only use it for capital items, capital projects, and city assets.

So even in a case where you entered into some type of prepaid maintenance arrangement or some other long-term contract, it would still not be eligible for funding through a general obligation bond.

So that's the the idea that we've commingled both operating and capitals literally against uh the bond laws in the state of Georgia.

As I mentioned earlier in February, we looked at approximately 13 different considerations for how we could potentially effectuate charging for parking services or potentially not charging for parking services at city or at the Green Street deck.

Um recommendation number eight, which you see before you was the final recommendation that staff had, um, and we were requested at that time to move this recommendation forward.

I'm not going to go back through all 13 of those once again, but I will just give a quick summary.

We looked at a whole variety of different scenarios.

We looked at the modeling associated with resident versus non-resident and at least financially, regardless of the technology limitations, what could that potentially do?

We also looked, if you look at the very bottom of this grid, you'll see the different uh weekday, the utilization rates and the parking rates.

We looked at a higher parking rate and a lower utilization rate, meaning we looked at what if we just park uh charge for weekends and weekend nights at a higher rate at five dollars per hour and not charge weekdays and weekday nights.

We looked at a whole variety of different uh charging and fee scenarios to see where the modeling and also the financial performance would land.

The challenge is is that in all of these we see a variety of different results, all hovering around a general funds subsidy for the Green Street parking deck, regardless of what we choose.

The question really becomes how much of a subsidy or how much of a general fund contribution are we potentially forecasting for our 26 and then again for our 27 budget.

In this case, what you see, if everybody were to pay and we would have the rates uh for the weekdays, the very top listed at $2 per hour, we'd essentially forecast that we would generate right around $800,000 annually, which would cover the cost of the deck.

As we take out the weekday rates, you see there's about eight hours and 20% utilization, and that rate is at zero.

That decreases your revenue expectations for the Green Street parking deck and increases by about $200,000 the overall general fund contribution in 2027 for the Green Street operations and for the Green Street Parking Deck.

So with our staff recommendations that are included in the packet tonight, and we'll go over those.

We are still assuming at this point in time that the general fund or the taxpayers could and might be supporting the Green Street parking deck operations by about $200,000 annually.

So we have not solved the revenue and expense number all the way.

That is also why it's really important for us to get into the parking deck, understand what the utilization rate is over a six, seven month period of time so that we have better numbers to really see what the revenue and what the expenses are going to be looking like.

We've done our best to estimate what we think the utilization rate is based on what we're going to be charging.

But until we actually see how the market responds to both the rate and the provision of parking, it makes it difficult to be ex uh exponentially confident in the numbers at this point in time.

So again, this is our best projection as we're moving forward.

We're doing our best to make sure that we manage the general fund implications of the parking operations moving forward, meaning decreasing the obligations.

Right now it's $379,000 annually, decreasing those obligations through a paid system that brings it to $200,000.

Does that make sense?

All right.

The council, we've gone through a number of different scenarios, but I wanted to make sure that we provide some clarity on how the Hill Rose structure affects a parking conversation.

The Hill Rose parking plan includes 350 spaces in the parking deck, but it also includes 159 spaces outside of the parking deck.

Those are in two locations.

One is on street Hill Street, which is what you see right now.

And there's second, there's about 66 of those spaces.

The second is an additional 96 spaces in the City Hall parking lot on the wet on the south side.

That's probably the best way to think about it, or the Hill Street side of the parking lot at City Hall.

Those 96 spaces are assumed to be part of the Hill Rose parking plan.

They are assumed to be part of our fee for parking plan to pay for the deck.

That has been, I think, some question that we've received over the course of the last couple of weeks, and so I just wanted to make that clear.

You'll also see the $4 million advanced from the town home that buys down the parking deck bond payment.

And you'll see the visual and the financial representation of what that means in the next slide.

Revenue from the parking deck includes 200 parking spaces that are leased by the multifamily at a set rate, and that was already negotiated as part of the development agreement, with another optional 73 additional lease and office retail spaces also at a set rate that escalates over time.

The remainder of those 400 or 509 spaces are part of the general public parking that drives the revenue for the bond, which you see on this slide.

Now there's a lot going on on this slide, so I'll do my best to explain.

What you see, the line that is going through the slide there is our expenses.

That is both the parking and the debt for operation of the Hill Rose revenue and expense projections.

The colors that you see on this slide are all of the different revenue sources that were negotiated in the Hill Rose project that pay for both the operations and the bond of the parking deck.

So you have payment from reserves.

If you remember the $4 million that I just talked about, that goes into reserves and pays for a portion of the deck for the first two years until we start to see occupancy at Hill Rose.

Then you have parking for the public, multifamily, and office in 2028, you see those colors start to show up in different areas.

So you're using lesser of the reserves, and you're starting to see revenue from the development agreement moving through.

So you're seeing revenue from the multifamily, revenue from office, and also revenue from parking.

As you work through till 2029, you see that the additional reserve is being used moderately.

And then in 2030, we don't expect that reserve to be used at all, but then it dips down in 2031 and 32 with a small fraction of the reserve potentially being used in order to complete a full build out of the Hill Rose project.

This again assumes the whole 509 parking spaces, the deck, the street, and a portion of City Hall.

So when we talk about why is City Hall included in this conversation, we also have to think through what is the potential effect of having multiple vacant or non-paid spaces in the City Hall parking lot and how does that potentially affect this model and this financial projection.

So I wanted to make sure that everybody was clear.

We've talked about that a number of times over the last few months.

This is the first time that I've laid it out in this way, and so I hope that it's much clearer for people to understand how the revenue is stacked in order to pay for both the bonds and the operating at Hill Rose for 2026 to 2035.

Again, this modeling goes out 20 and 30 years, so there's some additional numbers that are behind this, but this gives you really a snapshot of the next decade and at least what we forecasted at this point in time.

And so, as we think through the implementation recommendations for both Green Street and the Hill Street or Hill Rose parking plan, um, our policy recommendations landed here is that on the Green Street parking deck, all customers would pay with dynamic pricing, meaning that the pricing would adjust based on demand.

Um, that demand is not adjusting on a daily basis.

That's date that's adjusting after we get data in and we see where demand is, it could go down, it could go up.

We could see a dollar per hour, we could see $2.50 or even $3 per hour based on certain times of the day and the demand that we see.

One of the changes that this council requested at our conversation in February was that you would like to see Monday through Friday, that all customers would be able to park for free at the Green Street deck from eight to four.

Um, this allows the daytime transition for supporting businesses in lunchtime, but also would allow for people that are parking for longer periods of time to park in the deck regardless during that time block from Monday through Friday from eight to four, and then after four o'clock, they would be assessed a parking fee if they remained in the deck.

On street, this is the Canton Street, Elizabeth Way, and East Alley areas.

These would transition to a full-time dynamic pricing model.

Right now, um, there are some times of the day, Monday through Friday and on the weekends where you can park in those parking spaces for free for an hour or for two before you're charged a parking fee.

Um, as we think about turning parking spaces over in the downtown corridor, um charging for parking on an hourly basis at these premier parking spaces would help to turn those parking spaces over and make them available for customers that are coming into the downtown core uh in our I'll say our front door or front of the storefront parking.

We also heard from the community that we really want to look for an opportunity to support employee parking.

And so this council asked that we look through, and we haven't developed the exact policy and how this would function, but utilizing the Green Street gravel lot and transitioning that from currently a freed paid par paid parking into a monthly parking pass model that would be specific to businesses and employee parking.

We have about 66 to 70 spaces in that um parking lot that would allow us to open up employee parking in a way that would dedicate that to support our downtown businesses.

That is specific to Green Street and the downtown on street.

As we took one step further, we started to look at the Hill Rose, Hill Street, and City Hall Cultural Arts Center.

As you'll see my note there, the implementation would take place in the future.

We're trying to just get some framework so that we know how to go and have a conversation with developers at the our partners at the Atlantic Company to understand what we can expect from a parking model and how that will affect the modeling that we've done thus far.

What we're recommending is is the dynamic pricing model with implementation that is coordinated with the developer based on our forecasting.

That's the um graph that you saw earlier, uh, with these caveats that at the City Hall and Cultural Arts Center, all customers will park for free Monday through Friday from eight to five.

City Hall customers will park for free and will receive validated parking during night meetings.

Um so if you're here for a night meeting, such as tonight, there would be parking validation.

Dynamic pricing would be in effect at all other times and operational hours, and this was an addition from our February meeting that the city hall and city employees would park for free at no charge, regardless of when they're here in this lot.

I have some supplemental information that I can also provide if we get into some additional questions, but those are the two recommendations that we have moving forward tonight and be happy to entertain council questions.

And I know we have some members from the community that are here to answer.

Thank you, sir.

I I have uh two questions.

What please remind the public what was the actual dollar amount of the Hill Rose bond for the parking deck?

That was a revenue bond here at the city.

The I would the DDA, but it is under Yeah.

So the bottom line where you see the expenses, parking and debt service.

Um the there is a stair step effect of the revenue bonds that start out with the first payment in 2026 of 537.

I'm not asking for payment.

What was the total amount of bigger?

Oh, the total amount of the bond that was issued.

Was uh 197?

19.7.

Thank you.

Yes, sorry, 19.7 million.

And then my lat the only thing I saw also um in regards to understanding the concept, your concept of meetings here at City Hall.

What would be the consideration for people attending performances at the Cultural Arts Center?

Thank you for the question.

I think in our discussions, we would consider that also essentially city business at that point in time.

And so people attending shows at the Cultural Arts Center could be validated, but of course, we would take additional direction from the council on how you would want to tackle that.

Thank you.

Council have any questions.

Councilmember Bramley.

Oh, do we let's go to the public first?

So, City Clerk Nancy Long, are there any interested parties who would like to speak on this item?

Uh yes, Mayor, at this time we have 14 speakers.

The first is Jennifer Donlin.

Welcome, Stanelin.

Hi.

I'm kind of glad I'm going first because I think I'm gonna have an unpopular opinion.

Um first I want to thank Mayor and Council for the many hours and phone calls and texts and emails that you all have gotten and the time you've dedicated to researching this uh issue and trying to find the best path forward for all of Roswell, the businesses, the residents, and the budget.

Um I'd like to tell a very short story before presenting my opinion.

Um at last June's open mic, most people remember a lot of back and forth about Mimosa Hall.

Um I was not able to attend, so I was at home watching the meeting on YouTube because a new friend of mine agreed to speak on my behalf about the first ever Pride Walk in Roswell, and selfishly that was the only reason I was watching.

Um before my friend spoke, a woman came up and poured her heart out regarding Roswell Housing Authority.

Her house was without air for over a month, and again, this was June.

It was a very hot June.

She has five kids, four of them have asthma, and she begged for the city or anyone to care about them and acknowledge them.

After that, a fury of women wanted to do something to help, anything.

Could we get them fans?

Uh window AC units.

Was there a generous HVAC company that could come out?

Could we give Groveway Community Group money to allocate to RHA to help in some way?

We quickly found out that it wasn't that simple.

Some of the residents in RHA may even be too scared to plug in a fan for fear that it would blow a fuse and then they would be evicted as a result.

So what does this have to do with parking?

Um it's actually quite simple.

This is an extremely privileged problem.

So why should a Roswell resident who can't even plug in a fan in 95 degree weather pay for parking via taxes?

Why should someone working two or three jobs and still barely making it have to pay for free parking for all?

Why should someone who never goes to Canton Street because they can't afford a $16 drink, a $30 salad, and share a $12 appetizer, end up footing the bill for people who absolutely can't afford to park to pay when they park and visit our downtown area.

So take the enforcement costs out of it.

The maintenance costs will still exist.

Now, do I think the model that is being proposed is the best model?

No.

Am I a parking expert?

Also, no.

However, after some research, I would advocate for a hybrid model to be considered.

First two hours free with modest hourly rates after that, and consider daily caps.

Two hours is ample time to get drinks and food.

In fact, the other weekend, I visited Canton Street and found out they have an hour and a half cap on weekend lunch.

So again, I know that no outcome is ideal.

Nobody wants to pay for parking.

But a hybrid model would be the closest to a win-win.

So thank you.

Thank you.

City Clerk Long.

Yes, the next speaker is Bill Ray.

Hello.

Welcome, Mr.

Ray.

Hello, and uh thank you for your time here.

So I spoke before the council in late 2024, uh stating my position to the widespread uh parking paid parking plan that was put in place at that time.

That was the first time in the 20-plus year resident of Roswell that I felt compelled to speak in of my concerns.

I'm here again to speak against the paid parking plan.

To begin, I see Roswell really defined by three attributes.

It's our history, it's our great park system, and it's Canton Street.

This is a special sauce that differentiates us from other cities.

The vitality of Canton Street is critical to Roswell's success.

Just look at Zillow Real Estate postings and see how many times the proximity to Clanton Street is highlighted.

The attraction of Canton Street drives property values and by extension the value of the city of Roswell.

This proposed parking plan does nothing to make Canton Street better, more vibrant, or more accessible.

Quite the opposite.

It is headwind, it is friction, and it's a barrier.

Next, look at our peer cities, Alpharetta, Milton, Crab Apple Area, Woodstock, Sandy Springs, all of which have problems have programs providing free parking to visitors.

You can't ignore that Roswell is in competition with these neighboring cities.

Once someone's in the car, all of these destinations are an easy driving distance, and now it's a matter of choice.

I've heard about the Green Street parking garage was paid by bonds, and that maintenance can't be included.

Okay.

Well, collectively, as a city, as voters, we committed to 20 million dollars to build this parking direct, roughly.

We bought the parking deck, with that comes the responsibility of maintaining it.

To me, this is like buying a car, and then after the purchase, realizing you got to pay gas for it.

You buy a car, you know there's additional costs.

I am saying we as a citizens are smart enough to know and accept once built, other costs will follow.

It defies common sense to assume the parking deck was one and done construction obligation.

I've been through the presentation of Hill Street.

Uh it's my understanding we we I'm just gonna skip that part because you covered it again, but basically that it's a standalone project.

The the current parking plans include the conversion of the balance of City Hall and uh and the cultural arts center as paid parking.

Now I'm strongly opposed to this concept as taxpayers.

We paid for those lots of spaces originally, and every year since then we've in we've uh maintained the maintenance on them and the upkeep.

There's nothing new here to our fiscal budget for those spaces.

I also asked, is there really a gain for the pain here?

They talked about this, you know, very convoluted maybe uh administrative implementation costs, carve outs, you know, special events.

We just touched on them, but there's things there's alive after alive in Roswell, performances of the Cultural Arts Center, Youth Day Parade, the Farmers Market, Memorial Day celebration, music on the hill.

Will all those be parking exempt or is those now all feed events?

With a city budget of over two about 200 million dollars, what are we really talking about here?

When you get where the pluses and minuses of the cost to implement versus the the revenue versus paying a vendor, it looked like two looked like about 75 percent of the revenue was going to the vendor.

We're keeping 25 percent of the profit.

My position is clear.

I think I speak for thousands of Roswell citizens and saying don't do this.

We know when the Green Street parking deck was built, there was going to be an ongoing obligation.

City Hall and the Cultural Arts Center are free parking, and don't change that.

Kind of in closing though, you know, there's a couple questions.

Uh, you know, given that the city hall and cultural arts center, parking exists today.

Why are they getting pulled into this discussion at all?

I'm I'm sorry, Mr.

Ray, your time is oh, okay.

Well, I'm about done.

Sorry, your time is up.

Thank you so much.

Next speaker.

The next speaker is Daryl O'Hare.

Good evening, Mayor and Council and Happy Women's History Month.

Okay.

Um, I'm Daryl O'Hare, and I'm a Roswell resident for now 28 years.

Um, March 17th will be 28 years ago we bought our house.

We still in it.

I'm speaking tonight about the proposed expansion of paid parking and the broader policy behind how the city funds and manages public parking infrastructure.

I understand that cities sometimes use paid parking to manage demand in high traffic areas.

However, many of the locations currently being considered are public facilities that residents have already funded through taxes or bonds.

For example, the new parking deck coming online soon was financed through a bond approved by citizens.

It was not structured as a revenue bond intended to be repaid through parking fees.

Residents supported that project through public financing.

So converting publicly funded assets into paid parking change changes the expectation under which voters approve that infrastructure.

Similarly, locations such as City Hall Parking, which on December 9th of 2024 got me in a big argument with the former mayor, but City Hall is the people's space.

And the Cultural Arts Center have historically been public access spaces maintained through the city's tax base.

Charging residents to park at facilities they already support through taxes effectively means residents are paying twice, once through taxes and once again at the meter.

So that that one actually sort of gets to me.

So we don't have consistency.

Another concern is the financial side of the proposal.

In previous budgets, the city projected parking revenue approaching two million dollars.

That estimate was later scaled back after it became clear there wasn't sufficient data to support it.

And the revenue collected has been only a fraction of those early projections.

Before expanding paid parking further, residents should be able to see a transparent analysis comparing expected revenue with the cost of installing, managing, and enforcing the system.

That analysis should also include how the system will be managed if paid parking is implemented.

The city should consider whether the revenue remains within the city rather than being shared with third-party vendors.

A municipally operated system may require upfront investment, but it allows revenue generated from public spaces to return directly to the city.

It would also be helpful to see a comparison between funding parking through general tax revenue versus a fee-based system.

While it is often said that there is no such thing as free parking, the question is how these costs are distributed across the community.

Finally, paid parking at places like City Hall raises practical questions about civic access.

Residents attending city council meetings may now have to navigate a payment system and then request a code to reverse the charge.

Even if the intent is to make parking free for meetings, that extra step creates friction for people who simply want to participate in their local government.

Public infrastructure funded by taxpayers should not quietly become a new fee charged back to those same taxpayers.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Mary Lucas.

Mary Lucas.

Next speaker, Miss Lucas, apparently had to leave.

Roman Perzak.

Goodie.

Before I'm Roman Purzak, before I'm talking, I want to congratulate to the new mayor and you cancel.

You probably went to the classes to get officially certificate the certified by the state of Georgia to be canceled.

I hope you enjoy it.

We have been talking about the parking several years.

And I remember in 24 when the program came here, it says we want to have 100,000 parking lots.

We'll charge six dollars per parking.

And finally, we'll get a 2.2 million dollars revenue from the parking.

And it even put it in the budget.

This was according to report that you pay, I think 175,000 to give you a study, what you shall do.

I think the value of the papers was more than the value of the report.

They even recommend you to go to Wikipedia to see what kind of statistic you may use.

And I hope for that we are going forward, you not use any letter from this report.

That we'll have only 500 parking lots now, not 1,000.

Now you're adding additional six parking.

Six additional location.

And I understand that this will be about 500 parking lot, it's correct.

Some somewhere there.

Or 300.

350 in the Green Street.

Okay.

My question is if you'll come here in a year, you will ask additional places.

In a year after, additional praises.

Oh, this is the final plan.

I think here I see in uh in the agenda item, all kind of stuff that we need to what uh when we need to pay the money and will not.

I think there are some mistakes.

I'll show you because it's say like here.

Uh on Monday, picking parking from Monday from 8 a.m.

to 4 p.m.

But no will be no charges for parking from 8 a.m.

to 4 p.m.

Other times, no charge.

I don't know what it means, but you can check.

Uh I think there's a big confusion.

We're going to parking with a system.

It doesn't matter what system it will be, but we know we have electronic system.

People have problem with that.

There will credit cards on their identification.

I don't know what, but is a problem.

Well, coming to parking lock and suddenly it doesn't work, I don't know what.

And nobody will call me.

I can call and say what can I do because the gate is not opening.

For citizen that we pay the bonds in everything.

I think we can have a sticker on the car that we receive from the city.

They will read on your dash that we are resident of the city and will leave in the city.

This is everywhere we can go.

We have it on the dash and identification.

And I think this will solve a lot of problems and very simple.

This is my idea, and I think another point, I think that we should start with the deck to see how people behave and then continue with additional parking.

We'll see the deck is full.

We'd be using it, we can add additional parking.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Courtney Rosher.

All right.

Um thank you, everyone.

Um, thank you, Mayor and Council.

Um, thank you.

Also, I want to start off thanking everyone because if you read my email, there was a lot of questions.

So I appreciate just the time and effort just for me as a citizen, considering my questions.

Also, I want to thank um Jeff.

He and I had a conversation, and he spent a good bit of time with me, and so I really do appreciate that.

Um, and some of that information that from our discussion also informs some of my comments.

Um, I did send an email today with a chart that I created, and so reading from that.

Jeff was kind enough in his presentation, he did point out that taxpayers, and I'm rounding numbers, are going to be paying 377,000 um dollars in addition to the parking fee and the bond payments that we also pay with our property taxes for those to which it applies to.

Um when we look at the operating costs, the operating cost is 425,000.

Um, and also in the um retreat recap presentation, it points out that, and Jeff also mentioned it here earlier, that to do that differentiation between residents and non-residents would increase um the amount of money needed uh for operations by about a hundred thousand dollars.

So if you take that 377,000 um and then increase it by about for the eight months of that um hundred thousand, what I came up was about 443,000 dollars.

So we're basically operating at a loss, if you want to call it a loss, either way.

We're either going to, as taxpayers, be paying 425,000 for operating costs, plus potentially some additional um cost and transfers that might still apply, um, which makes up the 800 total.

Um so that's part of the reason why I'm here today and asking for free parking.

Um, because I think that there are more benefits for us having and remaining the free parking, especially when the cost is going to be the same, whether we enforce the parking or if we provide free parking at the end of the day.

Um, also I want to point out that similar to um others who have pointed out there hasn't been a discussion in regards to the city hall or cultural arts center in the past during presentations.

Um, similar to Ms.

O'Hare.

I've uh went back and I listened to different meetings.

Part of that is because um back on April 28th of 2025, I um there was parking policy changes that were being made, and I specifically was asking about those um changes in policy because Old Mill Park was being added to the designated area, and I was going back to the SEER plan, which basically activated the whole city, and I specifically was concerned about City Hall, and in that presentation or in his in the exchange, um, former Mayor Wilson indicated that City Hall would remain free.

So I would like to know, and perhaps Jeff has this information because it kind of came up in I think in our conversation.

Um, in the resolution, it indicates that the development agreement had City Hall and the Cultural Arts Center committed to the Hill Rose project.

So I would like to know when that development agreement was signed.

Um in my email, I made recommendations to table the proposal, and so that's one of the things that I would ask for this evening is to consider tabling this proposal, having two dedicated meetings to discuss with the public what is the Hill Rose Development Agreement related to parking and parking services.

Because one of the things is with the Hillrose presentations, there has been a lot of discussion in regards to the bond and paying the bond, but I haven't heard about how the operating costs is going to be handled.

So it seems to me that this is basically compounding.

We're going to be having operational cost for the Green Street and surrounding areas to maintain the landscaping, et cetera, that goes into that operating cost.

Then we're gonna have Hillrose operational cost.

And then the also the retra retreat recap mentions West Alley and another potential bond and a city taking on that responsibility too.

So I would ask that we table the proposal, have a more public, at least two more public discussions that are concentrated on parking.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Ryan Pernice.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Thank you so much for fostering this debate.

I'm so excited to be back here.

The idea of parking puts us in competition with our sister cities, and we've all noted this that no one likes us to think that we're in competition with Alpharetta with Sandy Springs, with Woodstock, with Norcross, but we are.

We're in competition with them for visitors to our downtown, for businesses to open in our community, and for the quality of life benefits that a center such as Canton Street provides.

And if you doubt the quality of life benefits that Canton Street provides, or you doubt that our residents and visitors want to be on Canton Street, then come down on Saturday night when it's due to be about 75 and sunny and tell me that people don't love the idea of having that amenity in their hometown.

Right now we're at this point where we're going to add another undue burden to the idea of operating a small business in our historic downtown.

Other cities around us have figured out how to offer free parking.

We should be able to do that as well, to remain in competition as everyone around us further invests in their downtown core.

The way I thought this should work is that when you put a parking deck into place, it enhance the vibrancy of the businesses all the way around it.

And the way taxes work, we don't get to decide where my taxes go.

My taxes go to pay for parks I don't use, they go to pay for schools my kids don't go to.

But a rising tide lifts all boats.

And so as we support the vibrancy of the small businesses in downtown Roswell through this parking deck, as we offer this amenity to our citizens of free parking.

Those taxes increase by way of greater visitors to visitors to my business and other businesses downtown.

We pay more taxes.

Our business registration occupancy taxes have already gone up many, many times.

So as I pay more taxes to the city, we are then able to use those taxes in any way we, anyway, you see fit.

And that's I think something we should consider is that by enhancing this quality of life amenity, a rising tide lifts all boats.

So help me pay you more taxes.

Another thing I want to mention is that it really seems like we're bending over backwards to accommodate Hillrose.

I really wish we'd spent the same attention.

I wish we'd spent the same attention or a fraction of the time supporting the businesses that have been here for decades already.

My restaurant earned a Michelin recognition that brought a lot of attention to Roswell.

We've been here for 15 years at Table in Maine and 13 years at Osteria.

And we've been paying taxes and supporting this community that whole time.

So it's real cool.

We've got this new big player here, and I'm gonna love going to Hillrose.

I don't think ill of them at all.

I want them to succeed, but I wish we'd gotten the same opportunity.

And I wish this city had thought about putting something I would deem as sacred as the idea of free parking at our city hall.

This is the people's house.

We gotta pay to park here.

Doesn't seem to have a good ring to it.

The last thing I want to mention is that it seems like a wild swing to go from all free all the time parking, which is roughly where we're at right now.

You've got the antique lot, you gotta charge there, but mostly the parking downtown is free.

How big a change it is then to go to a model where now everything is free.

And I want to go on record as saying, frankly, seems I had it better with Mayor Wilson.

See promised that at least Roswell residents would be free.

Now I get he didn't know how to do it.

But he was at least talking the right talk.

So I stand up here because I've been in this spot many times over my decade and a half running a business here in Roswell.

And I'm tired of coming back here.

The citizens, the businesses of Roswell have been asking for help with parking for a very long time.

This is our moment to do that and to solve something we've been trying to solve for a long time and offering free parking, like our competitive sister cities around us are doing.

I also agree that maybe all free all the time, maybe that's too much in one end of the spectrum.

Okay.

Well, let's look at a model like first two hours free.

But to go from all free to all paid all the time everywhere.

That seems like a bit too much.

So I've staked out a point on this side.

I want to do free parking all the time.

But if you say that seems untenable, we need a little bit of kick-in from people, first two hours free, something like that.

Great, well, that's compromise.

That sounds like the right thing to do.

Last thing I'll say is we want to help as businesses.

We want to be part of the conversation.

You all have my email, you all have my number.

Help me get a group of business owners together and let's kick the idea around.

But I think we can solve this in a way far more satisfactory than all paid all the time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ryan.

Next speaker.

Denise Woodall.

Hi there.

I'm Denise Woodall.

I'm a resident.

I'm at 162 Oxbow Road.

Um been living in Roswell since about 2014.

I was a renter, and then I ended up purchasing a home here.

Um so I'm a teacher, and I actually work too many jobs, more jobs than I care to say right now.

Um, so I really didn't have time to be here.

But I came here because this issue is really important to me.

In fact, I barely had time to even figure out what's going on.

Um, I do remember hearing that there was going to be paid parking, and I remember saying, don't worry about it, residents will be free.

So I didn't worry about it.

And now I'm hearing, I just sat here and listened to you all ask a million questions about a turn lane, but then didn't know how you were going to implement this free parking for residents after and going through all this.

I was just like, that's kind of baffling.

Um, so I I really don't know what the solution is, and I'm changed as I'm sitting here.

I'm impacted by the first speaker, and I do care uh very much about um our working poor here, and I don't want people to be overburdened, and I don't want the poor to be burdened with higher taxes.

If I'm a sociologist, so I'm sorry, but um I I just feel that there are other funding streams that this can come from.

It does not need to come from um residents paying for parking, it shouldn't have to come from uh increased taxes on people.

I uh another thing is just like trying to understand what's not my job to understand, um, is that it will deter people from coming to businesses here.

And so the money that you're gonna make with this parking, we're gonna lose in sales.

So you're I don't know that we're accomplishing anything, and I don't know what the what the deal is with the private company, but I'm concerned about they're gonna they're gonna make a bunch of money.

So I'm sure they're gonna have all day and all night to run reports that I don't have time to run.

But I will say this I come downtown every day.

I walk my dog.

Um, I feel safe here.

This I came, I I moved here and I wanted to live here to have community.

I'm I need more than two hours too, that's not enough.

Because I'll park and I'll walk and I'll walk my dog around the um historic homes and I'll meet up with a friend and I'll be down here all day sometimes when I'm not working my other jobs, and I don't want to pay by the hour.

I can't pay by the hour.

Um, I literally cannot afford the bill to do that.

And I came here and I live here to have that.

I can go live in a somewhere where we don't have what we have here, and pay a whole lot less money and pay less of a house payment and pay less in taxes, but I pay all this to have what we have.

This to me, this and I'm here tonight because this to me to begin charging for parking is absolutely destroys that.

And definitely, I mean, just like the whole like logic of like charging at City Hall that we already paid taxes for, then we're gonna charge the park.

You're like, no, sorry, I don't care what time it is, this should be free.

But if you're charging everywhere else, we know what's gonna happen.

Everyone's gonna be parking in this lot, and then I'm not gonna get my free spot.

So I don't really know what the solution is because it's not my job to do that.

I have enough jobs, that's y'all's job.

Um, but I do appreciate some of the comments about, you know, I need to see those numbers.

What is it we're gonna make?

What is it we're gonna lose?

What is what are what is happening?

I don't feel like there's really any coherent um proposal that I'm seeing that we're how who what we're gonna benefit from any of this.

And the hybrid model, as beautiful as it sounds, does is it's very stressful, and it feels very confining, and I don't like it.

I like that we have the freedom to park and be in the space that I pay a lot of money to live near, even if I can't afford the $30 salad.

Um, I can go in and get an app or something.

But and I do, I actually organize meetups, and I have friends that come here, and all my friends want to come here.

I'm like, come here, come to Roswell, we hang out, they have money, I don't.

Um, and this we can park anywhere.

That's not an issue.

Um that's gonna be an issue immediately.

I already know.

People aren't gonna want to come.

Um, and I hope that I wish I had a solution for you.

I don't.

I just wanted to speak as a resident that really cares, and I really am out there every single day walking around walking my dog, and I feel really safe being able to do that.

And I love that if I can't afford to do anything else, I can come down here and just hang out and walk around and see people I know, and I want to continue that, so thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Jason Yowell.

Well, three of you on council and the mayor are blameless.

Uh and yet I know you're taking a lot of heat from people because uh topic is now.

There's five minutes is just not enough to adequately address the particulars and in the parking disaster that we've got after four years of absolute ineptitude and incompetence by the previous mayor.

So I'm I'm gonna just ask some questions.

Is there any possibility that the having paid parking on the Green Street parking deck?

Will it create more revenue against the the expense of administering it and buying the technology to have it?

Because if it doesn't, then the answer is don't bother doing it.

It's a waste of time.

Um as far as what's going on uh with Hillrose, the principal stream revenue streams that we're getting for the land we put in to the deal uh is contracts for parking with the apartments and the and the retail.

My question is who's paying that?

Is it the resident is it the tenants or the landlords?

Because, for example, the biggest chunk comes from the apartments, but is the apartment building owner paying for the parking for every unit from day one, or do we only get money as the apartments are rented from the tenants?

And the same thing goes for the commercial.

If they haven't rented out the commercial space, there's the developer on the hook to pay the the parking fee, or is it only once he gets a tenant that that fee gets paid?

It's not clear.

Um nothing is clear, and part of the problem is that everything that was done with the bonds for the last four years was so poorly thought out, and that's giving it a lot of credit because it was one monumental piece of stupidity after another.

Wastes of money.

Um the the next item, which I'm also gonna speak on about the bonds.

Well, we've got a uh a revenue bond or general uh obligation bond masquerading as a revenue bond, and one of the line items is for the parking.

Oh my god.

Now, is that line item for the technology to make it paid parking?

Or is that just because it's cost overruns on the parking deck?

I don't know.

It's a mystery, and it shouldn't be.

I just we've got people on council, we've got people on uh who are employees of the city, and we have had consultants that have no qualifications to do the jobs they're doing, and they've left a tremendous mess, and it's really disturbing because I look at it and I see what what is the thought process?

And evidently there wasn't a lot of thought process on any of it.

And we're left holding a big expensive stinking bag of bonds.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Raymond Jacobs, mayors of the council.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Fellow citizens who stuck with this out.

Thank you hanging in here, guys.

They're important.

Not that you're not.

I don't have a lot to say.

I'll just say one thing in combined and everything else has been said.

Ditto.

All right?

We get past a whole lot of minutiae.

Bottom line, I think, is we have to consider one thing.

Parking is a business.

And it being a business, you have to consider how you're marketing it as well as how you're entertaining and how you're actually providing for it.

I hear you talk about City Hall.

I don't see a lot of people wanting to walk from City Hall to Canton Street in any given day.

I see the vast majority of the income revenues that will be gained from the people who deal with Canton Street at the businesses.

But we offer parking, we charge for parking.

That's enhancing our businesses.

Now I'm not to say that I'm anti, excuse me, I'm not to say I'm anti-business because I understand this is the wealth of the community.

I've been in Roswell for 32 years.

I remember when all of this was horse farms.

Literally.

Woodcraft or Woodstock used to be five ranches out there and 15 big buildings or five big buildings and a general store.

So parking has always been on my mind.

I've seen parking go from bringing it all to you can't park here, all right?

You have to come up with a plan.

We can't just say no, we can't, we're gonna have to pay for parking.

It has to be considered from all the aspects.

Don't forget the marketing.

I keep one thinking about this parking deck.

Half the people that come to Canton are not going to want to walk to that Dagon parking deck.

I'm sorry.

I've seen it happen in Marietta.

Marietta built the parking deck.

It's there you can park here for free because there's nobody in there.

All right?

And that's a city of it's comparable to what we're looking at here.

So when you make your considerations, consider all the aspects that we've offered today.

I'm military, okay?

I talk proposals.

Bombs come, run.

All right.

So I'm talking solutions to you.

Think about the fees that are being charged for.

I hear nothing about, I heard the gentleman mention fees for the parking deck.

What are the fees?

What was the consideration for the fees?

Is it possible to enhance those?

Can we have some of the businesses that are currently going to get more revenue with our adaptive parking to provide something for that parking benefit?

I don't know.

We talk about taxes and gentlemen, thank you for your chicken, buddy.

It's great.

But we talk about the revenue from businesses.

But in all consider all seriousness, they're making money based on the adaptations that we've made in Roswell to enhance their businesses.

So maybe something can be done to gain something from them.

I think the issue at this point in time is we don't have solutions.

We don't have answers.

We're not ready to make a decision.

Everybody here who is on the council has volunteered to step forward.

I don't know what your individual skills and expertises are.

I know we go to we go to council uh consultants for everything.

But I don't even know if we've got the skills to know we've got a good consultant.

History hasn't proven that we've been too successful in that area.

So with all the little one minute and 23 seconds I have remaining.

I just want to leave you with one thing.

And by the way, young man, five kids, carpool.

Employee parking.

Don't put it in a gravel lot.

That's a place where you can have your community, have people come in who are who are going to be your customer base.

Who would have to city hall?

One walk across the street, they don't have to worry about moving the car in two hours or three hours.

Makes sense.

To me, it makes sense.

It's a parking lot that's really underutilized.

If you really want to make it really happy, put a trolley system in like we had at one time.

Have it go by one or two hours, one or every hour or something to employ can come by.

There are options that we're not looking at.

It doesn't make sense for me to come here and pay a tax bill and pay a bill on a tax bill to pay the park.

I mean, each one of you would be subject to that.

Okay, I'm gonna tell each one of you care tonight.

I want you to park, and I'm not paying you for the evening.

How does that affect each one of you individually?

From the sensibility situation.

I can only say I've been here for 30 something years, and I've seen horses coming up and down the Roswell Road.

Now we got cars and trucks.

We're building, we want from a village.

Thank you, sir.

To a failing city.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Jonna Aronowitz.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

It's very nice to be back at the podium.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for the invitation.

I'm not going to talk for very long.

You all know me.

You all know that parking is air to businesses, to restaurants, to retail.

Without parking, we really are not in business.

There's one thing worse than no deck, and that is an empty deck.

We don't want to see an empty parking deck in Roswell.

We hope not.

You're faced with a conundrum.

You have a parking deck that has been built that needs to be maintained, and there's no budget for it.

But the residents have already paid.

So to ask them to pay again is just not feasible.

We've been waiting years for this parking deck, as Ryan said.

It's like I mean, I've been there for almost 11 years, and I've been hearing about it for all 11 years.

So the fact that it's here is wonderful.

But we can't expect the residents to pay.

Time and time again, I have guests coming to our restaurant, and I say, Where have you been?

Oh I'd come more often, but it's so hard to find a parking, and I don't want to pay too many dollars.

I don't want to pay $10.

And those parking things that you use to do the parking and they never work.

And it's I spend so much time.

So that you know, this is a special occasion, so we're here today.

I'd love to come every day, but I can't because the parking situation is such a disaster.

So to not implement payments and fees and all this for whether whether uh residents or non-residents, it's a deterrent to our city.

Rather, let's fill that parking deck and have people come to our area, spend more money, which in turn is more sales tax for you guys.

Let that be the payment.

As Ryan had stated, our occupational taxes doubled, tripled, quadrupled in the last four years.

Let's use some of that money to go towards.

As I said, you guys are faced with a terrible conundrum because none of you were, well, a lot of you were not part of the decision making, and it's now caused you to be in a situation.

But I beg and I I please I don't start charging for parking for your your residents, nor your people coming to the area.

I do have one question a few questions about Hillrows, because none of that makes any sense.

I'm not sure if Jeff can answer a question for me.

How many apartments are supposed to be built in Hill Rose?

143.

So let's I'm gonna round up.

Let's make it 150.

They're only building 350 parkings, correct?

350, right?

In the deck.

In the deck.

Okay.

So if you've got three, let's say there's two people living in each apartment.

Sometimes there may be three or four.

Um that equates to, let's say, 300 cars.

Where's everybody else gonna park?

There's only 50 spaces for retail.

And now we're gonna use for City Hall.

City Hall can't be, oops, City Hall can't be the solution to everybody's parking problem.

It can only be the solution to one.

So I just, I think my biggest concern is Hill Rose is not building enough parking.

We're back to square one where we started many years ago.

Again, I appeal to you guys to please consider not charging for parking so that we can grow as a city and start overtaking everybody else around us.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Charles Middle Stadt.

Good evening.

Council, my name's Charles Middlestadt.

I'm a resident.

I'm not a business business owner or restaurateur, but I live on uh at 144 Canton Street.

Been uh fortunate enough to live on the street for 15 years.

I've been a uh resident of Roswell for 30 years, and so I have watched all of the development, uh, all the growth, all the wonderfulness that comes with being uh, you know, having the the luxury and the honor of really living in this you know crown jewel that that we call Canton Street that is um what attracts so many people to our beautiful city.

And so I think you know, this decision is so so important and it requires so much consideration.

And it's obvious by listening to Jeff's plan that a lot of time has been spent considering a lot of different things.

But what it feels like to me, and I and I I will say I want to disclose the fact that I know virtually every restaurant tour on the street.

I'm friends with all of them.

I've heard all of the concerns, all of the challenges that they've had with parking for the 15 years that I've been on the street.

And um I think it's it should be very notable that uh Ryan is one of the loudest voices on this issue when he in fact has two restaurants that actually have parking.

And so what that tells me is that it just is emblematic of the fact that he understands that what is in every what is in everybody's interest affects all of us.

And I understand that too, as a as a homeowner, that my property value uh goes hand in hand with the success of everybody in this community.

And so the the only issue that I the one thing that I have heard tonight, loud and clear, and I don't want to, you know, repeat a lot of the very um, I think thoughtful comments that have been made so far and and suggestions and considerations.

But the one thing that I've heard is let's slow this train down.

I don't think we're ready for this decision tonight.

I don't think we're ready at all.

And and I don't think it feels on some level like we've taken what was we've we've had this big buildup to this parking deck, which is finally about to become uh a reality.

And right when we're about to make decisions about what that's gonna look like.

We've decided to include everything else around all of the other parking opportunities that exist within the within this uh the immediate area.

And and now we're gonna make a decision not about a parking deck, but about every parking space in the surrounding community that's gonna affect every single business on a very, very significant level.

And so we're gonna suddenly take all of these um guests and patrons and that come and frequent our great our great street, and we're suddenly just gonna on a on on a dime, we're just gonna change the rules for everybody.

Why don't we just take the parking deck and let's see how that works?

Let's just do a test for a few months and see exactly how much traffic it really is gonna get.

It's not exactly the closest thing to Kent Street.

We may be surprised, but but I think we should have a you know a much slower approach, and let's just look at that one new um amenity that frankly is an infrastructure.

I view it as an infrastructure uh uh investment that we should be making.

It's just like, hey, if we want to stay competitive with all the surrounding areas that we are in fact competing with for business.

It's like sometimes you gotta do a renovation to stay, you know, to stay competitive.

And to me, that parking deck is exactly that.

It's something that we needed to do as an infrastructure for this community in order to stay competitive, and that's just the cost of doing business.

And that's just the cost of doing business.

And so that's not something that needs to be passed on to everybody.

It should be free for that very reason.

It's something that the community should absorb because we will get that money back in tax revenues in sales tax in uh extra um visits to all our restaurants and businesses.

This is either going to be the goose that lays the golden egg or it's gonna lay a rotten egg for us if we're not careful with how we approach it.

But I I really think we should really consider just slowing this down just a little bit.

There's there's this is a really, really important decision.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Lisa Steamy.

Good evening.

Yeah, it's still evening, I guess.

So I'm kind of with Jennifer that this is all a place of privilege because you have to come here to this side of Roswell to actually participate in this discussion of parking, be it that you come to a mayor and council meeting that you have free time to come do that, or you go out to eat.

Either way, it's all a privilege that you are coming to this side of town.

Um during his presentation, he said that businesses that along Camden Street have a different parking allotment than every other business in town.

Um you tell me what that number is?

The different okay.

So I'm just thinking of my businesses in East Roswell that are clamoring for business each and every day, and they don't get the benefit at all of a reduced parking allotment that they have to do to do business.

If they have to do 50 spots, by God, they better have 50 spots.

Okay, so it's a privilege and an honor that you have this beautiful Canton Street that you can walk up and down and spend hours at going from place to place, giving your money.

Whereas in East Roswell, none of that happens.

You go to one place and you're done because there isn't another place to go to.

Um, but I do think that we need to look at what is the overall cost if we just suck it up and pay it.

Just as tax packers, what do we do?

Suck it up and pay it.

Is my tax bill a whopping $10 extra?

Is that a whopping $25?

Is that $150?

Well, if I don't have the privilege and the honor to come down here and spend $30 on a salad, right?

150 bucks is really gonna hack me off, right?

But it also means when I come to City Hall and have to do business, I don't have to worry about paying to park, or am I gonna find a spot?

Or is the council decided that it's going to be paid during the exact minute that I'm gonna be there?

And do I get a ticket?

And then what is that gonna cost me?

And am I gonna have to go to court for that?

And what like what does that cost me?

So, what is the amount that it cost us to suck it up that we made these really bad decisions that we just have to pay?

And maybe we should talk about that versus is it gonna be paid for this hour and this hour?

Like, just tell us what the suck it up cost is versus the it's gonna be free and it's gonna be like it's great.

Like, I just want to know my suck it up cost, and if my suck it up costs is 150 bucks an hour, I'm really glad that I have the privilege to pay the 150 bucks an hour, 150 bucks for the whole year and be done with it.

And we don't have to have this discussion anymore.

Right?

That's the kind of information that we as citizens need to be able to come to you as council and be like, yeah, um, it's gonna cost us 50 bucks to not have this discussion anymore.

That sounds like a great plan.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

Next speaker, Steve Rockland.

Good evening, Jeff.

Madam Mayor, welcome.

My name's Steve Rockland.

I live at 73 Woodstock.

I have been a resident of Roswell for 47 years.

I've seen it an awful lot.

You're my sixth mayor.

I've got the privilege to speak in front of.

I know most of the council, Mr.

Knighton, Mr.

Davidson, many, many business deals.

The first thing I'm gonna say, and I am affiliated and a partner in Lola's Zest and North End, as well as have a building permit in front of you all for the new house steakhouse to go in for Elizabeth Way, which will be a big revenue builder for the city.

And a m a lot of lot of people will come here for that restaurant.

Paid parking is bad for business.

And I have entertained the people from Gainesville recently because we're getting ready to put two restaurants up there, Alola's and a zest.

They have three parking garages.

None of them are paid.

The city has those surrounding parking garages so people can walk to the square just like we walk down Canton Street from one end to the other.

And it gets kind of desperate if we got to pay for parking when we haven't figured out yet.

Lighting up the trail from the parking lot back here at the city over to Canton Street so people feel safe and they can walk back and forth and don't have to worry about it even when restaurants close late at night.

Also, better signage.

Where are the golf carts gonna park?

Because we've got a couple hundred of them now.

There's no parking for golf carts.

We're paying for cars.

We're not having figured out where half of the other things are that we need to get and get straightened out.

The cities around us don't have paid parking, and here we are supposed to be Roswell, and we're gonna have paid parking.

It's upsetting to our customers.

As Jenna said, people come up, they don't want to be nickel-den-dime for five and ten and fifteen dollars when they're trying to come here a couple of times a week and try and do all the other restaurants, the shops, all the parks and stuff.

It's ridiculous to pay for the soccer parking when you got to walk from the soccer park all the way back up to Canton Street.

Um, I think what you need to do is and what we need to look at, as Charles said and several others.

Stop for a minute and try and handle all of the other things that need to be done.

And here's what I'm gonna give you the best example.

Everybody here knows Southern Post.

For 18 months, they were charging for parking.

And now it's free parking because they just about damn ran all 10 businesses out of being in business.

The restaurants were hurting, people would go there and get 40 dollar parking tickets, and then they won't show back up.

So talk to your 10 businesses that went into Southern Post because now there's free parking in that parking garage.

You don't think that's something when you're gonna be paying for parking in our new parking garage and across the streets free?

Answer how you're gonna handle that.

That's something that better be answered before you go ahead and go forward with paid parking all over the city.

Um I think what we need to do, and really really because it will affect our businesses greatly, as we were talking earlier.

There's probably 25, 30,000 residents in the city for homeowners, condos, townhouses.

I am one of those.

I would rather where my water bill comes, my sewer bill comes, and my property taxes come, have a bill for $20 for that month, or on my property tax bill, $80 or $100 for the year and get it taken care of and be done with.

Then the residents are paying for it, it's over with, and I don't have to worry about it.

It's paid for with all the other stuff that goes on.

There's no need for me to have to have pay every time I come downtown, every time my friends come downtown, and every time my kids come downtown.

It's ridiculous.

We're here five days a week, and I've been on Canton Street for 35 years.

I mean, I don't see how you're ever gonna get this to work out where you don't have ill will and you don't have people going, oh I don't want to go to Roswell, they charge for parking.

That's something you're gonna have to figure out.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Yes, this is the final speaker, cat plant.

Hello.

Um I just want to speak to everyone at home or who might hear this later, um, because I think there's a lot of things that are confusing unless you like really follow along.

Um, because I think there's a lot of things that are confusing, unless you like really follow along.

Um I want people to understand that the reason for paid parking is not the shortfall of the $377,000 from the parking deck bond and what it's gonna take to operate it and the the maintenance and everything.

It's about making the deal for the Hill Rose project to make sense.

The land lease deal didn't make sense to me when it was first discussed in council.

But former male Mayor Wilson and Mr.

Sells were adamant that it would make the city gobs and gobs of money for the next 50 years.

When I asked what the plan was when things don't go according to plan, because to me it sounds like the taxpayers will be left holding the bag for this very expensive development, they assured me that there was no way that this wasn't going to be the best deal ever.

Another stroke of genius from the Godson that is Peter Sorkoff and Sier.

Now I understand the real plan is to make parking all over downtown Roswell painful.

Otherwise, no one would pay to park at Hillside.

It was a crappy deal when it was made, and now we're starting to see the outcome of it.

Look at what, like you just said, look what happened at Southern Post.

People will choose alternate options for dining and shopping and personal services when they have to pay to park.

Or when they don't forget to re-up it and they get their 48 dollar ticket, they will not come back.

It's gonna be like that everywhere.

Aside from that, I'd like to point out that all the downtown businesses that do have parking are now going to have to take on the fifth, sixth, seventh job along with everything else they do to monitor their own parking.

Those of us that do have parking, we're now gonna have to keep the people that are going to Hillrose to Canton to whatever it is out of our parking lots because they have to pay everywhere else.

That is, I can assure you that I don't have time in my day to be dealing with who's parking in my spots.

Um I'd like to point out that the Cultural Arts Center is filled all throughout the year with productions from youth youth groups.

Um those are all volunteer run by parents who fill that parking lot all the time.

I mean, are we gonna have to be validating stuff every day?

Like what what is the point of that?

What is the point of paying making people pay to park there?

Um and I would also love to know why Alive in Roswell is gonna be um excluded in this paid parking thing of all events.

Hey, have all these people that are coming from all over.

It's been said over and over and over that it that these are people that come from outside of Roswell that come and fill our streets, trash it, make you know, pee all over the place, puke behind cars.

They can pay to park, they can pay to park.

That's fine.

They can pay to park, but let's leave everything else free.

Okay, that's all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

There are no other speakers.

Other speakers.

Council, do you have any comments?

I'm sorry.

Questions?

Questions, comments.

Councilman Fallout.

Um, thank you to all the speakers.

Um you had a lot of compelling things to say.

Um, I do want to say that that we have been talking about this since our swearing in, so it it hasn't come quickly for us.

Um Jeff, I do have a couple of questions for you that I was trying to get um straight.

So um when was it decided that the city would go into the parking business?

So parking is an economic development strategy um dates back to the scope of work where we evaluated parking, and I believe that was in 2024 under the SEER contract.

Um that was really the first um decision point, I think, with the evaluation of the overall parking plan around the downtown corridor.

And then from there we started to work with the Hillrose and Hill Street at the time, the Hill Street project.

And the development agreement and the associated uh bond agreement for the Hill Hillrose parking deck was really the first time that we got into I would say the business of downtown parking.

Um I would say that prior to that, uh the West Alley project uh always anticipated some sort of parking deck associated with the original hotel project.

And this goes back to 2018, 2019.

The West Alley agreement at the time included some parking provisions in their parking deck that would be available to the public.

And then the vast majority of the future parking deck parking spaces would be specific to that development.

So, you know, between those two projects, really probably 2018 is best I can recall is when we really started the conversation, and then it got more in depth in 2024 as it related to the Hill Street project and beyond.

And somebody had mentioned the 2.2 million dollars.

That was anticipated as part of activating all of the on-street and surface parking in the downtown core, including City Hall.

So there was parking spaces down Mimosa that was considered as part of that evaluation, as well as City Hall, West Alley, Gravel Lot, Green Street, Gravel Lot, as well as the on-street parking in Canton Elizabeth and East Alley.

So it was in 2024 when all these additional spaces, including Sydney Hall, the Cultural Arts Center, all the things that are on the agenda tonight were first identified.

That's when we first started the discussion, yes.

Yeah.

So we've been talking about all of these together and to Cap Plant's point.

Part of the reason why the Green Street deck is being considered the way it is, is because of the Hill Street deal.

Like we're looking at all this together.

Yeah, the essentially the parking, the downtown parking has to work together as a system.

And somebody, a couple of the speakers had mentioned, you know, the the downtown parking on street, Elizabeth Canton, East Alley, along with the parking deck in Hillrose and City Hall.

You can consider them as one-off projects, but really it's about the system of downtown parking and how you provide parking in the downtown corridor that needs to be looked at holistically.

And so as we think about the Green Street deck, it also causes us to look at what's happening in the future, which is really 18 months out at the Hillrose parking plan, which is not just the deck, but is the surface parking as well here at City Hall.

So, yes, it all works together.

Just happens that Green Street is coming first in that plan, meaning that it's going to be opening first, which is the reason that we're having the discussion tonight.

So then as has been mentioned last summer, it was announced at the groundbreaking that the Hill at the Green Street deck would be free for residents.

It was around that time also that the budget was being proposed.

The budget slides that you showed indicated that that was the consideration.

That revenue projection there is based on residents not paying for parking, correct?

Correct.

So then through the budget conversations, how was it discussed?

Uh what were the discussions about how this would be accomplished?

You mean actually the implementation?

Yes.

So once we adopted the budget, we started to work through our technology provider at the Green Street deck.

Um as I said earlier, you know, conceptually, you can kind of get your head wrapped around is it possible from a technology perspective?

Um we knew that it was possible to distinguish between residents and non-residents as we got further into our work, and really it was about November of 2025, where we really started to narrow down, okay, how feasible is it really to start to distinguish between residents and non-residents?

And that's really where you came in from uh operational perspective with the recommendation that we put forward at the leadership conference was it's just not realistic to try to distinguish in mass resident versus non-resident.

And so we needed to look for a different set of recommendations for council to consider as part of our revenue strategy for the parking deck itself.

Uh as you look at the numbers above, essentially, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of about 60% of our downtown visitors are non-residents.

It's give or take, it's different for each area, but that's generally what we see in the data.

Um, and so we brought that number down to 50% just so that we get a sense of what the potential budget projection should be.

It still leaves us with the challenge from a technology perspective.

One, how do we meet a revenue expectation that was set in the 2026 budget?

And how do we bring a recommendation forward uh that accomplishes that recognizing the technology limitations?

And that's what you have before you tonight.

Um so then when we're looking at the expense numbers, there's $305,000 in salary and benefits, um, which I'm assuming that's needed for um for the paid parking implementation.

Since this, you know, we we decided to put together all the operating expenses of all the parking across the the city.

How much of that 424,000 is is new just for the green street garage um operations?

Yeah, the thank you for that question.

The vast majority of it is new because it relates to also the landscaping in and around the deck, um, and it relates to landscaping along the what will be the new green street improvement area as the green street goes one way, there will be new landscaping requirements around that, um, as well as uh the overall operation of the deck, so utilities um and other supplies.

Now keep in mind that what you're seeing here is the 2026 budget, that's only a portion of an operating year.

Uh and so I know this question had come up, you know.

I started to do just based on our budget estimates.

If we were to not charge for parking at the parking deck, what would the annual carry cost be?

And it's roughly about $500,000 annually that we can expect.

That also includes roughly $100,000 of long-term and deferred maintenance and future capital improvements.

So on an annual basis, about $400,000 of operating costs if you were to not charge for parking, plus another hundred thousand dollars that you know from a fiduciary perspective, you should be setting aside, we should be setting aside for future repairs and maintenance of the parking deck.

That's going to replace elevators, it's going to replace uh concrete, electrical, and major maintenance at the 10, 15 and really 30 year mark for a deck.

Okay.

And then can you um talk a little bit about the importance of timing?

So we have a lot of residents asking us to pause.

Why is it important that we make a decision tonight on Green Street?

And also, why is it important that we then make a decision on the rest of the spaces when we have quite some time before Hill Street comes online?

So a couple of things that we're doing right now for both the Green Street and the Hill Rose and Hill Street projects is um Green Street, we have the technology, you know, we've made decisions on the technology going into the Green Street deck.

So the technology as far as the gate arms, the license plate reading system, all of that is going into the deck.

If we want to uh be able to have the best opportunity at hitting our budgeted revenue numbers, we need to start charging or some sort of revenue generation at the Green Street deck in May, because that's what we've essentially forecasted from a budget perspective.

And so we really are the purpose of the Green Street conversation is driving at a budget forecast now.

Um as it relates to Hillrose, we are working through all of the technology choices in the deck and in the City Hall parking lot and working on the design, those are actually being submitted to us now because that is the first thing that gets constructed as part of that project.

So certain policy decisions that we are recommending tonight helps us uh make certain technology decisions that we need to be able to put into place uh with the construction of both the deck and the on-street parking that is currently under design and being submitted to the city.

So that's the driver on the Hill Rose side.

As I mentioned in my slide deck, we're making technology decisions, but we don't necessarily need to make full-blown policy decisions at as it relates to Hillrose right now.

So we still have some time, um, but the technology decisions we're essentially making now, and the infrastructure is happening now.

Um more question I thought of.

Um we haven't discussed this, um, but what are the considerations for the parking at the library?

If it starts being paid at the Cultural Arts Center and at City Hall, how are they going to um keep people from parking at the library?

So the library is not controlled by a city and is not uh planned to be the managed through the city.

So Fulton County will have that obligation.

Um right now, what you see generally after hours is the library parking lot gets used very often and regularly.

Thank you.

Councilmember Zach I don't know what I did.

Excuse me.

Sorry, I'm moving the mic.

Let me know if this is good.

Um, could you pull up the slide of uh Hillrose and the revenue bond?

Um I guess first point of clarity, we're what is the the term for that bond?

So 30-year 30-year bond.

Okay, and just to make sure I'm not crazy.

So that means what we're seeing here is even with public parking being paid.

We're expecting for expenses.

Okay, we're expecting for expenses to get covered.

Okay.

So and this is to Kat's point, really what this decision is coming down to.

Is because if it wasn't for Hill Rose, that's a pretty easy decision, I think.

So what's the what's the exact gap if public parking is free that the citizens are going to incur from this revenue bond in that blue section?

And that's taking that number minus the excess and expense.

Public uh you're saying parking if we were to make parking free at Hillrose.

Uh well, I think the kind of the earlier point, but there's this whole strategy that for the revenue bond for Hillrose to be able to cover itself.

Is that blue section of parking is paid parking, correct?

Yes, sir.

And the fear is if we don't have paid parking at City Hall and we don't have it at the parking deck, then that blue section will get cannibalized, correct?

That is the risk.

So my question is if that gets cannibalized, what is the tax that is gonna have to come out the millage that is gonna have to come out of residence to cover the expense?

So would be some portion if you look at public uh parking public in the uh the table forum uh halfway down the center, and it's the blue, and you can run that across, and there's no public parking in 26 and 27, and you see 369,000 is the first number in 2028.

That's the line item that essentially would be at risk if you made parking free uh at the Hill Rose parking area.

So some portion of that line would be at risk, and you can kind of track it across, it goes from $369,000 and in 2035 up to almost a million dollars.

Understood.

I guess and it's okay, it's quick math, but I'm trying to figure out what the delta is with that minus the distance to the expenses.

So, like in your and to be fair, I'm looking at the later years once you get rid of the um payments from the reserves, right?

Um we're exceeding expenses, and then if you remove that, we're gonna be under expenses.

So it's not just a matter of removing the blue, it's a matter of the distance after you remove that.

And it would be really difficult to even forecast that standing here to even understand what the behavior is going to be of the res of people going to Hill Rose.

I'm just gonna kind of take an educated guess looking at it.

That looks to be another 500,000 that would be brought on to the residents.

That's just my rough guessing.

Fair estimate.

So to that as well, kind of a follow-up question.

I I do think that there was a strategy, is a strategy.

I don't know if it's still going, and that's kind of my question.

That with Hillrose parking as an economic development strategy was executed, and I think the continuation of that is parking needed to be charged elsewhere to make this deal work.

What is the continued strategy with that?

Is that is that something that is still going to be leveraged as a tool?

Um, and who owns that strategy?

Do you want that strategy?

So the str economic development parking is an economic development strategy is within the economic development team.

So, yes, it falls under my group of the organization.

Uh the council ultimately has the decision on whether or not you would effectuate that strategy and other projects moving forward.

As I mentioned earlier, the West Alley project is one that has a potential to see some sort of parking or parking bond associated with it.

We've talked about it in other areas of the city.

Um, but as been mentioned earlier, you know, ultimately the council also has to agree to back those bonds, whether they're sold or processed through the DDA or the RDA.

Um, and so the council has the ultimate decision authority on whether or not that strategy is something that we would continue to implement in the city.

Councilwoman Beeson.

This isn't so much a question as a comment, mostly for the public.

And I will also preface this with I am not my most eloquent at 10 o'clock at night.

So if this doesn't make sense, apologies.

I should be horizontal by now normally.

Um this is not going to be a popular decision either way, right?

So what the question that's presented with the board in front of you, um, with all the council members, uh, the vast majority of us collectively inherited this question.

The for context, the bond question was on the 2022 ballot, which is the exact same ballot that I was on, and I'm the second longest city uh sitting council member that sits in front of you today.

Um so it's not a fun decision.

Um also as well in terms of us charging for parking, I think it's fun to think of us as taking like a Scrooge McDuck bath with gold coins and just having a great time with them.

We would pay for the same parking that you would pay for.

Um, additionally, if it were to be free parking, I believe it was Ms.

Rosier who might have said it.

Um, if not, I'm sorry, that there's no such thing as free parking.

Contextually speaking, someone is paying for it, whether it's in your property tax dollars, um, you're paying for it at the arm.

If even businesses, I'll use for example, East Roswell.

They're paying for their parking.

You don't pay for their parking.

Those businesses incur that cost.

So, in some way or another, there's also the question of equity of why is it that those businesses have to pay for parking within their rent or the shopping center has to pay for it.

It's also covered in their property taxes because it's a part of their parcel.

Correct, Mr.

Leatherman.

It's part of their parcel, their estimate for the size of their property taxes.

So there's a question of equity too.

I don't think anyone on this dais intentionally wants to hurt any single business in Roswell.

Same with talking about paid parking.

It's you're putting the pressure on the unpaid parking.

Also, in that demographic, I run an office in downtown Roswell, really close to where the parking tech is going to be.

That means that that gets to be my new hobby as well, of staring out the window and wondering if our employees don't have enough space to park.

We're not retail, we're an office.

But still, that's going to impact our parking as well.

So, regardless of what the elected body decides this evening, whether it's free parking for residents, free parking for everyone, uh, that it's paid parking, whatever that payment is.

I don't think anyone's sitting here waggling our fingers and thinking this is a very fun and exciting time for all involved.

Um, but we do appreciate everyone coming out tonight and sharing their opinions and being able to provide context for how it would affect you personally.

So I think that just tries to set the standard a little bit from all of us up here.

It it's not as fun as you might think it is in terms of making this decision and the amount of questions that we've belabored staff with over the last several months at least, but definitely years, I would say on behalf of the existing council members and myself prior to the new body.

But thank you.

Councilmember South.

Got a few questions.

This is the first time I've seen this, and I'd I think I'm gonna have to challenge on a couple of things, but uh one in particular.

I'll just I'll just begin with that commercial real estate tax line.

Talk to me about how many square feet we're talking about and how you get the 10,000 dollars.

Um so the commercial real estate tax is uh uh really directly related to I'd have to go back.

Give me a minute and come back to that question and I'll come back at it.

This is not right.

Um well, let me give me a minute and then we'll come back to it.

All right, so let's just uh let's do some math if we could.

You you uh somehow or another we came to it was $500,000 of incremental cost if we charge zero for Green Street.

Right.

Okay.

That's only Green Street, right?

That's not Hillrose or any of the other parking.

So it's it's just that and um so I ask uh I'd like to do a little math.

Uh we're we're dropping light flaws.

Maybe we should take a break, Mary.

Or no, let's finish this item.

Uh we have more, we have three more items after this.

So let's go.

So uh uh let's do some quick math here.

A mill, sorry.

Aaron and Chris may want to hear your comments.

Oh stop.

Thank you.

Yeah, keep going.

Go ahead, Alan.

All right.

Well, I'm trying to uh come to uh Lisa's uh suck it up cost.

That's what I'm working on right this right this second.

That's what I'm trying to figure out right this second.

Um so uh because I had heard it was something like in the order of $800,000, not $500,000 of incremental cost when we start talking about the policy the parking policy.

Am I wrong about that?

And by the way, I just want to be clear what we're talking about here is the parking policy.

It certainly has an impact on the on the on the Green Street deck, but we're trying to set a policy for parking in general.

That's really the purpose of this conversation.

Uh I I think from your perspective, and let me just see if I can talk it back to you, is is from an overall cost of the operation of the deck that would include the necessary staff and or contractor to charge for parking and run that system.

The operating costs are roughly $800,000 a year.

My $500,000 number was in your knockdown.

What's that?

It's your knockdown cost, right?

Correct.

So if you were to not charge, you would need some of that overhead and staffing um and some other um supplies that we have in the budget, and that brings it down to the $500,000 number.

Well, let's go with that swag number then.

Um so I asked uh earlier, uh a mill is about 1.7 million dollars.

Is that point four?

How much?

Seven.

7.4 for a mill.

Okay, thank you.

Uh all right.

So it's $500,000.

It would be uh I don't know what percentage that is, but it's pretty low, right?

1%, 1% increase in our property taxes to the suck it up cost is 1%.

That's what you're saying, right?

10%.

8% tax.

So it'd be an 8% tax increase.

I'm sorry, I uh that wasn't the answer I expected, but it's 8% tax increase for everybody for the suck it up cost.

That's what you're saying.

Eight tenths of eight tenths of a mil.

Eight tenths of a mil.

It sounds so good in my head.

I know I'm trying to figure this out.

So which is it?

What is it?

So you would be we're at 4.019, right?

There you go.

So eight one hundredths of a mil.

So that would be uh what like two percent, something like that.

Two percent on the on the millet rate.

I just trying to get I'm trying to answer that question because it's uh it's plaguing me too.

I want to know what that number is.

Um let me move on.

It's if you guys think about that and come up with an answer, that'd be great.

But uh you know, we also have as taxpayers, we have certainly paid for infrastructure.

We're in the business of providing water, for instance, and providing recreational activities for residents on a usage basis.

We pay for those facilities as well.

I don't think anybody here would say, gee, we should we should provide that for free, and not only for residents, but also for everybody in North Fulton that wants to be in our rec program.

Okay, that's free too.

I mean, of course, we have usage based uh functions of the city that are designed to cover their own cost, and this is one of those.

Correct.

That's the point I'm trying to make.

And I so I continue to think that you know, in terms of like as a parking strategy and what how that shakes out, they like to talk about the fact that it's gonna cost more and it's going to impact their business model, but you're also getting 450, 450 total spaces in the parking deck, yes, is 340.

I have to go back and look at the numbers, it's getting late.

Hold on.

395.

395.

So we're also getting 395 spaces, and uh, you know, everybody who goes to Canton Street pays usually, at least I do, I always pay, and it's usually $10 or $20, depending on what time it is.

And you parked pay to park on Canton Street.

So we're talking about $2 an hour after 5 o'clock.

Correct.

Okay.

Two to three dollars.

Two to three dollars.

So this is going to be borne as as uh Councilmember Beeson says by somebody.

And it's either going to be an increase in our property taxes of some number that these gentlemen are going to tell us what it would be, uh, or it's going to be the users of those, like water, like the trash that's picked up by us and comp and trucks that we pay for in other ways and those kinds of things.

So this is an enterprise approach to doing that.

Correct.

And I, for one, even as a private citizen, when this was discussed as a bond, felt like it should be a revenue bond, and users should pay front for it from the beginning.

I've never changed my view on that, and I'm not changing it tonight.

Thank you.

Councilman Bromley.

Um thank you, everybody, for staying here.

Um before I have my comments, um, Mayor, at the appropriate time, I would like to make a motion to pass, but with certain conditions.

Um I would like to um thank everybody who stay here, everybody who has sent me an email.

Even if you don't get a replace, we read all your emails.

We went into social media, we saw we read everything that that you guys sent that, and we are taking into account.

We're thinking we're thinking about the people who don't frequent Canton Street, but will bear part of the cost.

We're thinking about the employees that have to work and they can afford to pay you know eight dollars an hour when they make five.

We're talking, we're thinking about the businesses who need to keep those employers happy as well.

You know, just like we are adding benefits to ours, I'm sure they will like others.

So thank you everybody for it.

It is really a very hard decision, made it even harder, at least personally for me, because I was not involved in any of these planning in any of this activity because I just became part of city council two months ago.

Um, and and I can tell you for some of the things I disagree.

And but now we are here to try to find the best solution for everybody.

Um again to remind everybody, because we have the many of the comments were about we paid for the bond.

Why do we have to pay for parking?

It's it's disappointing that when the bonds were presented, these specific items was not talked about.

Everybody was just stary out about having a parking deck.

People were not stepping back and thinking, how are we gonna pay for the lights for that building?

How are we gonna pay for if it's a path hole?

How are we gonna pay for replacing the roof when it happens?

Those questions were not part of the bond.

People were just focusing on parking.

Well, times have come.

We are now having to talk about this.

We can't put it off anymore.

Um the and I wanna also say, you know, right now what we're planning to do, what we would like to do is have some sort of pilot program on that deck.

The decisions that we're not trying to make tonight are gonna be permanent.

We don't know how a deck will be used in Ross.

Well, because we've never had one.

Um so I think you know, having it as a pilot program that gathers data that can tell us how many people are using it, what are the peak hours?

Are people really using it?

Um, who's from out of town and who's from here?

Who are employers?

Do we need more parking parking for employees?

Can we see movement on businesses wanting to validate parking?

All those questions, all those suggestions that you guys have taught us, shown us, you know, given us, we we need a way to figure out if they work or not.

So I just want to assure you guys that whatever we're saying today, it will have to move on.

It's it's not something that is going to be concrete, because we need to study all those things to make sure that it's in the benefit for the most people around here.

Maybe we'll find out that you know the best thing is to have free parking.

Maybe we found out that, well, we're gonna close the parking deck forever and we're not gonna have parking.

That is an option too.

You know, we could just demolish the parking leg, and then that way we don't have operating costs on it, right?

I'm going to the extremes, but that's but that's what I'm saying, right?

There's it is a joke, it is not a real thing.

Please don't take it as a real thing.

I'm just trying to I know.

I'm I'm trying to inject human is 10 30, 10 20 in the morning and and at night.

Um, we don't know how many of those 50-50% are from here or from there.

And I don't know, I mean, as a resident, would you like to have people from out of town bird get get some of that burden or parking?

Or do you, as a resident and as a taxpayer, want to give a gift from other people who are coming to us and not pay for parking, right?

So there's there's a lot of things that we have to think about.

Um, I think one other part of this whole the complexity is that like they mentioned before, as uh by last year, uh up to last year, economic development has been the driver behind this instead of being a public service.

Parking should not have been part of economic development, because we are not in the city is not a business.

So we should not have entered the parking business because we don't know how to do that.

Private people know how to do that.

We are here to give services to the people and and join all our resources so that it can be distributed to everybody.

So hopefully um this data will give us some some feedback so that we can prove to you all that you know, maybe we need to start looking at all these things as public services instead of you know business generators.

Um the other um comment I had was that um having a parking management operation is always going to be a loss to the city.

I and and to that I would say, you know, there's a company called Last Parking, there's a company called Twebox, there's a company called AAA parking, there's a company called Lanier Parking.

All those private companies make money.

So just because you are managing a parking lot doesn't mean that you're automatically gonna lose money.

There's a ways to make the revenue.

Um so anyway, that's um I and also the other thing that we have a lot of um feedback about, which we didn't talk and I thought maybe we were going to was how our sister cities have it figured out.

They really haven't figured it out.

Once you start really looking into it, you'll start seeing that Alphareta, Woodstock, and Sandy Springs are having these same conversations in their city halls.

It's it maybe people haven't listened really close when they're talking about the expectations and the difference in their budget.

Maybe they haven't talked about the fact that the agreement they had initially with the Alphareta businesses is not is not profitable for the city anymore.

But those conversations will start happening probably after we finish our discussion, because they're waiting to listen to what we are going to do, because then they're gonna probably gonna have to do something similar.

So, you know, again, don't just because you hear that other sister CEOs haven't, please know that they are we are all in the same boat.

Please know that they are we are all in the same boat.

We're all in the same boat.

So can I let me I'd like to make one up one last statement and then I'll entertain your motion.

No, go ahead, Councilmember Hall.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you, Councilmember Brumley, because the sister cities, as you as you covered, is one statement I wanted to make.

We do uh this is not unique to us, and it's not unique just to our area.

It's across the country.

And uh I was elected in 19, started serving in 20.

And we've this parking for many of you, uh, even much longer.

This parking discussion has been going on a long time.

Uh we went to the city of Greenville on our retreat in 2022.

And it's at that time and with the uh former electeds that uh we started to really study and look at parking as a vehicle as a tool that can be used in economic development toolbox.

Uh the city of Greenville did use it to revitalize as um Councilmember Philippi um studied a little bit about it.

They used it to revitalize their downtown, and it was such a successful model that basically the city adopted it.

So we're not necessarily modeling Greenville.

This is something that we are adopting as a policy in our uh downtown areas.

People will be people will go to our parks and be able to park at our parks, frequent our parks.

This is a policy for this area, and it is it's it's like a spider web.

It's interwoven.

So that's why it's important that we look at it holistically as as you said.

But um our our cities around our North Fulton cities and even even beyond are having these same discussions and uh trying to figure it out, and that's what we're trying to do.

We're not gonna make everybody happy.

We're making the best decision, the best informed decision as council member uh Beson uh loves facts and and data and to make decisions based on that.

And and we've uh digested that for really a couple of years, and um that's that's where we are.

Thank you.

Councilmember South.

Uh I just want to respond to the fact that economic development should not include parking.

For 45 years, somebody brought an article in one of our many conversations about parking over the last two years.

They brought an article, I think, from 1985.

Canton street businesses complaining about no parking on Canton Street.

It was a problem, and they were people parked in the in the what is now the park, you know, in the grass and all that kind of stuff.

This has been a long, long time problem.

And if the market was going to solve it, they certainly have had plenty, plenty of time to do that.

The reason that parking is a part is as we said, we're getting in the parking business.

That means we're going to build and manage parking decks because it's necessary to bring economic development to this area.

Canton Street is what it is.

It can't scale.

We're not going to build any more 1840 buildings.

So what do we do?

We have to bring in other businesses.

And the way we do that is we provide infrastructure and parking is one of those things that cities typically do to get that catalyzed and to create the opportunity for new businesses to come.

We want to figure out how to do it the most effective way possible for the residents, but the purpose is to bring additional business.

And in this case, Green Street was intended to try to pull some of this up Canton Street and over to Green Street, activating Green Street, making it a walkway.

I mean, that's why this was done.

And so once you once you step into that trap, you're now in the parking business because you've got a parking lot, it has to be maintained, people are going to use it, and I submit to you again.

We wouldn't invite them to tap our water system for free.

We we certainly put those things in place as residents, but they're per use for a reason because we're trying to, for instance, as Jeff talked about on the Friday when we spent three and a half hours on parking the last time we talked about this.

If you it's free, people will just leave their car there all day, over many days, whatever the case may be.

So this is a logical approach to parking to tie it to usage.

Thank you.

So one last statement from me.

I'll entertain your motion.

So I I you know appreciate again all the comments from everyone.

We we have listened.

We are trying to listen.

I think you've heard from the dias.

We've been asking those questions also.

But I will also say, please also remember as we're going in, we will be looking reviewing our budget and doing some form of budget readjustments.

We um in June, July.

So again, this may all change, but as we said, May May 6th is when it's I think scheduled to open.

So we have to have some form of at least a decision moving forward of some sort of at least pilot model to um get this going because we cannot wait until July and from what we're moving forward.

So councilmember Brumley, would you like to propose a uh yes motion motion to approve the Green Street deck pilot program and paid cantons street parking only with a commitment to further communicate with the public on the future of the Hill Roads and City Hall lots?

Do you want me to read it again?

Motion to approve the recommendations on the green stick deck as a pilot program and paid cantons street parking only tonight with a commitment to further communicate with the public on the future of the Hill Roads and Hill City Hill lots, City Hall lots.

One point of clarification as a pilot program.

Do you want a time limit on that as a pilot for the data collection before any additional decisions are made or moving forward?

Three months.

We we look at the data for three months and then we assess if we need to change.

Councilwoman Bees.

Uh I understood that it would just be a temporary pilot program.

But for example, if we did the three months, it would hit over summer break, and so you're not going to get a true reflection of the data.

I would say at least recommend, I would recommend at least six months, just so you have a more vivid picture of the data.

Yeah, I agree.

Are you willing to go with six months?

Yes, ma'am.

So, David, could you reread what is the motion that's forward?

Hold on.

Let's have discussion on the amendment.

Then that the discussion I'd like to have is specifically, Jeff, what does that mean to Hill Street and other parking decisions that we have to make if we focus is this going to be only Green Street?

Only Green Street and not the other surface so not Mimosa, not any of the other, not the Green Street, uh not the gravel lot, none of those, just Green Street Parking Deck.

And Canton Street.

I I have this the slide here that that might be helpful just from a discussion purposes.

And I think council, sorry to interrupt, but Councilmember Sells, I think it's might be asking about the Green Street gravel lot and whether or not that's included as part of uh your motion.

Oh, yeah, it will be both.

Uh, everything that you have on this on this page, but to move the Hill Roads discussion to another time because we I feel like we as council, we're still not super clear on what the different changes to it was.

And certainly the public has not uh had a uh time to look into that um to get the details on on all the different options that we have for that area.

I think just this is this this slide, what you're talking about for six months.

Councilman Hall.

Thank you.

I just have a clarifying question.

Um the proposal from staff is uh is there two pages to this?

Yes, ma'am.

There's a the uh Hillrose page is the second page.

The second page.

Can you go to that please?

And your the staff request is that we adopt this policy so that you can move forward and make plans.

Correct.

So this would help us make the infrastructure decisions that we need to make.

Um I will say that um you know we can continue to make certain infrastructure decisions over the course of the next two months, um without a formal decision on this screen that's before you.

We would need to come back um in short order after we have a conversation with the developer about what our parking strategy is overall to refine any recommendations that you may want to hear.

So we do have some time on the implementation for Hillrose, um, but it will need to return here, I would say in the next couple of months.

So uh would Councilmember Brumley be opposed to just implementing the policy under a you suggested nine months, I'm sorry.

Six months pilot program.

Six month pilot program or nine month pilot program.

For Hill Rose.

No, not Hill Rose.

Oh my motion is to not take not voting on this one, but move it to later so we can have more discussion to the public.

But this is a policy, and they need to make decisions on how they're gonna execute it.

I understand Councilwoman Hall, but um Jeff, if you could reiterate your statement just now that certain decisions on Hillrows, while you can still move forward for portions of the policy that we need to move forward one way or the other, that we have approximately two months before we need to come back and make additional policy recommendations on Hill Rose so as to not delay the development, but still make sound financially sound decisions as we move forward within those two months.

So yeah, let me just uh apologize this will be a little bit of a long answer, but the Hill Street deck, regardless, I think of the policy that I'm hearing and the discussion that I'm hearing today, um, we can make the technology decisions that we need to make on the Hill Street deck based on the conversation without a specific policy adoption from the council.

Same for the Hill Street on street parking.

Um that is uh basically sign infrastructure, so it is it can be implemented at any time.

The challenge is is what do we do from an infrastructure perspective on the city hall lot?

And that's really where a lot of the conversation is centering around the um development of the city hall lot and the design is in process.

We can work with the developer team um over the course of the next two months to delay certain decisions as it relates to infrastructure, meaning that we could bring the conduit in that we need to bring in, but not necessarily the curbing or the gutters that would necessarily be required here at the at the Hill or at the city hall lot.

Um those decisions can be delayed by a couple of months as we work through a city hall parking lot strategy in particular.

Does that make sense?

So my follow-up question to that is what does two months buy you?

I mean, what what what are you gonna gain in two months if we delay this decision if we make that decision but not make a policy decision?

Sure.

I I think what I'm hearing um just in conversations with the council over the last couple of days is uh desire for a more intimate understanding with the Hill Street deal structure and how that relates to the city hall parking lot or the cultural arts center parking lot.

Um because really what we're talking about is is what policies do we put in place to support the Hill Rose parking plan overall?

And what I'm hearing from council members is is that they would like some additional clarity beyond what they understand right now so that they could feel comfortable about a decision.

Thank you.

Sorry to put words in your mouth, but so do we want to re restate the motion or do you want David to uh can you restate it, please, Mr.

Davidson?

Because I didn't make notes.

Yes, it was to implement the policy recommendations of staff regarding the Green Street in downtown on street parking as a pilot program for six months.

From open.

No, from from open from open from open.

That is clear.

With the commitment to further communicate with the public on the future of Hill Rose and City Hall.

Councilmember Basin.

I realize I'm the person who made the six-month suggestion, but doing the math, um, that would make the six months conclude before the holiday season fully is recognized.

And I want that data.

Um so could we just say that it would be a pilot program that's initiated only for the year of 2026 with us looking at full or potential implementation as of 2027 moving forward.

Is that amenable to council member?

Say that again.

Uh so instead of making it a six-month pilot program, because that would be from May to November, you would be missing out on that data for the holidays, which is you would want that data.

So I would suggest making the pilot program through the end of the year with us to reassess policy moving forward for um December for 2027.

Okay.

I understand what I was trying to um prevent was if we decide to, you know, this will be a paid parking, and the residents might want to have at shorter time so that we can really say this is gonna be permanent or we're gonna change it and it's gonna be done by you know, with the citywide taxpayer fee or whatever.

I mean, I can't I can see the three months, I can see the six months, I can see the end of the year, but I'm willing to understand well.

I mean I can't I can see the three months I can see the six months I can see the end of the year but I'm willing to understand well I'm and I willing to entertain motions on this for Councilmember Bison Councilmember Fellow not to throw a wrench in this situation but I really would like to see one more model and I would like to see a model of the two hours free with um high high fees for um like a a higher rate on event parking meaning that you don't want to vote for this motion.

Okay we don't have to so motion on the table right now I'm going to just say something what I understand it sounds as if you've come to an agreement that it would be for a till the end of the year till December thirty first twenty twenty six a pilot program.

Of course that does not mean that we won't be able to look at data before the end of the seven months let's all be honest um that um as to what is recommended right now on the green street property only do I have a second is that what I understand green street and downtown on street parking on the screen on this this screen on the screen up there today do I is that what I'm hearing you what it's there a second for that all in favor raise your hands so we have a vote of four all opposed two so the motion passes break or not food for us now we have ethics mayor want to take a five on what second items they changed it.

David said it overwrote it she was breaking it no she wasn't voting at all she was changing the motion she didn't break it in two like they had done the store and then we didn't take a vote on Hills five minute break.

Set the set the timer because I'm gonna ring the belly

Um city clerk long.

Um, the speaker for item number five has had to step out of the room for a minute, so we're going to go to item number six.

Are we ready?

Yes.

Okay.

Chapter 2 Administration, Article 2.5 Code of Ethics is repealed in its entirety and replaced to read as follows.

The text of which is incorporated here by reference and if approved, this is the first reading.

Good evening, everyone.

Tonight I bring forward a rewrite, or late tonight, I bring forward a rewrite of our ethics ordinance.

Just to start out and give a little background, and I I encourage anyone in the public to go to our uh YouTube and look at the discussion we had during committee, because I think it was a robust uh and in-depth discussion of our current ethics ordinance and the changes that this ethical ethics ordinance is going to bring.

Um, just to outline and give some sort of high level of how we got here, but uh late last year, Councilmember Beeson asked myself and Mr.

Davidson if we could look at our current ethic ethics ordinance and compare it to the one Johns Creeks had just passed.

And Johns Creeks was uh took a more apolitical stance than ours.

Um, and so we've we fashioned our new ethics ordinance, tried to remove politics uh or or political leanings or any sort of political pressure from uh from the from our new ordinance that's in front of us tonight.

So uh just from uh a quick summary, the the main ethics standards or ethics duties you are bound by as council members and members from uh members of our boards are gonna be bound by remain effectively the same, but will be enhanced a bit.

And and what I mean by that is the the current standards that we are bound by as as council members, or you are bound by as council members or bound by as board members, those have stayed true throughout most of time.

Now, what this ethics ordinance does, it expands on certain amounts or certain um certain portions of that.

And and what I mean by that is there in our current ethics ordinance, there's a uh provision that doesn't allow you to disclose anything that's in closure.

Well, the new ethics ordinance expands on that and doesn't allow anything that's given to you in confidence or any confidential information, you couldn't trade on that confidential information.

So that's sort of a hole in our current ethics ordinance, but that's getting fixed in this new ethics ordinance.

Uh, but mainly from a process standpoint is where the ethics ordinances are going to differ.

And to go over our current ethics ordinances, our current ethics ordinance process uh is sort of filled with political landmines, if you will.

Uh and and I'll I'll outline the process here and go into why it's a good idea to change that process.

So the current ethics ordinance is started with a complaint that is filed with the mayor or mayor pro tem, and that complaint would be filed with the mayor pro tem if the mayor was the person who the respondent to that complaint.

And then three members of council would be chosen along with the city attorney to determine whether a hearing is warranted in front of the board of ethics.

The board of ethics is chosen by the mayor and city council.

Um, those two appointees by each person, so it's a board of 14 or 14 people can be chosen from for this board.

Um inherently, right from the jump, you have people on the board of ethics who are sitting in judgment of the people who have appointed them.

So right there, there's a there's an inherent sort of conflict, if you will.

Um, and the politics are somewhat in injected into this right away.

From there, and and this is I centered on this in committee, but this is where some issues lie with how the board of ethics then goes about its business.

The board of ethics then just is chosen.

There's uh five members, and they get to establish their own rules on how they are going to run their committee.

There is no burden of proof they are given for how the ordinance tells them to determine what burden of proof you would be governed by.

There is no rules of evidence.

There is no rules of how a respondent would respond, or if they are allowed to stay silent during this proceeding, which is actually a right you have and a due process right that is built in that you should have during a quasi-judicial proceeding like this would be considered.

Uh so they can basically just decide what type of rules they want to apply, what type of burden of proof they want to apply, and and go from there.

And that that creates a big problem because of the findings that they would then give.

The findings would then come to you as mayor and council, and then you can vote to accept, deny, or or tailor those findings however they may, however, you may choose.

Um, but there is an appeal right that comes from that as well that goes to the Superior Court of Fulton County.

And if a judge were to review any of these findings uh with no burden of proof established, the due process rights of uh somebody going through this process have basically been trampled on.

A judge is just gonna say this is thrown out.

I I can't make sense of this.

This is kind of crazy.

Um that's that's sort of the what we find ourselves in right now with the way this ethics ordinance that we have is is drafted.

Now the proposed new ethics ordinance makes a little more sense, a little more intuitive, remove some politics from the process because the complaint starting from how a complaint is initiated, the complaints filed with the city clerk.

So right away it's not filed with the mayor or the mayor pro tem.

It's not filed with an elected official.

It's filed with the city clerk, like many of our filings are taken in uh currently within the city.

The copy would then be furnished to Mr.

Knighton.

And then the complaint is then served upon the respondent who can then either file a response or choose to stay silent throughout this uh process.

Now, here's where the the big difference is going to come is a hearing officer is then chosen if this complaint meets all the criteria that's listed by the ordinance, uh, and that is from five pre-qualified attorneys.

So these attorneys do not have a practice in Roswell, they do not live in Roswell, their businesses are not within 10 miles of Roswell, and they do not have any sort of business relationship outside of possibly with the city attorney's office.

So it's completely removed.

You're taking an attorney who doesn't have any sort of bias, any sort of political, I guess, political will or political capital already with the city.

You're taking a solely independent party and utilizing them to determine what has occurred here and to make a finding of fact, finding of the facts with the law, and then formulating uh their investigation, have an investigation move forward, and then ultimately submitting those findings from that investigation to you as the mayor and council.

Um so their investigation would lead to those findings like I was just speaking of, they come towards come back to you, and you can determine whether to accept them, modify them, or outright reject them.

And then they would still have that same appellate right to the Fulton County Superior Court after that, uh, but you're gonna have a better standard of review because there's actually a a burden of proof that's listed in the ordinance now, which would be beyond a reasonable doubt.

So you have all these things that a judge would be looking for to make sure it the process was properly filed protocols, properly had a due process rights of the the accused, uh, and also a burden of proof of which they would know that they were on notice of of what they would be um having to what burden they would have to meet.

So all those things fix these uh various things uh in the new ordinance, and I'd be happy to take any questions regarding this ordinance and the changes that are being made and how this is uh expanding the uh sort of the the ethics ordinance and making it stronger.

Just one other point that you know again in the discussion that this group of five attorneys that they would have, um, or at least those that were chosen would have no relationship um with any of the the people within council or mayor.

That's correct.

So again, it would be as unbiased on that we could get.

Yes, there'd be no familiar relationship.

Questions from any councilmember Brumley?

Uh and to clarify that these ethics ordinance covers not just mayor and counsel, but also the members of the commissions that we have, correct?

Correct.

Okay.

And the rules to the attorneys that can help us with this are also applying to those board members.

Correct.

Yes, okay.

Also, I want to just, you know, for point of clarification, one big reason why we want attorneys instead of residents doing it, is because I resident if they the investigation is not done with the diligence that it would be that it will need it, there's no consequences for that.

Whereas if we send it out to an attorney, they could be disbarred if they do a bad job, or if you know, if something is going wrong there.

So that gives a little bit of more weight to whatever investigation, whatever results we're getting for them.

Any other comments?

Councilwoman Beeson?

Uh just to reiterate what Mr.

Kyuzak had said, part of the reason why I wanted to be able to bring this forward is firm believer and referees or players to not referee the game.

So in this situation, the people who sit on the dais, with the exception of staff, are the same people who would pick the ethics commission members who would then decide if we acted um with impropriety or if we violated any ethics within the city.

So there is an inherent bias within the current form and fashion.

Um love having due process over vibes, which is what we're moving towards.

Um, and I also appreciate Mr.

Cusak's help as well as the legal team for not only going through this process um and examining surrounding cities, um, but also to call out as well, Mr.

Cusac has extensive experience with the state ethics commission as well.

So being able to hold Rosal to a higher standard is something that um I very much appreciate and appreciate the help of staff for getting us there.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Councilman Sells.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just much to like about this and Joe, your your background so helpful and appreciate your and Sarah's work on this.

A lot of work went into it.

A couple of things.

I mean, appreciate the call of the day.

We had a good conversation about this.

That but uh, you know, I I I am sort of I chuckle uh uh that uh famous saying from William F.

Buckley, I'd rather be governed by the first 450 names in the Boston phone book than by Congress.

You know, I'm not so sure that you know we're taking this away from our residents completely.

I wish there was a role for residents in this in some way.

I mean, uh, I think I'd rather be governed by you know nine Roswell residents than uh five lawyers from out of town.

That's that's just I think there should be some consideration of how we can include the residents in this process as we have in the past.

It seems you and I talked about this today.

I don't think there has been a flood of ethics complaints over the years.

Have there been any that you're aware of that I think there's go ahead, David.

So there's been three complaints filed, but none ever made it past the council and myself.

Okay, gotcha.

Well, and obviously that whole process needs to be rethought.

So I appreciate that.

And I'm gonna vote for this, but I just I do think that we are trying to include residents in these things.

I think that's good, and we should, but this one is not, so I would I would say that that's a problem.

And the second thing is it doesn't, you know, I've had a number of residents talk to me about an ethics issue, which is PAC money, and I would like to see this include a prohibition against PAC money in Roswell elections.

So I would I would suggest that we amend this resolution to include that concept.

So I will I will bring my old job into this.

Um we can we can get into all the campaign finance stuff and I'll put everyone to sleep here tonight.

Um but so anything to do with PAC money or barring PAC money, that's gonna fall under the sole jurisdiction of the state ethics commission.

And I there will be, I know the current ordinance we have something about developer money with contributions that they that and and I'm going off the dome here, but it's if if a developer has given you campaign contributions in the past, then you cannot vote on if they bring a rezoning or something forward.

Um I don't know how to fashion that with PAC money without infringing on state what the state ethics commission does in regulating political action committee money.

Um but this is the first reading, so you know, open to hearing anything, and but uh it would be very hard.

Councilmember Sack.

Sorry.

Uh just a point of clarity.

Um, and this maybe just for my understanding.

When it comes to ethics, it's more of a definition and then an execution of that definition, correct?

It's not necessarily a subjective understanding.

And that's my understanding of why having lawyers do it opposed to our um peers makes sense to me because it's really is a uh a reading of the definition and implying the definition.

Is that correct?

Yeah, you're you're really it's it's very much applying facts to law, a lot of facts, and a lawyer is trained to do that.

Or, you know, I was trained to took three years of school for that.

But but the these types of cases and and I've I've handled so many ethics cases during my my career at the at the state ethics commission, but it's what I call what paper cases.

A lot of these are just made on paper trails.

Uh that's what like an ethics complaint really is going to take.

So like if you vote on something, well, there's gonna be a paper trail of you having a substantial business interest in it.

And so it's gonna be a there's a record of the vote, a record of you being a part of that business.

So these are are very much law and fact cases and weaving those together.

Councilwoman Hall.

Thank you, Mayor.

Not just me.

Wake us up.

Apologies.

As I mentioned in the committee meeting, and thank you, Councilmember Sells, for the PAC conversation, because I think that's very important if we have the right if we write into the ordinance, if we can in a way, things that are very clear that would be unethical if a PAC donated to somebody that they that they basically have to recuse or you know not participate in that.

And if that exists somewhere else, please let us know.

But before the next reading.

But I I'm I'm really disappointed that we are pulling our residents out of the process.

And I'm grateful to Councilmember Beeson for looking up Alfredta.

Um Alfredta's program has a combination.

They have, they do use uh attorneys, but I understand they also uh have a couple of uh residents that they have on that committee.

And if we can look into that to see if we could fashion ours that way, if others are amenable to not completely remove our residents from the process.

Um right now that residents are the process.

And um I'd I'd like to see our our residents stay involved.

And and my other just concern about this, and and I recognize we don't get many ethics cases, um, three over I don't know how many dozens of years, but um the cost.

I mean, this this is an additional cost, and and as we discussed in committee, I guess it comes out of your budget, but ultimately the taxpayers are paying for the cost, and and not that we uh want to take advantage of our residents, but that is volunteer time, and with a clearly written uh policy and law that you could follow, I think residents could interpret it.

But I I understand the work that you all did and and uh and thank you for it.

I'm not I'm not saying that.

I just would like to keep our residents engaged in some way.

Councilwoman Beeson.

I again apologize.

Now it's an hour later than the last time I apologized.

Um I don't know how else to phrase this.

No duh, nobody's ever filed an ethics complaint before, because if you take five seconds to read the current ordinance, you'd be like, oh, the person that I'm complaining against is either close political allies with the person that I'm complaining about, or they have a political vendetta against the person that I'm complaining about, and then it gets referred over to this board that was not publicly appointed.

It's like the Skull Society, except very less interesting.

And I will tell you, as someone who's read the list, uh it's comprised of people who are very politically engaged, anywhere from people who have campaigned and side waved for people who sit on the dais at any point in time to relatives of people who sit on the dais at any point in time.

Uh there's no recommendations based off our current ethics ordinance as to who can even serve on the ethics commission.

So theoretically, it could be the most most ethically heinous person you've ever met in your life, determining what your reputation is going to be just because you served on a board commission or the elected body for the city of Roswell.

In this situation, to Councilmember Brumley's point, you're adding skin to the game in the sense that this person can be disbarred if they um acted unethically because people who are barred as attorneys uphold an ethics requirement as part of their profession.

Our ethics commission's not all held at anything.

Again, vibes.

I'm here because it seemed cool.

I get to wagg my fingers in this secret room.

Nobody knows.

And so I understand that in the 30 some odd years, bless you, uh, Mr.

Davidson for only 26.

26.

I'm sorry, it probably feels like 30 after this meeting.

Uh, after serving for 26 years in the city, that you would not see anything brought forward because common sense would dictate that it would go a whole lot of nowhere.

So I think that is inherent or indicative of the fact that the process is messed up.

If you don't even have in 30 years, nobody's violated ethics, be real.

So thanks.

My one clap.

Slow clap, one clap.

Uh so I just want to say I appreciate the tightening up.

I understand incorporating residents within all aspects of our city.

That's what board and commissions are inherently for.

They hold public meetings because they represent the public.

These ethics commission meetings are not publicly held meetings when they are convened, when they are appointed, or even when they determine if there's grounds or standing for the case.

This changes that and brings transparency and light of day to a process that should ethically speaking have light of day to it.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

City Clerk Long, are there are there any interested parties who want to speak to this topic?

Yes, there are two um speakers.

Alison Vrollich.

I know.

That's why I quite care.

Let me geek out a little bit here.

I'm surprised I'm not the only one speaking that there's another fellow geek.

Good evening.

Good evening, whatever time it is.

I'm Alison Vrollith.

Most of you know me.

I'm an almost 30-year resident of Roswell, former member of the planning commission, local attorney, and am currently in my second stint in the pool of 14 residents, from which a board of ethics would be drawn if an ethics complaint ever made it past the gatekeeper, as called for in our current ethics code.

And as you all know, and we've discussed, no complaint ever makes it past the gatekeeper.

And I'm a little offended at your characterizations of, but I'll I'm gonna let that slide.

Quick full disclosure, she was my appointment to the ethics commission.

So yes.

So during my first stint in the pool of 14, it's about 20 years ago.

Um I took my first look at our ethics code and frankly was aghast at what I saw.

A system by which the fox watches the hen house, and then in the unlikely event that a complaint ever makes it past the gatekeeper, five citizens would be selected from a pool of 14 residents that have been handpicked by the mayor and council members to first make up its own rules about how it's going to proceed in that case and then conduct an investigation and hold hearings, and I have to put that in quote as an attorney because they're nothing legal really about their hearings.

Um, all by lay people who have relationships with the elected officials who put them there and would most likely be the subject of the very ethics complaint that they were charged with passing judgment on.

Um honestly reading our code made my lawyer head spin.

Certainly reads like it was drafted drafted to check a box because of course our city had to have an ethics code, but also with the intention that an ethics complaint never had the a chance to actually be considered on its merits.

So at that point, so this is 20 years ago now in the making, I made it my mission to quietly plant seeds in heads and to push to get our ethics code reformed.

Now, 20 years later, here we finally are.

Um I nearly hugged you at um the committee meeting, embarrassingly, but um I was so excited when I saw it on the agenda um of that committee meeting the other week.

Um and there's finally recognition that our ethics code has been a joke.

Um we've skillfully drafted this new code of ethics for which I cannot commend you enough.

Um I I want to throw in there my opinion, which is now not written, but about having non-lawyers um having any kind of role in this.

And I think that it would be a wrong move to go in that direction, different than the reasons that have already been given.

Having attorneys, and I'm not just saying this because I'm an attorney, but having an attorney's attorney serve in this role, attorneys that have no connection to the city, give the appearance of complete complete disinterested parties passing on these issues and these ethics complaints.

If you have any citizens on that panel, there's no way that you can say a citizen is complete completely disinterested.

They vote, they come and speak.

Things that you guys do, and that the boards and commissions do impact all residents.

And for that reason alone, residents should not be part of this whole process.

It should be completely, completely disinterested parties.

So we need this new ethics code to promote public trust, to prevent corruption and misuse of power, to provide a framework of accountability, and to ensure that our city officials act fairly, transparently, and in the best interest of the residents and businesses of Roswell.

So I strongly urge you to vote in support of adoption of this new code of ethics that is proposed tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Frederick Guyano.

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Frederick Guillano.

I'm a resident of Roswell.

So uh the presentation by uh Councillor Cruzak was helpful in uh to frame the context of this new ordinance.

Uh, what I'm here to talk about is more of a few technical issues that uh I came across as I was reading the document.

Um, and in particular the fact that the current ordinance uh has uh chapter 2.5.11 that talks about penalties.

But in spite of the fact that your reference to penalties is included in the title of this new ordinance, there is no chapter related to penalties.

So no penalties for code of ethics violations.

Um the second issue is the definition of family member, it excludes domestic partners, stepchildren, grandparents, and grandchildren.

And perhaps it would be good to have a little bit broader um expansion of the definition of family members.

In the text of the ordinance, uh it makes one reference to family members as it is defined in the first chapter of definitions, and throughout the documents, it refers to immediate family member, which is not defined, and therefore it creates a little bit of ambiguity in the ordinance, and ambiguity is just not good to have.

Um to a point uh made by uh councilwoman, there is no anti-retaliation protection for the public uh complainant and for civilian witnesses.

So uh I think this is something that perhaps this audience should incorporate.

Um there is a vote that is required prior, sorry, there is a disclosure that is required prior to a um a vote that refers to the uh that refers to being part of a board of a nonprofit organization or a board, and I wonder why it has to be done just prior to the vote rather than having an annual disclosure that would encompass all sorts of uh board memberships and whatnot.

So it would be a lot easier to have that rather than having it the disclosure done before a vote and sometimes being forgotten.

Uh there is uh the hearing officer disqualification uh criteria uh is not incorporated, and perhaps we should have something that provides for the conditions under which uh a hearing officer could be disqualified, and there is no procedure in this text to challenge, recuse, or replace a hearing officer after it's been after he or she has been appointed.

Uh and I think also this is something that should be incorporated to allow for um first better transparency and better management of the process.

Um lastly, or actually uh penultimate, there is no provision uh for an interim recusal of a member, which has either mayor, council member, or um member of a commission uh when a complaint is pending against uh he or him, uh she or him.

She him or her, sorry.

Uh so I think again, those are some technical issues that I thought of that perhaps would be good to have.

And then finally, to a point that was made also by uh by a councilwoman Beeson.

Um there is no sanction for frivolous of or bad faith complaint.

And you were talking about the cost, the cost which is borne by the citizens anyway, because it's part of the budget.

But I think that uh to the extent that the ordinance would uh put the burden of cost onto the complainant if that complaint turns out to be frivolous would discourage this sort of behavior.

Um, and I think that uh it would make sense to incorporate that as well.

That's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have any other speakers?

David Woodrow.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Um appreciate the opportunity to talk.

And uh straight up, uh I want to apologize because I really hoped when I came down here that I would actually see what the amendments were going to be on the ordinance.

I'm actually on the ethics uh pool.

Uh I'm one of those 14 names that's in there.

And um so I wish I was better informed, but I would love to see exactly what those amendments are.

When I was appointed or um uh asked to serve on the ethics uh in the ethics pool, um I read everything I could um what the ordinance currently looked like, and uh I expressed uh to a number of people that I felt like it was lacking.

Um there was no training per se.

Um there was no organizational meeting.

Um, and uh so I was hoping that maybe this would be the start of that.

I'm certainly not opposed to uh five attorneys, four attorneys, three attorneys being on this uh the ethics committee.

Although many times as I read in the newspaper, the ethics issues we have are with attorneys, with all due respect.

Um Mr.

Davidson as well.

Um so what I would like to see is what are these changes.

I think there should be things in there providing for penalties.

Um I would hate to think that anyone who has been appointed or asked to serve in this pool would be the type of person that would absolutely be unethical themselves.

And I kind of heard a an inference to that, and I hope that's not the case.

And as a change, because I do believe that there should be some citizen involvement in this, um, that if there is in fact an ethics complaint that is lodged against someone sitting on this dais that if that particular council person, mayor, what have you the two people that they asked to be in the pool?

I think those names could be pulled out of the pool, and um would uh remove that potential um uh stumbling block or that question of impropriety.

So again, I wish that uh is this available?

Can I is it?

It's part of the agenda packet.

Tell me where it is and I'll I'll look it up.

Look in the agenda packet.

Great.

I can do it.

If you send an a message to Roswell Mayor and Council, um an email, we can send it to you.

I'll do that, and I appreciate it.

Um I'm an old retired dude now, so I got a lot more time on my hands to uh to read these things, and I appreciate you all continuing to work and driving the economy.

Um I'm I'm thankful for that.

So again, those are my uh quick comments.

I think citizen involvement should still be, should be there.

Um I would again hate to think that there is in uh there's a um a feeling of impropriety uh because someone was appointed or asked to serve.

Um I'd like to think that we have people on that in that pool that are engaged that have maybe worked in a campaign.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Um maybe they know a little bit more about what's going on than somebody who has no time, has no interest in what's been going on in the city.

So this definitely needs to be cleaned up.

Uh that's why I came down here tonight.

It was an interesting conversation on parking.

I'm glad I could be here for that.

Um I wish I could have moved this up on the agenda, but uh again, thank you for uh the opportunity to speak.

I'll uh send the email.

I'll be looking for that.

And um again, I would urge you uh bring in some outside counsel, make sense to me.

Uh let's codify what the penalties are.

And uh you say 26 years, I've been here almost 35 years.

You know, I'll be honest with you, I really have not seen or heard of any unethical behavior.

Now, we've had council people, mayors that haven't been popular, but I haven't seen any of them, frankly, in my opinion, that have been un in unethical.

And uh that's another great reason to live here in Roswell.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Woodrow, just clarification.

Did you want a red line copy of the ordinance?

Sorry, say again.

I'm sorry, you want a red line copy of the ordinance.

Complete okay.

All right.

We'll get you the clean version.

It's a complete rewrite.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And and just to it would be interesting to see what got redlined out of redacted, but uh no, I'd rather have the clean version.

And just to clarify, too, on the the penalties are codified in here, and the penalties are uh you get a public or private reprimand or censure by the city council, a request for resignation from the city council or removal from office in accordance with all applicable state and local laws.

That's that's the nuclear option the governor would appoint a three-person panel if you're ever convicted of a felony or charged with the felony, you can't discharge your duties.

That's that's what that provision is.

But the other two, those are the penalties in here because there's no fine mechanism, but there are penalties in here, and those are the penalties as listed.

Thank you.

Any other speakers?

Yes, Courtney Rosher.

Hi.

Hi.

I just wanted to real quick um take the opportunity.

Um Alan had mentioned uh the PAC item.

And something that um had come to my mind is a possibility when thinking about it previously, is that um perhaps I'm assuming that during RFQ type processes and that there's also a process for when items come up for agenda, that there would be opportunities for such disclosures.

Um it would be on a volunteer basis.

Um I know through the work that I do, I often have to um uh conflicts of interest um forms when we submit um work at insurance, and so when we're submitting to different governments and things like that, we have to fill out those types of forms.

It is voluntary and but and it does have to be signed by executives, but um, that could be a potential um solution if it's not something that could be codified.

Thank you.

Any other speakers?

No.

Do the council have any other comments or questions regarding this item?

Councilwoman Beeson.

Uh wanted to address some of the comments.

Um there was a comment about disclosures about an incorporating a process to require elected officials to have to disclose um fiduciary positions.

That's already a requirement.

Um, if you go to our disclosure website for the city of Roswell, I know it's confusing because the state of Georgia does a completely separate one.

City of Roswell, under the voting section, um, look for personal financial disclosures.

Every year we are required by law to submit our fiduciary positions with companies, ownership and companies, um, any state contracts that we have, board positions including nonprofits if we oversee fiduciary positions.

Am I missing anything in that?

So we do disclose our financial obligations, but it is incumbent upon ourselves prior to a vote to disclose any um personal financial interest.

Um, for example, there was a case might still be pending um in Milton where a council member um voted on an item that had to do with his homeowners association, which he's active in.

Um, and that's led to a court case.

Um, so that's something that you wouldn't personally financially disclose, um, but it would be on your address, or you would have to disclose it recuse.

Um I do love the idea of penalties for frivolous complaints.

Um, I wanted to ask Mr.

Cusak, is there an established process for something like that at the state level?

There is.

Uh there was by rule the adoption of the attorney's fees option.

Uh, if a frivolous complaint came through where the complainant known or knew or should have known that the allegations they were making were were false, then the respondent, if if they had any attorney's fees, could meet a burden.

Uh they could submit for attorney's fees, and then ultimately the commission rules on whether or not attorney's fees are appropriate, taking the facts and circumstances surrounding the submission and uh assuming that they they find that the the filing was frivolous, they would award reasonable attorney's fees under that situation.

So in this case, would we we need to revise our ordinance to incorporate that language or is that an art already inherent in state law?

Yeah, we can I can insert some language in there.

I have a I wrote the rule at the state ethics commission for this, so I could just use the same thing.

Got it.

Appreciate it.

Um, and then lastly, uh, with a comment on um the Roswell residents being able to serve um as a position on this um on the board of ethics or the ethics commission.

Um I totally understand wanting to prioritize having folks who are more politically engaged or may follow the bouncing ball.

Um they've already had the opportunity to decide if they like that person or not, whether they voted for or against them, they're inherently judging them with their vote.

Um, in the p in the judicial process, and I am not an attorney, but I believe there's war deer, which you could just determine who is going to be on your jury and who's going to determine your case and if you're going to be inherently biased.

So if you ever go to jury duty, they ask you 9,000 questions to see if you are a biased jury member in the process that we currently have, nor is there any resident process that would be able to eliminate that bias without extensive questioning to determine if they are going to be biased.

I'd prefer personally, as someone who might be judged on my actions.

I don't want the person judging me to know me from Adam's House Cat.

They should not know who I am.

They should be judging me purely on my actions and whether or not I'm at fault, not my entire political history.

Um, and I would assume others on the dais may feel the same.

Um, but I do appreciate the contribution.

I do appreciate the contributions of those who have served on the ethics commission.

I wanted to look at you and give you eye contact.

As Ms.

Rollock had said, she is also my appointment to the ethics commission as I believe her to be ethically a high person, but also an attorney and would be able to interpret that.

I'm sure whoever selected you also selected you because of your high ethics and your common sense in the fact that your first instinct was to dig into the ordinance itself to apply it.

Unfortunately, there's not a rule that says that that should be the golden rule for everybody who is appointed.

So I'm just trying to make sure that we're solving for um uh potential impropriety moving forward, and that's not only for people who serve on the ethics commission, but also for us as well.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Do I hear a motion?

Councilman Beats.

Do I have a second?

No, I agree.

All right.

Uh motion to approve an ordinance to amend the code of ordinance of the city of Roswell, Georgia, by amending Chapter 2 administration Article 2.5 code of ethics to provide for penalties, to provide for codification, to provide for severability, to repeal conflicting ordinances, to provide an effective date, and for other purposes.

This is the first reading.

Do I have a second?

Council Councilman.

All in favor, please raise your hand.

Opposed.

So I I'd just like to make a comment.

I'm not going to support this tonight, but I would like to dig into the resident input the way Alfreda does it, and we can discuss it at the second reading.

So we'll now go back to um item number five.

Uh City Clerk Long, would you read the fifth item on the agenda?

Approval of a resolution of the mayor and council of the city of Roswell to approve the bond resolution of the Roswell Public Facilities Authority authorizing the issuance of the RPFA revenue bond series 2026 and authorized execution of an intergovernmental agreement between the city and the RPFA.

This will be presented by Chief Financial Officer Bill Gotchal.

Mr.

Gotcha, it may take that long to get the technology to work.

Can we someone help with the technology quickly?

It's tired.

Thank you for your accommodation and patience.

Tonight I want to bring forward uh the uh resolution to approve the PFA bond issuance for 2026.

Uh we will cover briefly um what is the uh the PFA?

Um, what is the City of Roswell Public Uh Facilities Authority?

What are the benefits of a PFA offering, and then we'll talk about the bids um and the recommendations and also um a quick summary of what came out of the PFA meeting earlier today at 5 p.m., which feels like about a half day ago.

Pretty much.

So um the public facilities authority issues revenue bonds um pursuant to the Georgia revenue law.

So there's been some discussions about uh what does what does a revenue bond mean as it relates to the public facilities authority and the city of Roswell?

And in essence, in order to issue the bonds for the PFA, we have to use a Georgia revenue law.

Um that law requires a revenue source to repay the the bonds that are issued out of the PFA.

Um as a um result of that, the PFA in the city enter into what's called an intergovernmental agency agreement uh or lease in essence uh to facilitate a fund that flows from the city to the PFA to repay the bonds.

The lease structure is scheduled to match the payment terms of the bond, so that the debt services uh from the from the PFA to the to the bond lender is the same as uh the lease service.

Um thing that you can look at in and borrowing on the PFA.

Um it's a is a little bit quicker process.

Um we'll talk a little bit about the court validation uh in a second, which gives a little bit more security to the bond issuer.

Um but it allows us to borrow uh smaller amounts than you would under a GO bond.

Um I heard uh some reference to a house earlier today is the one I like to use.

You know, you buy a house and you want to make some improvements.

You have your your home mortgage loan for 30 years on it, uh, but you're not necessarily tearing the house down, rebuilding it.

You're you're making improvements to uh uh foundational issues associated with the house appliances, air conditioning, so forth, and you would borrow home equity loan.

And it would be a shorter period of time, um, generally a smaller amount of funds that it would take to borrow the house.

And that's why you would typically want to move quicker on that, and then the longer underwriting process that goes into a mortgage.

And it's sort of the same analogy under the PFA.

It's it is not a shortcut to the GO bonds.

Uh and it still goes through open meetings, still goes to public records access, still goes to open council meetings.

Um, but it allows us to move a little bit quicker and in most cases achieve lower cost uh financing uh for capital projects.

Another aspect that's important under the uh Georgia revenue law is called the court validation process, and where the Georgia law requires a judicial validation of those bonds.

So, in essence, um we sue ourselves in superior court.

So David always likes to kind of give the nod.

Um, and and what we're asking the judge to do is to look at our our self-challenge of the bond and rule that the bond complies with the Georgia revenue law, and then that allows the banker issuer to know that that bond has been declared legal and it can't be challenged.

And because of that, we can save one, two, three, five basis points depending on on the interest rate environment, but it does reduce some risk to the bond issuer uh or the winning bank in the process.

So, how does our offering work?

Um here uh in Roswell.

Um we met as a committee on February 10th.

Um, and we go to the committee to present a draft of the IGA, discuss the offering process, the projects that would be included under those projects.

Um then the uh the bids are actually if the committee approves moving forward, the bids are submitted.

Um we bring the bids back, evaluate them at staff level, um, and then we present uh to the PFA at a meeting that's been convened and noticed uh in accordance with state and city law and the charter.

Sorry, Alan, I know.

You've been through this, you've been through a couple of times.

Um, you know, again, we talked about what it would be used for, any city assets, uh parks, public safety, utilities, city buildings, um, you know, anything inside of City Hall would be eligible.

It's important to understand that while the PFA is the conduit to the borrowing, the city maintains title and ownership of all the assets that are financed through the PFA.

So again, it's it's it's a it's a conduit borrowing in uh in essence.

Uh in this case, the bid process um we met with the committee on February 10th.

You approved moving forward uh with the bid process.

So we issued RFPs to approximately 40 banks and lenders on February 11th.

Um we received bids and evaluated those bids on March 3rd.

Um nine unique banks submitted responses.

I'm sorry, nine banks submitted responses with 17 unique offers.

Uh one bank submitted three offers, several banks submitted two offers.

The offers varied on different things, such as rate versus prepayment terms uh versus term of the loan.

Uh in evaluating those 17 uh unique bids, uh, the the screening criteria that we used was the interest rate, the prepayment provisions, and the total dollar amount of annual debt service because that has to come out of general fund and that's a budgetary consideration.

So I I want to use the cash flow versus balance sheet versus the so-called income statement, which is basically our cash flow statement here.

Um so we will vote tonight.

So PFA is uh voted to recommend um approval of the IGA, and we're bringing that recommendation forward so that you can recommend as counsel to approve what you recommended earlier at five o'clock.

Um if approved, we will then proceed to validation.

Uh that's about a 30-day process, all said and done.

And if everything works out as time uh as expected uh based on approval validation, we would be funding uh somewhere around April 9th, probably somewhere two to three days before or after that that day.

Some of the items that uh we uh have proposed to be included in the project list.

Um the big one is this the roof at City Hall.

Um we've also um we've recently upgraded our HVAC system at City Hall and hope that we could back uh be backwards compatible with the controls that run that HVAC system.

Um we've done our best.

Uh I know our facilities people have done their best, but we we need to upgrade those controls to truly take advantage of the HVAC system.

Uh we're looking at a roof replacement at Barrington Hall.

We wouldn't do that until towards the end of the year from a usage perspective and timing perspective out of Barrington.

Public safety headquarters, we're adding some improvements that were not originally foreseen in the bond uh request in 2022 that was talked about earlier.

Um another important public safety attribute is the fire engines.

Our fire department uh likes to keep two engines fully operational in reserve in case some one of them goes out.

They can pull it from the apparatus, replace it, and keep that apparatus in service any amount of time it takes to replace the engine.

If an engine blows and we do not have a replacement engine, it could take up to six to eight months, even with top dollar and premiums and everything else paid.

So this allows us to keep uh an apparatus rolling regardless of the status of engine.

Um we've typically had two engines in reserve.

This would allow us to rebuild both of our engines.

Currently, we have no no engines in reserve right now.

Um 911, we uh uh adding 500,000 to revitalize the range.

That will also take place towards the end of the year as the rest of the work is done over there.

Um but the range was not originally included in the uh original bond uh scope.

Um parking deck improvements.

I know we don't want to talk too much more about this, but we do need a technology in the building, particularly with the pilot program having been approved as it was earlier tonight.

This will allow us to collect that data that uh will allow us to better understand the dynamics of parking and and what kind of impact that's having on the city budget.

Um and Crab Apple, we are uh expanding.

Let me get this straight.

We are moving dance um out of Crab Apple into its own facility, and then we're going to bring in um gymnastics, and we have to redo the floor, expand the center.

These expansions will also allow other types of needs to be uh addressed at the Crab Apple Center, such as the adaptive program that you heard earlier on the RFP committee.

Um and then the last is a vehicle lift to maintain uh maintenance operations over at fleet.

The total bond offering was set at 13.4 million when we did the offering.

The projects total 13.1.

We had budgeted 300,000 in offering costs, but um when we did the final tally on the bids, we come out to about 125,000.

So what will happen is the additional 175,000 will roll into project costs and we'll use those on other projects as necessary.

So think of it like a small little contingency uh bonus.

The um so as we went through the process, I showed you the factors that I consider.

We came up with three bonds that kind of met the criteria for final evaluation.

Um the first was from JP Morgan, and it was a 15-year bond at 3.61% with a $1,172,000 uh debt service uh amount each year to come out of the general fund, and it allowed for no prepayment penalty.

Um the technical language was we would have to take a make hole premium for whatever the difference was if we try to prepay.

So that would in essence leave us with the same rate if we refinanced.

So that was basically no prepayment option available whatsoever.

Um the best prepayment option rate that we had was regions at 15 years, and that was 3.63 were debt service of 1 million 174.

Uh, but that still didn't allow prepayment until year nine, uh, but that did not carry any penalties uh with the prepayment, and there was no scaling of prepayment options before year nine.

It was a you're available year nine, and then you can available each year thereafter.

Uh the third offer that we looked at was from Webster Bank.

Um, as a as a memory jogger, Webster also financed our uh PFA offering in 2025 to acquire the Spruel property that we closed on in September.

Um that bond offering um was also a uh the selected offering for that was also a 20-year rate.

Um they came in at 4.18%, which looks higher, or it is higher.

Um, but from a debt service perspective combined with the the timing, it will be approximately 173,000 less in annual payments, which takes pressure off of the general fund to allow us to do some other things that we may want to do with general fund monies.

Uh we also have scaled prepayment penalties that begin in four years at two percent, six years at one percent, and then no penalty at at eight years or uh one year earlier than the uh the regions.

Uh so the recommendation that we made to the PFA earlier that was accepted is to accept the Webster um bid.

So that's the recommendation.

We uh recommend the Webster proposal, uh balances rate term and annual debt service requirements.

Umcluded with this recommendation would be the city side of approval for the IGA lease, uh which was approved earlier at PFA.

Um and and this would match, I mentioned this at PFA, the the lease payments would match the debt service.

There would not be any difference between the the terms over the 20-year period of the of the lease arrangement, and if the debt retires early, then the lease retires with it.

I'm happy to take any questions.

Any questions from council?

Councilman Brumley.

It's not a question.

I think um this is very clear, just a clarification for anybody who's listening out there.

Um, because the first time I heard it, revenue bond.

It is not a revenue bond.

I don't know why they named it this way.

It's by law it has to be named that, but it's basically a loan, like a home equity loan.

So I know when we every time we say revenue, we're like, oh my gosh, we're gonna have to like charge or do things, you know, to to pay it.

But no, in this case, it's just a name, but that's not what it is.

It's basically a home equity loan that we're paying so we can fix the roof.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Are there any residents or interested parties who would like to speak?

Um, I have one speaker, Jason Yowell, if he is still here.

So yeah, revenue bond.

It's a general obligation bond masquerading is a revenue bond.

It should be put to a public vote, just like the whole big bond issue.

Um the roof replacement for seven million dollars.

Are we are we gold leafing the dome on the building?

Because that's a lot of money.

You could for seven million dollars, you could build a 20,000 square foot office building, brand new from the ground up.

But seven million for the roof, it can't be repaired.

It's not getting gold leafed.

Uh, it's just mind boggling to me.

Public safety headquarters improvements.

You know, if you hadn't bought that shooting range for six million dollars and put another four million dollars uh into putting the 911 center into it, guess what?

You'd have money left over here.

Parking deck improvements.

This thing is so over budget, I can't even begin to believe it.

Um $15 million just for the construction, and what are we 10 million for the for the land acquisition and uh and the renovation to the uh uh Masonic Lodge, and now another another million 200,000 dollars?

I mean, I uh how do you do this?

You could have put an automated parking garage on lanes you already owned on Mimosa, and you'd be ahead of the game.

Um fire engine refurbishment.

Oh, City Hall, HVAC improvements.

Did I just hear?

We just got a brand new HVHC system, and it didn't come with controls.

Oh my god.

Who buys stuff in this city?

Um city uh the uh fire engine refurbishment.

Uh you know, you could put you you should have had money from the public safety bond.

Oh, but oh wait, we bought uh a shooting range.

Uh Crab Apple expansion of physical activity center.

Oh, yeah, for the building you bought for six and a half million dollars, you should have bought for a dollar from Fulton County.

And uh I thought we just approved a million dollars to renovate the building after we approved two million dollars to put a new roof on.

Um and the mill where does it end?

Oh, and then of course we've got the 911 center range revitalization.

Oh, more money for the shooting range.

Seriously?

I mean, uh can we not go get Peter Sarkov shaking the money back out of his pockets?

Um vehicle lifts for fleet shop.

You know, you can go on Amazon, you can get vehicle lifts for about $3,000 apiece.

But how many of these are you buying for $115,000?

And then $60,000 for Barrington Hall roof replacement.

I got a bigger roof than Barrington Hall.

It doesn't cost $60,000 to replace.

Seriously.

I just who is spending the money like this.

I know an awful lot was spent by the fool who preceded you, Mary.

And unfortunately, you guys have to clean it up.

But three of you approved all this crap.

Set the table.

And now the other people have to clean it up.

I just am so tired of watching the city spend money irresponsibly like drunken sailors.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any other speakers?

There are no other speakers.

Does council have any other comments or questions regarding this item?

Do I hear a motion?

Councilman L.

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to uh to approve a resolution of the mayor and city council of the Roswell to approve a bond resolution.

Uh to approve the bond resolution of the Roswell Public Facilities Authority authorizing the issuance of the RPFA revenue bond series 2026 and authorize the execution of an intergovernmental agreement between the city and the RPFA.

Do I have a second?

I just want to leave.

Councilwoman B.

All in favor, please raise your hands.

Vote is unanimous.

Next on tonight's agenda is the city attorney's report.

City Attorney David Davidson, please read the item.

Thank you, Mayor.

This is a recommendation to go into closure at 5 30 on Monday, March 23rd, 2026 to discuss personnel litigation and/or real estate.

Do I hear a motion?

Councilwoman Beeson.

Do I have a second?

Councilmember Sells.

All in favor, please raise your hand.

Vote passes unanimous.

Last is an addendum to this agenda.

We're not done yet.

Sorry.

City Clerk Long, please read the item.

This is adoption of a resolution to support the memorandum of understanding between the City of Roswell, Georgia, and Sunbelt Office One LLC presented by Jeff Leatherman, Deputy City Administrator.

Jeff, please.

Thank you.

In your packet, you have a resolution and from our economic development team, we are recommending that the mayor and council adopt this resolution.

What it does is it continues a project that we've been working on for the past year.

Um and this council has the opportunity to demonstrate to the property owners as well as to the potential future developers that we're continuing to support the work that has been done over the course of the past I said year, really, uh a couple of months as you think about December 2000 or December 18th, 2025 is when an MOU is adopted by the council.

Um we've been working through the redevelopment of the project itself.

Um as many of you know through our briefings, we've had uh some questions from the development team on whether or not we are continuing to move forward on our economic development strategy in this resolution signals to the pre-op property owners and to the developers that we too are in fact moving forward on our economic development strategy as defined in the original MOU.

And this council isn't adopting the resolution that supports the MOU from December 18th, 2025.

Be happy to answer any questions.

I know it's late and we're ready to go home.

Any council member have a question?

Any comments from interested parties speakers comment?

Do I hear a motion?

Councilwoman Brumley, would you please read your motion?

Motion to approve the adoption of a resolution to support the memorandum of understanding between the city of Roswell, Georgia, and Sunbelt Office LLC.

Do I have a second?

Councilman Zach, he had his hand.

All in favor, please raise your hand.

Passes unanimously.