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HomeMy WebLinkAboutJuly 10, 2006 ARC Commission - called meeting. CALLED MEETING COMMISSION CHAMBERS July 10, 2006 Augusta Richmond County Commission convened at 12:00 Noon, Monday, July 10, 2006, the Honorable Deke Copenhaver, Mayor, presiding. PRESENT: Hons. Holland, Smith, Brown, Grantham, Hatney, Beard, Bowles and Brigham, members of Augusta Richmond County Commission. ABSENT: Hons. Williams and Cheek, members of Augusta Richmond County Commission. Also Present: Jim Plunkett, Attorney; Fred Russell, Administrator; Lena Bonner, Clerk of Commission. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Russell? Mr. Russell: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Commission. Several months ago now you asked me to put together a list of properties that I thought would be the most sellable or most advantageous for us to sell as a government as we look at raising revenue. That list is still standing and what has happened is there have been several different areas of discussion between myself and the staff on how best to deal with properties that are on that list and how best to deal with other properties that people have come forth with some desire to purchase from our government. We’ve never done that before to my knowledge until just recently. We had our first attempt at that last week and that was successful. But what we don’t have is a real process or real procedure that would be available when either we declare a property surplus or when somebody has a need or use or desires some of the property that we currently own. What I’d like to do briefly is hopefully develop that policy and procedure as we stay in here for a few minutes and obtain some direction from you on how we particularly want to do that. May I suggest that the first thing we do is we’ve got a couple of people in the audience, at least one person in the audience that has some property that he’s interested in purchasing for a client, and I’d like to give him the opportunity to speak to that very quickly so that we can move forward with that. And then see where we from there since we are fairly tight on time. Mr. Mayor: And you’re speaking of Mr. Allen? Mr. Russell: Yes, I am. Mr. Mayor: All right. Mr. Allen, would you like to come forward? Mr. Allen: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I know you’re pushed for time. What I did, I hand delivered a letter to each Commissioner. Along with that letter I enclosed copies of tax maps. I represent an individual, Will McKnight, who owns property that 1 surrounds both parcels of property that is located in and around—one parcel is 841 Frontage Road. This is near I-20. The other parcel of land is 862 Scott Nixon Memorial Drive. Again, these are both located in west Augusta, not too far from I-20. Ms. Beard: I just want to let you know we haven’t received the letter. Mr. Allen: You have not? I put it in the mailboxes. Can we—it would probably be easier if you had those letters in front of you. The Clerk: I’ll go get them. Mr. Allen: Thank you for letting me know that. I thought maybe they were in front of your. Mr. Russell: You just put them in the boxes this morning; right? Mr. Allen: That’s correct. Mr. Russell: Mr. Mayor, if I may? Mr. Mayor: Mr. Russell? Mr. Russell: This is one of the issues that we have in front of us, is when somebody does desire to purchase property or has an interest in property that we own we really don’t have a standard program or standard format or a standard anything to bring that before the Commission. Mr. Allen has talked to me on several occasions and that’s why I wanted to get him in front of you right now. We requested that he put his request in writing, which he’s done. I guess what I’m looking for is a mechanism that we can refer people. I know he was somewhat frustrated by me saying I don’t know how to do this, sir. We were trying to be kind when we said it, but, you know, we were cutting new cloth at that particular point in time. So that’s one of the major issues we need to look at so I would suggest, as we first develop this, is that if there are people interested in buying property from the city the first thing we do is we request that they put that request in writing, including a plat, and forward that to your office as our chief executive office. If we have some agreement on that, that would give us a place to start as opposed to contacted three or four other people there. Mr. Mayor: That sounds reasonable to me. As I have discussed with some folks before the meeting, I think this is, this is part of a planning process so we can get there, because we have even prior to the list coming out, on a pretty regular basis we have people that are interested in purchasing our surplus land, so I believe, Mr. Russell, that would be the appropriate way to proceed. Mr. Russell: Thank you. 2 Mr. Allen: A couple of comments that can be made about the property. The client that I represent, the property is over near his office where he works at. He owns all the property that surrounds both parcels that he’s interested in purchasing. One piece is located—he owns some wetland in the area and one piece adjoins the wetland, and that’s the 862 Scot Nixon Memorial Drive. That adjoins wetland that he owns and he really would just like to purchase the property. We need some direction as to where do we need to go to initiate and begin to negotiate the purchase of the property? Mr. Mayor: Mr. Plunkett, is there not a special exception for property that’s contiguous? Mr. Plunkett: No, sir. The issues that’s there is that property that was [unintelligible] say a small sliver of land or an odd-angled piece of property, that could be sold through negotiations. Fairly large tracts of land that have marketable value could not be just negotiated [unintelligible]. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Grantham? Mr. Grantham: Mr. Mayor, directing your, continuing your question, why would not a landlocked piece of property be a piece that would be similar to what you just described because it would seem to me you would have less interest in a landlocked piece of property than you would even in a sliver that has accessibility. So if our ordinance rules or whatever does not include that, then I think we should look into including the landlocked properties for that purpose. That may be the only interested party that would ever want to buy that property, and that being the case we could eventually lose a potential purchaser of a piece of property that is of no value to the government, not to possibly anyone else that would be interested in it. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Plunkett? Mr. Plunkett: Mr. Grantham, the issue there is whether or not [unintelligible] some other way. I believe the piece of property we’re talking about with Mr. Allen, while it’s surrounded by a [unintelligible] road frontage on Scott Nixon Memorial Drive. That’s a little bit different issue there. But obviously if a piece of property is landlocked it would have [unintelligible] issue, it certainly would affects its value [unintelligible] to buy that property. Mr. Allen: If I may comment, it’s completely landlocked. It has no access to the road frontage at all. It doesn’t front on Scott Nixon Road. My client’s property front on Scott Nixon road and this is a piece of property in the back. And the other piece, I-20 is there, but there is a sliver of land in front of there and my client owns that little sliver that runs in front of that land. So both pieces are completely landlocked. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Russell? 3 Mr. Russell: Mr. Mayor, if you don’t mind, I’ve talked to Mr. Allen about using this as an example to walk through the process and that’s what I’m attempting to do at this particular point in time. The next question that would arise in my mind is whether we should ask the attorney and staff to do some determination or if that should be brought to you initially before we spend staff dollars and time on determining whether or not we should actually look at this particular piece of property. My suggestion is before we spend the money that would be required to do any additional study by the staff or the attorney is that we notify either you or one of the appropriate committees that we have been approached and that we have been asked to look at some property and then we move forward in that--and my general feeling is that would probably be the Engineering Services Committee—to give us permission to go ahead and continue that dialogue with the proposed purchaser. What I’m attempting to do is not spend a lot of dollars on the lawyer or the staff time to come back and say we’ve done this, this, this and this and y’all say we don’t want to do anyway. So what I’m trying to do is get some clearance there, if that would be appropriate. Mr. Mayor: Okay. Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Plunkett, but wouldn’t this be a situation where just with this particular property it would have to go through the bid process; is that correct? Mr. Plunkett: Assuming the property is not considered [unintelligible] then basically the way that you can liquidate property is either through a public bid, which could be either sealed or locked bid; the other option is to have that piece of property conveyed to another governmental entity or authority. Then you have to go back and look at whether that aurhotiry is an appropriate vehicle and they actually want to take on this piece of property and try to liquidate it. The Land Bank is oftentimes thought of as a good vehicle for doing that, but you have to go back and look at what the Land Bank is for, to take physically depressed, under-valued, under-utilized properties, possibly acquired by tax sale, and then try to get those back into developable property. If you have a piece of property that someone wants to buy, it may not be that the Land Bank is the best way. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Brigham? Mr. Brigham: Mr. Mayor, I think that the administrator at least ought to run any requests for property sales through our departments to make sure we have no need or use that is being planned for these properties that are being sought after. Mr. Russell: and I agree fully, sir. What I wanted to do is do that. Mr. Brigham: You need to do that before you talk to us about it. Mr. Russell: Well, that was the chicken and the egg question that I was going to ask next is, would you prefer that we do that and then bring it to you as an idea that would be appropriate with us, or would you prefer that we tell you first that we’ve been requested about looking at the property and determined whether or not it’s appropriate? 4 Mr. Brigham: I would think it would be more appropriate to first determine whether or not there’s any future use of that property being planned by the departments rather than come to us to say we have a surplus piece of property and then have a department say we don’t want—we have a need for this piece of property in the future. Mr. Mayor: And so running through the process in my head, that would—and I think what I hear Commissioner Brigham saying—is that we can get a proposal from somebody on a piece of land and say the first part of the process would be to make sure it’s surplus property prior to bringing it to us. So you could at that point say we’ve had a proposal on this piece of property, we’ve run it through the departments, it is in fact surplus, and—so we’re coming up with the process as we go through this. Commissioner Bowles? Mr. Bowles: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just like to ask if—I know at one point we had asked for an inventory of all of our properties that we hold, not just the ten most marketable—and where do we stand on compiling that list? Mr. Russell: That list is available and we can get that to you at this point. Mr. Mayor: And so much of this I think is just the planning process, and I did want to—I’d spoke to some other folks. Some of these properties that are city owned may be, you know, may not be sold. I think it’s trying to get us to really plan for the properties that we do own, that we have an inventory of them. Mr. Russell: What I’m hearing you say at this particular point in time is we would then do an initial review of that particular property when requested and then provide to you a recommendation on whether or not it’s surplus or not, that we have no need for it at that particular point in time. At that point then I would assume that we would bring the lawyers in to look at the legality of selling that property and determine what would be the best course of action on the procedure to sell that particular property. I mentioned a second ago Engineering Services, but after a little bit of discussion I’m thinking Finance might be the appropriate committee to bring that to as opposed to Engineering Services. Mr. Mayor: I agree with you on that. And one thing that I would say, just based on some meetings we’ve had regarding real estate, I think it would probably—and Commissioners, you might chime in on this—but other than tracts that are, you know, big tracts like what we’ve done with the Downtown Development Authority I think it would probably be a good rule of thumb to go through the bid process whenever possible, just to make sure that we get as a government, that we get the best price we can get for our land. Commissioner Bowles? Mr. Bowles: Mr. Mayor, I think—Mr. Brigham and I just discussed that we would probably have to have a third party, an outside appraisal done, instead of going by the tax values. And probably set that as a minimum acceptance offer when the bids come 5 in, and so if it’s under that threshold then we just reject that offer. We just need to look into those types of situations also to make sure we get the maximum amount for the property. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Plunkett? Mr. Plunkett: As a follow-up on that, typically what you would do is once the committee has said we’re interested in selling it, to have it appraised, you would also have that committee put any type of restrictions or covenants that you’d want on that piece of property, that is, it must be used in a certain way that’s being development and certainly a time. That would be your committee structure or the Commission’s citing those issues as well. You’d also want to think in terms of passing on the costs of the appraisal to the purchaser and typically at some point in that process you would want to see a survey. Most people come in with a concept and you need to decide when a potential purchaser needs to start spending money. Appraisals can be $300, they can be $3,000. A simple survey is $350, it may be $2500 for a survey. So when are you going to [unintelligible] this person [unintelligible] when they purchase it? And by the way, Mr. McKnight is paying for the survey, Mr. McKnight is paying for the appraisal, but if we end up putting it out for bid, he’s lost those costs or those costs be incurred—we need to figure out the process of identifying exactly what we’re selling and the value. Do you want that to be the direction of the staff to get the appraisal and then we’ll add that cost on to the purchase price? You’re going to figure out how those numbers are to be run. Mr. Mayor: I would, ladies and gentlemen, I would feel better about doing it that way, to just have, get our own appraisal and then tack that on to the purchase price. I just think that would—anybody else? Mr. Brigham: Mr. Mayor? Mr. Mayor: Mr. Brigham? Mr. Brigham: It’s been my experience as Commissioners that we like river bottom or stream bottom property and for some reason, I don’t know why that is since we don’t control any rain or anything else that has anything to do with water, but I think we need to look at very strongly when we are doing—or have somewhere in these guidelines that we are very definitely looking at the flood plains that are associated with the creeks and everything to make sure that we’re not selling off property that we could be forced back into purchasing. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Plunkett? Mr. Plunkett: Mr. Brigham, just so you know, when we do a road abandonment that comes through Planning and Zoning. And what normally happens, Planning and Zoning has already approved that. Traffic Engineering, Public Works and Engineering Department, as well as Utilities Departments. So I think the concept of this due diligence before it even comes to Finance Committee is Planning and Zoning would be 6 determining whether or not this property was necessary for flood mitigation, greenspace, things of that nature, and so hopefully all of that will be accomplished before you even made a decision to sell or not to sell. Mr. Brigham: Also, if I remember correctly, in road abandonment there is also a public hearing. Mr. Plunkett: Pardon me, sir? Mr. Brigham: Also, if I remember correctly, in road abandonment there’s a public hearing involved, and I don’t know that we want to necessarily go there in this surplus of property. Mr. Plunkett: Yes, sir. Mr. Russell: And that would be the next question I would ask, is the model that Mr. Plunkett described is what I envisioned of bringing that back to you with a complete staff review on the uses of the property and whether or not it would fall into any of that categories you talked about. Would anybody feel the need to have a public hearing on the surplus of a particular piece of property? Mr. Mayor: I guess basically as we’re going through this process, I just—Mr. Russell, a question for you. Would it be good just to go ahead and get a policy in place? I mean for the Commission to approve with regards to how we dispose of properties? Mr. Russell: Yes, that’s the direction I’m trying to get at right there. Mr. Mayor: Okay. Mr. Russell: So right now we’ve got two-prong currents going on. We’ve got an individual that’s brought forth a particular piece of property that they are interested in, which would then undergo the due diligence of the staff and the attorney to make sure that it didn’t meet any of the usages or potential issues that might be raised there. The second prong of that would be property identified by the staff as surplus, that would be brining us back to that same particular—going through those same due diligence issues to make sure that other departments have looked at that and made sure that Recreation is not selling something that Utilities needs. So we’d have an internal review of those particular things. And then in my mind it would come back to you with a plot recommendation and a price recommendation to you on what we should either sell it for, or if bid, it would be a minimum bid with the covenants that we would think appropriate, which you could adjust through the committee structure to determine whether or not you would think that would be appropriate. And obviously the end result would be the price and the covenants and whatever else you attach to that particular sale. Mr. Mayor: Commissioner Grantham? 7 Mr. Grantham: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think that as we develop this process, I’d like to see you put this in writing for us so that we know what direction we’re going in. And Mr. Plunkett being the real estate guru of our attorneys, I think he should be involved in that process, be able to put these things in the proper procedures that we need to follow. Mr. Russell: I anticipate at the next committee meetings to have a written procedure for you to bless or change or adapt to whatever you feel to be appropriate, so it will give us something in writing to move forward. I think the workshop session today is to get me to that point basically. So at that point we’ve got that written procedure. We would have the attorney’s advice on whether or not it could be sold at either public auction or either through one of the other options that might be available to you, if the property’s landlocked or a small sliver or those kinds of things, so you’d have several decisions in front of you that you could make and several options to modify our recommendation. But that would get us to the point where you are ready to make the decision up or down on whether or not to sell the property and what mechanism to use to sell it. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Brigham? Mr. Brigham: I would like a review, at least from the attorney or somebody, that would give up options as to what the Land Bank can do, and also as to what the Richmond County Industrial Development Authority can do, and along with that the Downtown Development Authority, in their various and respective areas, especially on the dealings of these properties. I think that we need to know what options are open so that we as Commissioners would understand what options are available to us, not just throw everything up and say we’re going to do everything by one method necessarily. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Plunkett? Mr. Plunkett: Mr. Brigham, within there would you want one of the conditions of this checklist that the staff or attorney or whoever [unintelligible] option how to dispose of the property, that it could be disposed of through the Land Bank or through public auction? I mean would you want that part of the— Mr. Brigham: I think basically the three methods, the four methods open to us for disposing of the property are public auctions, either transferring it to the Land Bank, transferring it to Downtown Development Authority, or transferring it to Richmond County Development Authority. I don’t think anybody else has the authorities, have the ability to negotiate real estate prices or anything. Mr. Plunkett: I guess what I was following up with is that when this report comes to Finance, would you want in that report, that documentation that the logical avenues to dispose of the property are the Land Bank or public auction, if that’s the purpose? 8 Mr. Brigham: I would think the scenario of the logical order or method, do we want to use the Land Bank, or a scenario of where we might want to use one of the two development authorities as opposed to just going in for public auction. And those scenarios where we don’t have an option of doing anything but a public auction. I think we need to have some kind of—something we can understand as a guidance. Mr. Russell: I think, sir, the policy, that would probably give you a brief paragraph on each one, that we give you some of those options and could do that in more depth with the recommendation per property, why we would choose, why staff would choose that particular option, but the others would be spelled out in the policy itself. Is that what you’re after? Mr. Brigham: That is what I’m after. Mr. Russell: Okay. That would bring us back to the situation where you once again have got that information in front of you and you as a Commission would make the up or down decision on whether or not to proceed forward with disposing either of that property that’s been brought forth by a third party, or property that staff’s recommended to move forth with. What I’d like to do, if it’s okay with you, is develop that policy, bring it back to your series of Commission meetings, and Mr. Allen has somewhat volunteered, I guess, or I volunteered him to go ahead and work through the issues that he has here with his properties and use that as an example that could be brought forth in conjunction with that policy to see where we could move forward with that. Mr. Mayor: That sounds like a plan to me. Mr. Holland: May I ask a question here? Mr. Mayor: Commissioner Holland? Mr. Holland: In reference to these two pieces of property here that’s surrounded by the owner, and since these two pieces of property are owned by the city here, has the city made any reference or has the city made any kind of recommendation as to what they want to do with this property? Since it’s just sitting there, you know, and it’s surrounded by someone else? I mean do we, have we said anything about what we want to do with the property? Mr. Russell: No, sir, we have no. And right before you walked in, sir, I was talking about some due diligence that would be involved with our review of that property, so what we’d end up doing is when somebody came forth with a request we would run that by the appropriate city departments to make sure there was not any use for that particular property that we would have to have, and that would be part of the recommendation that we would make to you as a final part of the package there. So in that case, if for some reason part of the master plan for the Utilities Department was to have a pump station built there in 2010, we would be able to identify that and determine that that would be a usage that we would have in the future and our recommendation at 9 that point would not be to sell that particular property. But that would be part of the due diligence we would do internally to make sure that we weren’t—that Recreation wasn’t selling something that Utilities might need or somewhere down the line. So that would be part of our recommendation. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Russell, you clear on how to proceed? Mr. Russell: Yes, sir, I am. Mr. Mayor: Everybody good with proceeding in that fashion? Anybody have anything else to say? Mr. Brigham: I guess we can tell Mr. Allen he’s going to have to wait a little while. Mr. Mayor: We are streamlining the process. Mr. Allen: We’re working through the process and I appreciate what I’ve heard. Mr. Mayor: Great. Thank you for coming today. Mr. Allen: Thank you. Mr. Brown: Mr. Mayor? Mr. Mayor: Mr. Brown? Mr. Brown: I just wanted to know if the person who is interested in purchasing this property has offered any kind of dollar amount on what they want to offer, or are they waiting for us? Mr. Mayor: Mr. Allen? Mr. Allen: If you want us to make an offer we will make a monetary offer. That’s no problem. I just wanted to make sure that this was something that you all would sell. Mr. Mayor: And here again, I think we want to run this one through the policy which Fred is developing, too. Mr. Allen: Okay. Mr. Mayor: Mr. Holland? Mr. Holland: When we have pieces of property coming forth, we’re going to have to take it through this particular process that Fred is getting read to develop? 10 Mr. Mayor: Fred is developing a policy. We’ve got no policy in place. So that when people come to us or when staff would determine that a piece of property is surplus we’ve got a policy to guide us on how to proceed. Mr. Holland: Regardless of the size of the property? Mr. Mayor: Regardless. Mr. Brown? Mr. Brown: Can we let Mr. Allen’s client know what kind of time line we need to be able to give him some kind of answer? Mr. Mayor: Mr. Russell? Mr. Russell: I anticipate having the policy and this example in front of the next Finance Committee, which would then be forwarded on to the next full Commission st meeting, which would be August 1. Mr. Mayor: Okay. All right. If there is no other business to come before the body, we stand adjourned. [MEETING ADJOURNED] Lena Bonner Clerk of Commission CERTIFICATION: I, Lena J. Bonner, Clerk of Commission, hereby certify that the above is a true and correct copy of the minutes of the Called Meeting of Augusta Richmond County Commission held on July 10, 2006. ______________________________ Clerk of Commission 11