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HomeMy WebLinkAboutRegular Commission Meeting July 7, 2015 REGULAR MEETING COMMISSION CHAMBER JULY 7, 2015 Augusta Richmond County Commission convened at 2:00 p.m., July 7, 2015, the Hon. Hardy Davis, Jr., Mayor, presiding. PRESENT: Hons. Lockett, Guilfoyle, Sias, Frantom, M. Williams, Fennoy, D. Williams, Hasan, Davis and Smith, members of Augusta Richmond County Commission. Mr. Mayor: Good afternoon. I hope everyone’s doing exceptionally well from a winning weekend for us as Americans. Go Team USA, girl power. Isn’t that right Commissioner Davis? All right. Everybody in this audience ought to be saying yeah, Go Girl Power. Fantastic. We’re hereby calling this meeting to order. Our Chaplain of the Day, Ms. Morawski, is the th, distinguished Commissioner from 9 the Dean of the Commissioner, Mr. Marion Williams. He’s going to give us our invocation followed by our Pledge of Allegiance. (Invocation given by Commissioner Marion Williams) The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America was recited. Mr. Mayor: Commissioner Williams, you don’t get a certificate like the other Chaplains but thank you so much for that. I will tell you that you are going to be called on often I’m sure like I was when I was in the Legislature. Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I don’t need a certificate called on me but make sure you want me when you call me because I’ll be there. Mr. Mayor: Fantastic. Madam Clerk? The Clerk: Yes, sir, the first delegation? Mr. Mayor: Yes, please. The Clerk: DELEGATIONS A. Dr. Clark RE: Abandoned property at 1409 Steiner Avenue. (Requested by Commissioner Fennoy) Mr. Mayor: As with all of our delegations you have five minutes to present. Depending upon which side you’re on, Dr. Clark, if you’ll approach the podium here depending upon which side you’re on, you have the podium, Dr. Clark. Dr. Clark: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I won’t take five minutes. I’m not a man of a lot of words but I try to do what I say and say what I do. Mr. James is passing you out 1 some pictures and really the street is Garrett Lane of course we have a lot of problems with Garrett Lane and the old compress. My wife has a family house on Mill Street 1507 I own the other house on 1509 and 1533 and I’ve got several complaints from the tenants in those houses now that there are roaches the size of squirrels coming into the yard, dying and they’re having to clean them up. I’ve talked with Code Enforcement, I’ve talked with Environmental, and I’m coming here today for some help. Picture number one, that’s Garrett Lane. Now I did go out there and cut that grass about three or four weeks ago but if you look at the other pictures these are the pictures of that compress. They’ve cleaned all the bricks out, tore the building down and got all the material out but now they left the junk there to deteriorate and cause problems for the neighborhood. And I come here today asking for your help to do something about that area. I’ve invested a lot of money in that property and I don’t want it to deteriorate any further. Thank you, sir. Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Mr. Clark, Dr. Clark. All right, the Chair recognizes the rd Commissioner from the 3 Commissioner Davis. Ms. Davis: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to see what would maybe be a good next step. And I know that Dr. Clark’s said that he has talked with Code Enforcement so I didn’t know if we could get some kind of feedback on if we’re able to do something in that area and if they’ve looked at that area. Mr. Mayor: Okay. Ms. Davis: Is Mr. Sherman? Mr. Mayor: All right, the Chair recognizes Rob Sherman. Mr. Sherman: The Code Enforcement has been working on this property and as I mentioned to you before it’s roughly 16 acres. At one time it had I think over 70 warehouses on the property and where they did warehouse cotton. The property has been abandoned. The owner of record, Mr. Whitney, contracted with a demolition contractor to salvage materials. They tore the structures down to the ground, left debris. What was salvageable they did take. The owner apparently doesn’t have an interest in the property, it has been on the courthouse steps for sale and there was no interest. We did contact a demolition contractor just to get an idea of what it would cost to clean it up and it going to be roughly $650 thousand to clean the entire property and taking up the foundations a little over 250 I think there about just to remove the surface debris. We did get with Environmental Services and they did clean Garrett Lane which is the lane that parallels Mill Street behind the houses that front on Mill Street roughly 16- 18 feet wide. They cleaned up the debris, cut the overhanging limbs and did spray some herbicide on the ground. And at this time that’s all that has been done. To go on the property we wanted to get a legal opinion from the Environmental Services to go on the property because the roads are actually they’re chained across the road with locks so we’d have to get some direction there. And that’s what we have. Ms. Davis: Thank you. 2 Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Mr. Sherman. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the th 9. Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I’m very familiar with this property and how long it’s been there. My question is the owner whoever he or she is, is there not anything that can be done, Rob, with whoever owns that property to put some pressure to make them do something? Mr. Sherman: I think that we’ve done all that we can do going in that direction. The property possibly could be sold on the courthouse steps or bought in and conveyed to the Land Bank and made available to a private individual who wants the property. The problem with that is just the cost to clean it up. Mr. M. Williams: But I heard you say it had been on the courthouse steps and evidently nobody wants it. But now we hold some people and I’ve been preaching this sermon and the Reverend asked me to do a prayer but I don’t have to preach for many we’ve got some people, Rob, that can do this. And because they’re good taxpayers and citizens, they try to follow the law. So what do we need to do to get, not just this property any property of this magnitude to get somebody to the courts or somebody somewhere. Mr. Sherman: I think this, he has been to court. In this case it’s an abandoned property. I think it’s roughly $38,000 dollars in back taxes that are owed on it. He has walked away from the property. I don’t think he has any funds, any money or resources to do anything with the property and that’s why he has walked away from it. That’s where it is. Mr. M. Williams: Well, just across the street from this property the Medical College of Georgia, it’s got a lay down yard that’s infecting that neighborhood as much as this property is. Now if we can’t do anything with this side, can we do anything with the other side? Mr. Sherman: They seem to be in compliance with the zoning because it is zoned Light Industrial and they do meet the setback requirements from the residential zones. One thing we could ask them to do is just put up a privacy fence so it isn’t so noticeable from those houses that are across the way from it. Mr. M. Williams: And that scares me even more because if we put a privacy fence up a lot people think well that’s a privacy fence but you don’t know what they’re doing then. At least you can see it without the privacy fence but I just think there’s something that can be done with not just this property and the Medical College of Georgia but coming into the neighborhood this is not a landfill this is not a situation out by itself. It’s right in the middle of the community. I just think it should be addressed. Mr. Sherman: On the GRU property we can talk to them and see if they can’t organize it a little bit better because they are using is just as a place to go and put their stuff. And at times it doesn’t seem to be very orderly over there. Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Mayor Pro Tem Commissioner Smith. 3 Mr. G. Smith: Rob, what --- Mr. Mayor: Commissioner, would you place the microphone down? Mr. G. Smith: --- we have laws to set up to sort of protect the community from hazardous areas and everything. What happened to those? Who’s in charge of overseeing that? Mr. Sherman: Well --- Mr. G. Smith: Does it take somebody that you’ve got to come back there with a big stick and get somebody’s attention? I mean what’s the deal here. We’ve got this guy telling us what we’ve got to do? Mr. Sherman: --- no, sir, you know we have taken him to court. There is and when we take them to court the judge tells them what they have to do. Mr. G. Smith: How long has this been going on? Mr. Sherman: This has been going on for a few years. The first contractor to work on this property was Mr. Benny Christian and he was in the salvage business, he was going to tear down the structures for the salvage materials. He passed and then another contractor I think from, I think he was from Tennessee he came down and finished the project. He got all the bricks and it’s basically leveled but what he did leave is just the debris from --- Mr. G. Smith: Don’t we have somebody to go out and inspect ongoing jobs? I’m in construction and you, I had a chat with you in the past. When we leave a construction site or something it has a certain standard to meet. We don’t have somebody that goes around and before somebody can pull off the materials and everything get everything cleaned up the way our laws say they should be. I mean I know if I lived in this area I’d be upset. In fact where I live if my yard all in array and a couple cars parked on the side of the road, ya’ll be up there within two days and hauling me off in the paddy wagon. Now you know we’ve got laws, who’s in charge of getting the laws done for what this county needs? Mr. Sherman: Well, in this case it would be Code Enforcement and as far as for what can be done I think Code Enforcement has done. Mr. G. Smith: Who’s the chief of Code Enforcement then? Mr. Sherman: Well, I’m over that division and Melanie’s over (inaudible). Mr. G. Smith: Mr. Sherman, okay, well I say we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do we can’t call ourselves the Garden City when we’ve got a patch of locoweed running wild. So you know let’s get on the bandwagon and get somebody in court if it takes it. We’ve already had a turnover or four or five judges so let’s get something going, this is ridiculous. 4 st Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 1 Commissioner Fennoy. Mr. Fennoy: One of the reasons I asked Dr. Clark to come here because I’ve also had numerous phone calls from the people that live in that neighborhood. And Dr. Clark said that the roaches are as big as squirrels, rats, the rats, okay. So you can only imagine how big the possums are and coons but it’s really presenting a problem for the people that live in that area. And unfortunately this is not the only warehouse that’s been abandoned that’s in my district. And I think that we need to come up with something because we can I don’t think the City of Augusta can afford to have major parcels of land looking like this and there’s nothing that we can do about it. So that’s why I asked Dr. Clark to come here and address this issue. I think that when it was put on the committee agenda Ms. Wilson had mentioned some Brownsfield --- Mr. Sherman: Right --- Mr. Fennoy: --- where are we on that? Mr. Sherman: --- well that was discussed but as far as we know there’s no contamination on the site. And I’m not that familiar with the Brownsfield application. What we do believe is that they had a small tank over on the property that they used for their lift truck, just lifting the bales of cotton. Otherwise and again I’m not that familiar with those applications the application for Brownsfield’s funding but that’s sort of was the topic when it was discussed is that we’re not certain we don’t believe, rather, that there is any contamination on the property. Mr. Fennoy: Okay, so right now we have done all that we can do as far as that property is concerned. Mr. Sherman: You know it’s, you know, using the Land Bank and foreclosing on the taxes provided that that’s a doable thing it’s a roughly $38,000 to $40,000 dollars whatever the taxes are currently, delinquent taxes. You could put it in the Land Bank and you could convey 16 acres to someone or roughly that amount or the appraised value. The problem is finding someone who wants that property and then who will have to spend roughly you know over $600,000 to clean it. Now the demo contractor did mention that and these were just ballpark numbers but he put it in writing to me that the cost to clean it would be reduced by half if the tipping fees were waived, but I don’t know that that’s possible. But still you know you’re talking about roughly $300,000 dollars to clean 16 acres because it’s for the most part the entire ground is covered in concrete or road because of all the warehouse buildings that were there. It’s, right now it is a puzzle what to do with it. Mr. Fennoy: And my last question, Mr. Mayor, is it possible that we could use maybe SPLOST funds to clean that area up if we decide to put that in the, make that a part of the SPLOST package? Mr. Sherman: Now that would have to be a legal question because I just don’t know the answer. Mr. Fennoy: Could I refer to? 5 Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes Attorney MacKenzie. Mr. MacKenzie: One of the issues you have with this property is that it is private property. This is a systemic problem with a lot of abandoned properties this one just happens to be big and it’s causing big problems for the neighbors. The last thing it would be possible if it gets into the land banks hands it would be more feasible to utilize SPLOST funding because it would be public property. But currently it’s private property and that presents certain limitations when using public funds. Mr. Fennoy: Okay and not a question but a statement. Mr. Sherman, is it possible that you could ya’ll could work on getting this property in the hands of the Land Bank? Mr. Sherman: Yes, sir, the Land bank has a meeting coming up I believe next week and we could put it on the agenda. Mr. Fennoy: Thank you. th Mr. Mayor: All right, the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 8. Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Rob, as far as he was talking about nobody seems to be attracted to this property whatsoever. The one industry that we have down, it’s not industry the state the hospital GRU with the lay down yard right beside it. Why don’t we make an offer for them to accept it for a dollar? If anybody that’s going to utilize that parcel of land it would be GRU because they’re steadily growing here down town and I don’t know it the Mayor has any relationships with any of the people with GRU to see if they would even consider it. It takes the burden off of us. Mr. Sherman: We could do that. We did have conversations with them back during several months ago when things were going around, going on over there with Dr. Azziz and anyway so that we didn’t get a lot of discussion on it. One comment that we did hear was that the property that they have is enough for what they need. But for that price or you know something as you were suggesting they may be interested and will contact them and ask them. Mr. Guilfoyle: For the future expansions it should work. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. th Mr. Mayor: All right the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 9. Mr. M. Williams: Rob, I heard that statement and I kind of agree with it but if GRU or anybody else gets it and don’t do nothing with it and let it sit there for another ten years that means that the residents are going to have to deal with that. So I mean if anybody gets it it’s fine I just want somebody to do something with it. My question is, though, if we done carry someone to court and they hadn’t fulfilled their obligation that the court demanded, then what happens? Mr. Sherman: Well, it gets to where it is, it gets to where it is. This is a, it is an abandoned property it’s like Mr. MacKenzie was saying it’s like all the other properties that we 6 have that are abandoned, it’s just much larger. This is you know it is zoned Light Industrial it could be, you know, it’s a good central location for someone to use it it’s just we haven’t found that user yet. But we’ll continue to work on it and I’ll report back to you. I’ll meet with GRU to see what we can come up with. Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Mr. Sherman. All right seventeen minutes. Thank you so much. Mr. Sherman: Okay. Mr. Mayor: Ms. Morawski, the next delegation. The Clerk: DELEGATIONS B. Mr. Moses Todd RE: Environmental audits and liabilities. Mr. Todd: Mr. Mayor, I think I can make mine short to save some time and it kind of tie into what you’re talking about. I was at the last meeting when we discussed the Mill’s properties and it’s my thoughts before the county considered acquiring any property whether it’s through tax sales on the courthouse steps or otherwise that we would do an environmental audit or request an environmental audit from the EPD/EPA and the inventory of the chemicals that the vendors or industry used on those properties. I’m in support of everything that I’ve heard. I didn’t know Dr. Lee was going to be here but I kind of put something together in reference the Mill’s properties as far as the possible use and it would fit in with taking it into the Land Bank once you had the environmental questions answered and possibly consider it as an immediate cleanup for green space then later on the Land Bank selling for low income housing or housing so I’d certainly would like to support that. Now I also looked at the Hyde Park and let me say this. But I served six years on the NACO Environmental Steering Committee and have some experience in this area. On Hyde Park I would recommend that we continue to buy out and relocation of those individuals that live in Hyde Park and possibly look at an alternative use other than detention ponds, retention ponds if we don’t necessarily need them and do green space and wetland banks there and that the City of Augusta would have a wetlands bank there. Rocky Creek, the, I guess there’s a water beautification program or project that we’re using some SPLOST money for to enhance the properties at the Regency Mall. I know Commissioner Smith is here and I haven’t talked to him about this but I would think that we would look at reprogramming those funds, those SPLOST funds in the same district for other projects or resurfacing the roads that we’re in need of doing. Oates Creek improvements, we need some improvements on Oates Creek so I’ll just leave it at that. Landfill Enterprise Fund cell development and post closure. I think that we need to be very careful on what we do as far as moving monies or funds from the Enterprise Fund to the landfill. I know we run a regional landfill and we have pretty good funds coming in now but that’s not guaranteed. And I could tell you a story about when I first visited the landfill and we’ll save that. Used tire disposal chain of custody, we have a problem there. We have tire companies being paid to dispose of tires it’s a dollar per tire in the state of Georgia and the counties wind up having to deal with these problems in some cases and folks are just walking away with money and not carrying out their 7 responsibilities for disposal of tires. And we have a lot of used tire businesses in town. So I would like to suggest look at the possibility of doing in Augusta a disposal fee on top of what’s already there if it’s legal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Commissioners, for your time and I’ll try and get a copy of this to you or I’ll email it to you. Mr. Mayor: Thank you so much, Mr. Todd. Ms. Morawski. The Clerk: DELEGATIONS C. Ms. Debby Kalliokoski RE: Communities in Schools Augusta. Mr. Lewis: Good afternoon. As you may notice I’m not Debby Kalliokoski but I’m DeMargo Lewis. I’m the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Communities and Schools of Augusta and today we’re here to just give you a brief story of Communities and Schools and how we’re impacting the community. I’ll first talk a little bit about what Communities and Schools is why this organization is even functioning in our county and how that organization functions. Communities in Schools of Augusta is part of a national network of independent 501C3 organizations. It’s operating in 27 states and the District of Columbia and our goal is to aid in addressing the drop off epidemic of our country. Why does this organization exist? We have more than I think it’s right at, every 26 seconds in the United States of America a young child is dropping out of school. And how we have addressed this within our organization is providing resources or access to resources that the schools cannot provide. Ms. Kalliskoski has given to you an in-depth picture of what’s taken place within the Communities and Schools but here in Richmond County the Richmond County Board of Education has chosen us as the intervention program to help aide with the dropout rate. And you can how are we doing that? The first thing that we do is we provide resources for the students of Richmond County. Those resources may be basic needs food, clothing, shelter, enrichment opportunities, academic assistance and life skills, behavior intervention and family engagement. Our most successful program to date is our performance learning center which is housed in the Tubman Education Center on Walton Way. At this center students who have been recognized as about to drop out are able to attend school at the Tubman Educational Center and they are taking online courses, which is the same curriculum they would take at their home high school and these students are able to recoup credits and graduate. In the last year alone the Communities and Schools PLC was able to service 176 students in Richmond County. Of those 176 students 63 graduated with their high school diploma in May. Seven of those students got their GED. The other 55 earned enough credits to catch up with their grade level and went back to their home schools. Over the next year next fiscal year we have met with the Board of Education and at the advice of Dr. Pringle we will be expanding the program to the Clifford T. Sego Middle School. This is will not be a performance learning center but what we will do is place a site coordinator there that will help at risk students get the access to these resources that keep them from graduating from school. We are here today just to begin the story of Communities in Schools. We ask that in the future as we continue to progress and helping with that dropout rate that we will be asked back so that we can enlighten you on what we’ve accomplished. One of the things that we’re doing now if you can see in this very small picture we have a very distinguished gentleman that’s 8 supporting us and he’s supporting us in helping us to change the picture of Richmond County. One of our asks is that each of the Commissioners will take a picture with this sign saying that you stand by us in improving the dropout rate in Richmond County. We also would further like to invite you to a legislative breakfast that we’re planning for this fall. So this is just our chance to show you what we’re accomplishing and what we plan to help do in the school system of Richmond County. Thank you for your time. Mr. Mayor: You pulled a fast one on me. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from st the 1. Mr. Fennoy: Yes, I have a question for you, sir. I’d like to thank you and Communities in Schools for the outstanding job that ya’ll are doing. I think this program is much needed and needs to be expanded but one of the questions that I have is whether or not ya’ll after the GED, after the diploma and even after going back earning enough credits to go back to the regular schools, are ya’ll doing a follow up on these schools I mean on these students to find out where they are and what they’re doing? Mr. Lewis: Commissioner Fennoy, that is one of the projects that we are embarking on this fiscal year. In the last year we have on board a new Executive Director Ms. Lori Cook along with Ms. Kalliokoski who’s our Development Director. And one of our past Chairs Dr. Marilyn Willis is taking on that job for us and she will be tracking as many students as she can get in contact with to see where they are in their life right now. Mr. Fennoy: Thank you. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 6. Mr. Hasan: Yes, sir your name again (unintelligible). Mr. Lewis: Demargo Lewis. Mr. Hasan: Mr. Lewis, if I’m not mistaken I just was reading I think it was Communities in Schools, was this your organization, has it got some national recognition? Mr. Lewis: Absolutely. In the last 30 days we have been able to achieve a national accreditation. This accreditation basically says that we operate at an efficient level I mean an effective level meeting all standards for the national organizations. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 5 Mr. Lockett. Mr. Lockett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Lewis, being a retired educator I want to applaud you and your group for what you’re doing and what you’re going to do but my question is how long have ya’ll been in Augusta Richmond County? Mr. Lewis: Many years. To be honest I’ve been on board for the last five. I think we date back at least 20 years. Previously the program really homed in on mentorship and we had a 9 lot of mentors go around reading and doing those types of activities within a school. In the last couple of years we have changed our program model and the PLC is again the program that we focused on as we grow our goal is to get site coordinators into the school in which the county deems as needing help. Again Sego is the school that we’re expanding into this year. Our hopes in the following year is to actually go into the elementary schools that feed that middle school and eventually into the high schools as well. Mr. Lockett: What are the age requirements? Mr. Lewis: With our PLC they’re high school age students but as we reach out into our community as in the middle school that we’re going into next year it does lower it down to that middle school age. Mr. Lockett: Is there any cost to the participants? Mr. Lewis: There’s no cost to the participants at all. Mr. Lockett: And lastly my colleague asked about follow up. My question’s going to be is there any job placement or assistance after they complete the program? Mr. Lewis: That is one of many programs that we’re looking into in the future. There are many partnerships that we’re in the process of forming. Ms. Lori Cook is doing an excellent job of actually finding out those or seeking those opportunities for those job placements as well. Mr. Lockett: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Mayor: Thank you, thank you, sir. Mr. Lewis: Thank you. The Clerk: DELEGATIONS D. Mr. Jimmy Smith RE: Upcoming SPLOST (Requested by Commissioner Guilfoyle) Mr. Mayor: Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith: Thank you, Commissioners, for allowing me to come this afternoon and present our view of this. It’s my hope that a SPLOST package will be presented to the voters that focuses our community’s primary infrastructure needs. Our roads, gentlemen, are in very bad condition. They need to be overlaid and some of the dirt roads really need some work that need to be paved what we’ve been trying to get done now for almost ten years. They are taxpayers and they should be considered. The safety parts of the roads that really are bad is the utilities made cuts on the road and leave it for several months sometimes. And when they come 10 back to repair them it’s just asphalt then after a few months it’s down and makes bumps. Also the manholes are in the middle of the road. When we repave it we don’t take care of that, they’re down about four inches and every time you run over one it jars your rafters and if you get in that lane that’s what you get. We know without a doubt that this storm water thing is absolutely necessary we know that. In serving on the Commission for a couple of terms and being on the Engineering Services I know how desperate it is. Some of these pipes have been in there 100 years and it’s continuing having maintenance on them and that does need to be done. However we feel that there’s a way as smart a people as we’ve got in this government to use this storm water in the SPLOST, I believe we can put it in there, there’s got to be a way. And if it’s not legal we can go to Atlanta we’ve got friends up there to change the law if we need to. So we need to take care of what we already have. We need this striping on the side of the roads, it’s safety. And when it rains and you at night you can’t see especially on these two roads, two lane roads and we really need to consider those safety factors. Another thing is I think we need to include abandon these include demolishing these abandoned houses. They are all over the county and we really need to clean up our city. And a lot of damaged trees I was up in Summerville the other day and they have some large trees up there that are rotten. And while I was there was a limb as big as a steering wheel fell off and it could’ve been a very serious thing if it hit me or a car or somebody else. I don’t know if we can include those trees in the SPLOST or not but again I think we could find a way to be able to do that. I think we need to be sensitive to these small churches and small businesses concerning this water runoff. There are churches in Richmond County that 20 years ago were running five to six hundred people. Today many of them are running fifty and they cannot afford to pay with their income what it’s going to cost. And I think we need to bypass that in small businesses as well. You know the small business don’t try to come up with a million dollar building and stuff to start with we start off small. We go to the bank to borrow a thousand dollars and then we build from there but it seems like we’re trying to buy the world to take care of all of that. That’s a lot of money coming in and I think we need to utilize it mainly on this infrastructure. We need to do some things that our taxpayers can see us do. I like that sign we used to have that when they’re doing something put it up and say this is your one-cent sales tax at work. I think we ought to put that out on every project that we’re doing. And I’m asking, gentlemen and lady, to accept my recommendations in the spirit that it’s given. We really need cooperation and some common sense in what to use this money for. I thank you and appreciate your attention. Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Mr. Smith, we appreciate that. All right, we appreciate all of our citizens feeling like they can come and share with their local government what’s on their mind and we will really receive that. We have a late arriving delegation item that we’ve added to the agenda. Ms. Morawski. The Clerk: The addendum item? Mr. Mayor: Yes, ma’am. The Clerk: ADDENDUM 14. Delegation Item: Col. (Retired) Thom Tuckey (CSRA Alliance for Fort Gordon) 11 RE: Establishment of a Richmond County Tag Office on Ft. Gordon. Mr. Mayor: Col. Tuckey. Col. Tuckey: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Commission. Every military community prides itself in its relationship with its military installation and the greater Augusta community is no different. In fact we feel and if you talk to the folks out at the installation they will tell you that we in the greater Augusta area have the best relationship between our serving military personnel. One of my responsibilities as the Executive Director of the CSRA Alliance is seek out initiative to further enhance that excellent relationship. In this case discussions with the installation and Mr. Kendrick, the Tax Commissioner, we found that the placement of a Richmond County Tag Office on the installation would be a great benefit. You have a copy I think in front of you of a letter I submitted to the installation proposing that and Col. Anderson’s response which is very positive and he sees that as a tremendous asset for those who work and serve on the installation. Our initial thoughts that this would be a pilot program operating perhaps one to two days a week and Fort Gordon has already indentified space within the main in-processing center that they will offer to the county for free to operate this tag office out there. I can’t speak for Mr. Kendrick but I will tell you that today military folks were having to leave real world mission time and training time to go out and often times make several trips to the tag office because of the unique requirements that military personnel have to get their tags creates a hardship for them. And I think it also creates a hardship and some inefficiencies at the tag office having to deal with clerks that aren’t necessarily the most familiar with those unique requirements that these military folks have. What I’m proposing is that you assign us to a committee and ask Mr. Kendrick to provide the cost benefit analysis of doing something like this. Fort Gordon feels based on their analysis and their data scrub of zip codes and things like that that this would service about 17,500 vehicles. So I’m just asking that you assign it to a committee for further review. Thank you. Mr. Mayor: I appreciate that. I’m confident we can get that done. The Chair recognizes th the Commissioner from the 6. Mr. Hasan: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, if my memory serves me correct I think that would be Public Services Committee. Mr. Mayor: I couldn’t agree with you more. Mr. Hasan: And just like this body we try to get the Tax Commissioner to come before the Public Services Committee next week and give us some data based on the conversation he had with Col. Tuckey there to give us some information about what that would like per their conversation. Mr. Mayor: I couldn’t agree with you more. Thank you, Col. Tuckey, I appreciate that, we’ll do that. All right it looks like their ready and raring to go, Ms. Morawski. The Clerk: Consent agenda? 12 Mr. Mayor: Consent agenda. The Clerk: Our consent agenda consists of items 1-5. Mr. Mayor: All right the Chair will entertain any motions to add or pull from the consent th agenda. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 9. Mr. M. Williams: Mr. Mayor, I’d like to add item 10 to the consent agenda. th Mr. Mayor: Thank you. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 8. Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. If my colleagues don’t mind consent item number 11. Mr. Speaker: --- object. Mr. Mayor: Which item? Okay with an objection. All right. What about item number 12? Mr. Guilfoyle: I believe the Finance Department is going to do a presentation, is that correct? Mr. Mayor: Is that correct? Fantastic. All right. Mr. Lockett: Mr. Chairman? Mr. Mayor: Yes. Item number 11 should be stricken from being added to the consent agenda there was an objection. Mr. Lockett: Mr. Chairman, that’s not my question though. Mr. Mayor: Okay, hold on just one moment, Commissioner. Thank you, thank you th Madam Clerk. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 5. Mr. Lockett: I would like if we could dispose of agenda item number 9 since we’ve already gone through the interview process. Mr. Mayor: I think you’re real warm on that based on our conversation yesterday. Mr. M. Williams: If I can, Mr. Mayor, yeah I asked for an update and I think the Administrator had some interviews and maybe give an update. I ask her when she, where she is where’s she’s going to be or when. This item was put on before that was that happened I believe so I’ve got no problem either way, Mr. Mayor, I just want to --- Mr. Mayor: Okay, all right, I appreciate doing that. 13 Mr. M. Williams: --- forthcoming on that. th Mr. Mayor: I really appreciate you doing that Commissioner from the 9. Ms. Morawski, we’re going to I think the term I’ve heard here delete that item. Is that appropriate Commissioner? Mr. Hasan: Which item? Mr. Mayor: Number 9 again I think it’s been indicated we’ll get an update on that in a th week. Okay, the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 4. Mr. Sias: With item 9 I think that will be a separate motion and I move to approve the consent agenda. Mr. Mayor: Okay. Ms. Davis: Second. CONSENT AGENDA PLANNING 1. ZA-R-239 – A request for concurrence with the Augusta Planning Commission to approve a petition to amend the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance by amending Section 28-B-8 (Signs-Freestanding Signs) by amending the permitted sign surface area, height and illumination provisions in P-1 (Professional) Zones. (Approved by Commission June 16, 2015 – second reading) 2. ZA-R-240 – A request for concurrence with the Augusta Planning Commission to approve a petition to amend the Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance by amending Section 4- 2 (Off-Street Parking Requirements) by amending the Section to include an allowance for providing compact parking spaces. (Approved by Commission June 16, 2015 – second reading) PETITIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS 3. Motion to approve the minutes of the regular commission meeting held on June 16, 2015) APPOINTMENTS 4. Motion to approve the appointment of Mr. Roy Simpkins to the Tree Commission representing District 4. (Requested by Commissioner Sias) 5. Motion to approve the reappointment of Ms. JoAnn Cook to a new term on the Department of Family and Children Services Board. (Requested by the Dept. of Family and Children Services) PUBLIC SAFETY 10. Motion to approve acceptance of the 2015 Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC) Juvenile Justice Grant Award in the amount of $295,000.00. 14 Mr. Mayor: All right, we’ve got a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda with the addition. All those in favor will vote yeah and all those opposed will vote no. Motion carries 10-0. [Items 1-5, 10] Mr. Mayor: Okay, so here’s our posture this is to everyone. All right, you want me to th defer to the Commissioner from the 9 or do you want to do it? Okay, all right, this is our th posture. We’re going to receive this motion from the Commissioner from the 9. ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES 9. Update on the hiring of the Housing and Community Development Director. (Requested by Commissioner M. Williams) Mr. M. Williams: I make a motion that we delete item 9. Mr. Sias: Second. Mr. Mayor: We’ve got a motion and a second to delete agenda item 9. All those in favor will vote yeah and all those opposed will vote no. All right to our Juvenile Court folks you have your item and we’ll let you get back to work. Thank you. All right --- The Clerk: Mr. Williams, are you voting? Mr. Mayor: Mr. Williams, Commissioner? All right. Motion Passes 10-0. Mr. Mayor: Okay, all right, so this to the Commission this is what our posture is to the audience as well. We’re going to take about a 25 minute recess. We’re going to go to Legal and address a legal matter, a very pressing legal matter. We’re going to recess and then we’re going to come back. The Chair recognizes Attorney MacKenzie. LEGAL MEETING A. Pending and Potential Litigation. B. Real Estate. C. Personnel. Mr. MacKenzie: I would entertain a motion to go into a Closed Legal Meeting to discuss Pending and Potential Litigation. Mr. Lockett: So moved. Mr. Fennoy: Second. 15 Mr. Mayor: All right we’ve got a motion and a second. For those of you in the audience we promise we’re coming back, we promise. Motion Passes 10-0. [LEGAL MEETING] 17. Motion to approve execution by the Mayor of the affidavit of compliance with Georgia’s Open Meeting Act. Mr. MacKenzie: I would entertain a motion to execute the Closed Meeting affidavit. Mr. M. Williams: So moved. Mr. Fennoy: Second. Mr. Mayor: We’ve got a motion and a second. Voting. Mr. Smith out. Motion Passes 9-0. 16. Motion to approve a resolution authorizing the settlement of all claims of Johnny McDonald in the amount of $200,000.00 and authorizing the Finance Department to disburse the funds. Mr. MacKenzie: I would entertain a motion to approve resolution authorizing settlement of all claims of Johnny McDonald in the amount of $200,000.00 dollars and authorizing the Finance Department to disburse these funds. Mr. Lockett: So moved. Mr. Hasan: Second. Mr. Mayor: We’ve got a motion and a second. Voting. Mr. Smith out. Motion Passes 9-0. Mr. Mayor: Ms. Morawski, we’re going to move item 12. The Clerk: FINANCE 12. Receive as information the results of the 2014 financial audit. 16 Mr. Edwards: Good afternoon, how are you all doing? Mr. Mayor: If you’ll state your name, sir. Mr. Edwards: My name is Miller Edwards I’m with Mauldin and Jenkins, CPA. David Irwin is passing out some information to you as well, he’ll be joining me. As you know we’re here today to share with you the results of the fiscal year 12-31-14 annual audit. And so what we’ve put together we put together a presentation to help us kind of get through some things that he’s passing out. Okay, what David’s passed out is what we call the Annual Audit Agenda. There are lots of deliverables that we give to management to the city with the completion of an audit each year. Of course your finance statements are what’s issued whereby we look at all the funds and activities of the Augusta Richmond County Government. We also issue management letters where we talk about recommendations for improvement. We issue supplemental reports about you internal controls and your compliance of laws and regulations and the single audit report relative to your financial awards. We issue a lot of different things and what we’ve elected to do over the years is summarize it as much as possible because there’s a lot of different deliverables into this that David has just passed out. One of the things we talk about inside of here is exactly what is our role as your auditors and our role is what I’ve got on the screen as well. It talks about we’re asked by you all to express an opinion on your financial statements. Management is responsible for the financial statements and it’s their numbers that we are opining upon. We do follow government auditing standards and if were in your shoes one of the first things I’d want to know is well tell us how was what was the opinion on the finance statements. And our opinion is what we consider to be an unmodified it used to be called our entry unqualified and that is where we do believe your finance numbers do present fairly in all material respects, your financial position, your results of operations, your cash flows and disclosures, etc. That of course is the number one thing you want to get out of an audit is are these finance statements be relied upon. Another thing as I mentioned earlier we have reports on your federal programs and this past year you all took in about $14.7 million of federal funds. We perform tests on three of those major funds that represented almost $12 million dollars worth of federal monies. That of course had to do with your some HUD grants, some CDBG grants and the FEMA/GEMA ice storm grant that you all had. I’m still trying to work with them. Another thing that I wanted to talk to you about today is you know your financial statements themselves and like I’ve got on the screen your financial statements are pretty big. This is a pretty big balance sheet. If you look again at what I’ve got on the screen let’s kind of talk about some of the numbers here you’ve got about $1.75 billion in total assets. That is a pretty big balance sheet. Not a lot of local governments have that kind of balance sheet. Of course of that $1.75 billion $1.27 billion of that is capital assets we’re talking about your roads, your bridges, your water, sewer, airport, all those capital assets that are so important to a government. You’ve got about $770 million in liabilities. This leaves you with an equity position of about $975 million and again that’s a pretty strong balance sheet and I think we all would enjoy being able to say we have a balance sheet of $975 million net worth or net position. Entity wide the government also took in about $394 million worth of revenues and spent about $375 million so your bottom line was about $19 million, that’s what we call a net change. In the commercial setting we might call that net income okay? So again that’s a very quick picture of what happened entity wide. When you look at all your funds, all of your operations here at Augusta Richmond County that was the highlights of what we have here. Now I’ve got in broken down the next slide a little bit 17 more and we talk about the General Fund. Of course the General Fund is the heart and soul of the government. This year you all had about $36 million in total assets that includes some due from other funds for about $12.7 million. You’ve also got about $12 million of liabilities and deferred inflows giving you a fund balance of the General Fund of about $24 million. That’s a little lower than what it’s been in the past and I’ll tell you that’s pretty tight for a government of this size and nature to have a fund balance of 12-31 or $24 million. It’s you’ve got really good management on top of it ya’ll do an amazing job of working through the cash flows but you know typically a 12-31 government you would like to see fund balance be a little higher but again you always had fund balance on the lower side. This year it got even lower and I would definitely say the reason it got lower was because of the ice storm. You all spent about $17.3 million dollars on the ice storm damage this past winter, winter a year ago and FEMA/GEMA has only contributed back about $8 million thus far and so management has elected not to record a receivable on the contingency of getting it from FEMA/GEMA. So right now you’ve got about $8 million offsetting $17.3, the math is right there that’s about $9 million dollars that you had to spend of your fund reserves which caused your fund balance to go down the way it did. And you did have an ultimate use of fund balance of about $7 million if you had not had that ice storm you might have seen an increase in fund balance of say $2 million, $3 million something like that. But on the General Fund that’s a quick and dirty picture of what transpired with the General Fund this past year. Looking at your Special Sales Tax Fund just to give you a quick look on it it’s a very strong fund you’ve got a lot of monies there from the special sales tax. You’ve got about $83 million in total assets and most of that is cash in investments. You’ve only got about $6 million in liabilities we’re talking traditionally like accounts payable and accrued expenses to give you a fund balance in that fund of $77 million dollars. This past year it took in 37 and spent 37 it also had $31 million come in in transfers in from other funds and $14 million transferred out to other funds for a net increase of $17 million so your fund balance went from $60 million to $77 million in that fund but again a good looking fund there. If I’m in your shoes I’m looking at saying we’ve got the where with all the do the things the initiatives that we have told the people the people have voted on we’ve got it’s working right now you’ve got the funds there going forward to be proactive. On your water/sewer fund it of course looks like a business and it’s you know you’ve got about $378 million in assets, about $553 million in liabilities, you’ve got a lot of long term debt of course. Water/sewer operations that are growing or being improved upon often times have to issue long term debt. You all definitely have got a certain level of that but you do have an equity position there about $185 million dollars. This past year you took in about $90 million in revenues and you spent about $96 million for a net loss of about $6 million in that position. The Regional Airport also has a balance sheet similar to a business $101 million in assets, $23 million of liability, $78 million of net position or equity. It took in $16 million and spent $15 million for a total of a $1 million dollar change. That leads us to garbage collection a little bit smaller but again another business operation here at the city. It had assets of about $20 million, has a net position of about 18 took in about 21 and spent 19 for a $2 million dollar positive change so again that’s what took place in garbage. Another thing that we as your auditors are supposed to communicate to you is if we have any required communications meaning did we have any kind of problems with management, did we have any problems with independents, did we have any issues that auditing standards would tell us we need to communicate with the governing board such as yourself. I’m happy to say we don’t have any required communications that need to be addressed with you. Everything went very smoothly this year with the audit, we didn’t have any audit adjustments that management didn’t 18 want to book, we had good communication between all parties and it worked very well this year and I’m happy to say again nothing to share with you that I would otherwise have to. We do have some recommendations. The first we had had to do with the material weakness on internal controls. We had to make a restatement that is noted in the financial statement footnotes of this audit whereby we had to put in some assets from the prior year that were not properly reported. That was in the area of the Law Library, the TIA projects and the public roads fund. We made those adjustments we put those into the finance statements we went back and audited the opening element of those and we feel very good about where they stand as of today at 12-31-14 so you’re finance statements are very all inclusive they’ve got everything and we made sure that everything is where it needs to be. But it did result in a finding to where we recommended to management they do a little better job of making sure that all things are complete prior to issuance. Another thing that we got is other manager points. Some of these are over in the elected officials at the other constitutional offices. Number one basically has to do with cash bonds at the Sheriff’s office. Our recommendation is that we get a little bit more automated, a little bit more electronic technology oriented. A lot of the process over there is manual and as you know when you’ve got manual processes often times we make human errors. And we would just recommend we have a little bit better process there to track our cash bonds. Another thing at the Sheriff’s offices we recommend that we do take a look at the outstanding checks. There are quite a few of them there that are approximately about $96,000 dollars. Under the State of Georgia is a sheet laws any unclaimed property remits to the state which is kind of painful. That’s the way it works and we recommend that the Sheriff’s office look at those old outstanding checks and determine if under these sheet laws of Georgia any of that should be remitted to them. Number three we had was excess funds. I think you heard this from us in the past and it’s something we have that every government we serve we serve about 39 county governments in this state along with a about 300 total governments that we serve. Every county government that we go to I cannot think of one that we have not gone to that would not have number three here, excess funds. A lot of the elected officials don’t use a general ledger. A general ledger is a good way of balancing things at all times for every debit that has to be a credit but a lot of constitutional offices not just over here in the county but over in other counties they kind of use more of a manual system. We’ve got a receipts system and we’ve got a disbursement system and they don’t really always talk and walk together. And what happens is that over time you can have things get out of balance. As you know anything, the Tax Commissioner for example anything the Tax Commissioner holds belongs to others. Anything the Clerk of Court holds belongs to others so it’s important that any funds that you’re holding you always have an offset showing who it’s owed to and it should equal they should talk and walk together. And what we’ve got here we’ve got some excess funds of about 33 and $9,000.00 at these two offices. I want to give kudos to them for working on it. They have been working to minimize this but it is something that’s still a concern to us because when things don’t balance that creates and opportunity for things to never balance and for things to be improperly accounted for. The best thing to do is get it balanced, get it taken care of, address it and then proactively go forward to make sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s the best answer right there. Number four when we did the single audit I mentioned we had the HUD appropriately picked ultimately I think they did a pretty good job over there but as you would expect with a project as big as what you all are running through there we do recommend some better documentation of certain things being done and communications or reports being filed with the FED and the state. There was some discrepancies there, they weren’t huge but they’re enough that we had to talk to you all about 19 today to let you know that we could do better there then we’re currently doing. It’s a tough world in this federal government having to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T’ and I think when you look at all the programs you all have you do a very good job of it but in this one we looked at there were some shortcomings. We discussed it with management. Everybody’s on board and I think we just got to keep working harder to better at this area. The same thing could be true with the CDBG Program that we looked at; we also recommend better documentation. Additionally there was required monitoring going out to the various projects to take a look at certain aspects and elements of the projects due to what they call site visits. They were not being done in the manner and time in which they were supposed to and so we recommend you all do a better job monitoring and documenting what we do relative to those programs. The final page we’ve got here 6, 7 and 8 Reconciliation and Consolidated Cash Accounts you all have a lot of cash accounts. When you think about all the cash accounts that you all have in the general Board of Commissioners office along with the elected officials, constitutional offices you’ve got a lot of accounts. By and large they’re all being reconciled individually. All we would do is recommend that the government consider doing a glorified reconciliation on a monthly basis as well make sure there is no chance for any loose ends to be missed when you’ve got as many accounts as you’ve got here. Number 7 is Consolidation of Similar Funds. You all have as well as having a lot of cash accounts you all have a lot of funds here. Each fund is its own separate set of books; it’s got its own debits its own credits and have to monitored and operated and accounted for separately. We think you’ve got quite a few of them out there that are kind of old and outdated that we would just recommend to you to consider and have management maybe talk to you about it further about maybe should we consolidate some of those funds and let it be less numbers of funds and less clutter of funds and bring them a little bit tighter together. And the last thing that we’ve got is number 8 Capitalization of Construction and Progress. A lot of governments have this situation whereby we start a lot of projects and then maybe you decide to abandon the projects. And then when you abandon the project you don’t capitalize and depreciate it you then write it off. And what we’ve noticed over the last couple of years is Augusta Richmond County’s no different. You have projects and things you start that you many decide that it’s not really in the best use of the funds going forward and that they need to be abandoned not completed, let’s move on to another project instead. All we would do is ask you all to be a little bit more proactive in looking at that not let things go for too long before you all make such decisions as to if something should be written off. You know an example would be like some research where you all would go out there researching an idea. You can capitalize certain research but you’ve got to make sure you’re headed in the direction of doing the ultimate job and if you carry a lot of those things on your books and basically you’re inflating assets because if they’re not going to be done not going to be completed we may as well go ahead and write them off. And so our recommendation is let’s just make sure we do a little bit more proactive consideration of that question on an annual basis and not let it catch up with us over time. The last thing I want to talk about is new Gasby Pronouncements. Now I’ve talked to you about this one in the past couple of years and it’s now upon us. This next audit that you will be bringing forth and unfunded liability that have your pension plans. Pension Plans in the past have always been something that if you funded what the actuary said you had to fund on an annual basis then you were good, you would go you did what you were asked to do on an annual basis and any unfunded element would be just in the footnotes or in supplementary information for a reader who wanted to know could dive in and see. Well the standards changed and they’re going to be implemented this year that we’re now in 12-31-15, they’ll be implemented whereby 20 you’re going to take your unfunded pension liability the long term and it doesn’t matter if you were good and funded the current year portion or not. They’re going to ask every government to bring that in to their books. And in this case remember I said you had a $975 million dollar equity position, it’s going to go down by $42 million next year. It’s a big number but it’s not that big compared to your overall position. There are other governments out there that are going to take it on the chin pretty big. The state of Georgia is a good example. The Teachers Retirement System the Employee’s Retirement System we’re talking multibillion the State of Georgia’s going to be putting on their books this year. I’ve got one government over in the Atlanta area that’s going to have $1.1 billion hit its books as an unfunded liability relative to their long term pensions. Your numbers are actually very small for a government of this size. I also want to give you kudos. I think every time this community has done a very good job of managing its pension investments. You all look like you’re in pretty good shape. That’s demonstrated by having such a small $42 million if you want to call that small, it’s not $1.1 billion. And I’ve got a government about your size that’s got that same kind of a number come on board so again I think you’re looking pretty good. The last thing I’ll mention is something that’s just passed a couple of weeks ago. There’s not even any literature out on it yet but this pension standard that we’re talking about a $42 million the Gasby has made a decision that we’re going to do the same thing with other post employment benefits meaning if someone retires from here and they get healthcare coverage for a certain number of years after they retire and they’re on the plan here and that’s a benefit to them by being so you all are going to have to look at it with your actuaries and determine what that amount needs to be. In 12-31-18 you’re going to have to post probably about a $100 million dollar liability to your balance sheet at the entity wide level. I’m not talking the General Fund; make sure this is understood. I’m not saying the General Fund’s going to be hit. It’s this entity wide perspective when we look at the entire government it’s going to be about $95 million dollars. That’s that new standard and again it was just passed in June and like I said they haven’t even issued the literature on it yet even though I know what it’s going to say it’s going to be very similar to pension. But that’s going to be coming out there in the future and I just want to make sure you all had heard that first from me rather than on the street. The last thing I’d like to say is we appreciate being of service to you. We offer free continuing education that we have been pleased by your participation in. We do this once a quarter. We also issue newsletters and if you ever need anything from us relative to any particular subject please let us know. And again thank you for having us here today. Mr. Mayor: Thank you and again it was Miller Edwards? Mr. Edwards: Miller Edwards, yes, sir. Mr. Mayor: Thank you so much. The Chair will entertain any questions. We’ve got a motion to receive as information but I do have a question, Mr. Edwards, in regards to the Fund Balance. At $24 million would it be your recommendation that that amount approach five months fund balance if you will in the grand scheme of things? Mr. Edwards: Well, that question is one we’d have to look at the seasonality of things. th You know a 12-31 measurement of your balance sheet is very different from a June 30. It’s th even more different from a 9-30 a September 30. I look at two governments that are Triple A rated in this state. We all know Gwinnett County and Cobb County. Gwinnett County is a 12-31 21 and when you look at their balance sheet their fund balance at 12-31 is huge, okay? You look at Cobb County which is very similar in dynamics and financial prowess but you look at them at th September 30 and they’re skinny as can be. So you’ve got to make sure you’re looking at the right measurement of time. In the case of Augusta you all take in your property taxes during the fall and so you would expect fund balance to be a little bit bigger at 12-31 to give you the prowess of going through the upcoming year. But for you all to be at $24 million going into any new year that’s a little on the, I’m impressed by you all being able to go through a year not issue a TAN and apparently you all are doing a very good job managing those cash flows. That’s I mean I was just talking to Donna about that outside before this meeting started just asking that general question about how long’s it been since this government had to get a TAN and she said it’s been like 30 years. That’s exceptional so apparently you all are doing something right. So I hesitate to say what the right number needs to be. I think it’s one of those things you have to look at each year independently, you have to work with management say what do we need going forward, look at your initiatives, look at your goals and objectives and decide what do we need to do today versus what we did in yesteryear. And that’s really the only way I can answer that question. Mr. Mayor: Would you also speak to the issue of again utilizing the TAN what that means to this government if were to do that? Mr. Edwards: Well, the TAN is kind of like living on a credit card and if you don’t pay your credit card off monthly then it becomes that much harder to pay it off the next month. And that’s how I equate a TAN. And I’ve got some governments that they get a TAN like in January. They’re a 12-31 year and they get it in January. That’s not a good thing. We’ve got governments that also might get them in August trying to get through the next two or three months before property taxes come in. But it does put a government at a disadvantage if they’re having to get a TAN each year to get through those lean months. It means that you have to slow down your initiatives is what it really comes down to. And that’s again where you have to look at yourself and say are we initiative oriented or do we have a lot of things going on that we need to go address? Are we okay in this situation? th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 6. Mr. Hasan: Mr. --- Mr. Edwards: Edwards. Mr. Hasan: --- Edwards, yes, thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. In terms of the rating the Mayor just asking you about the $24 million and the impact of that what that number should look like but how does it in your mind does it affect our rating the $24 million compared to where we were a couple of years ago? Mr. Edwards: Are you talking about your bond rating? Mr. Hasan: Bond rating, I’m sorry. 22 Mr. Edwards: You know I’m not a bond rater but I would have to just perceive yes. Again when I look at this government of this size taking several hundred million dollars for your General Fund which is supposed to be the heart and soul of your government to be one of the leanest general funds as compared to its other funds you’re whole government as a whole you’ve got when you look at your Special Revenue Funds and you look at your Capital Project Funds and you look at the General Fund you’ve got like $190 million dollars worth of cash and investments but only 2.8 of that is in the General Fund meaning all the other ones all that other $188, $187 million they’re already in other funds and they’re already designated by how they’re going to be spent. You can’t go in there and raid those monies and say we’re just going to give it to the General Fund. So what that does that means your General Fund is not as strong as maybe your other funds are. And I’ve got to believe when you look at bond ratings that the stronger your General Fund is if you were at 12/31 you had five months worth of fund balance that would certainly make your bond rating look great. But again bond ratings look at a lot more than just the government itself. They look at the demographics the economics of the community they look at so many things. I’ve had clients that look really good but because of where they were located the bond rating just didn’t work so it’s just a component. So I wouldn’t want to put it it’s not all about your General Fund your general fund balance as you’re bond rated but I’m sure it does play a part. Mr. Hasan: Thank you. Final question, Mr. Edwards, in terms of some of the things that concern you as you look through there, are there some other things that you want us to deal with as elected officials here is there any thing that stands out to you that as you share with whether it’s the Administrator, some of the department heads who handle some of these projects, whether it was cash flow problems or what have you, is there something that you would like to say to us as elected officials this is what I want you guys to make sure that you elected officials stay abreast of this, don’t let this get out of your sight. Mr. Edwards. No, I think what I read to you today earlier was pretty much the things I wanted to make sure you knew about those nine manager points that we talked about. Those are the things I felt like you needed to know about. Certainly there’s other things I talked to management about as to things they might want to consider in the future but nothing of any magnitude and significance that I feel like I need to bring it also to you all today outside of what I’ve already communicated. Mr. Hasan: Thank you, sir. Mr. Edwards: Yes, sir. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 8. Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, this is actually directed to you. As far as your contacts that you have in Atlanta I would ask that if you could reach out to the people with FEMA to see if we could actually retrieve some of that money back to where we could increase our, that one account. And as far as, Mr. Edwards, I appreciate the presentation and I appreciate Donna as well as the staff of Augusta Richmond County for you know you could’ve been finding things and you didn’t. 23 Mr. Edwards: Well, again I think you’ve got a pretty good management --- Mr. Guilfoyle: Oh, yes --- Mr. Edwards: --- they do an excellent job. Mr. Guilfoyle: --- and that says you’re presentation actually says everything in a nutshell because you don’t show any kind of preference of --- Mr. Edwards: No, sir. Mr. Guilfoyle: --- any failure you have to be on us in legal and straight up about this and the only thing I ask you for is a copy of your presentation because it’s not the same thing that’s in our book. Mr. Edwards: And I understand that’s why I was just trying to highlight the Power Point and it’s saved right here they can get that to you along with all the deliverables that we’ve given to management. If you need the audited financial statements themselves they’ve got it, they’ve got everything that we’ve delivered to them. And if I were you so inclined I would ask for that too. Mr. Guilfoyle: Okay, I will ask Donna for that and I’d like to make a motion to receive this as information. Mr. Mayor: Okay, all right I’ll entertain --- Ms. Davis: I’ll second that. Mr. Mayor: --- okay, all right and if we hit the pause button for a moment the Chair recognizes Administrator Jackson. Ms. Jackson: I just wanted to let you know that our full audit documents will be online. They’re available on our website for any member of the general public to view as well as if any members of the body would like a hard copy we can provide that you also. Mr. Mayor: Including in the presentation that he shared this afternoon? Ms. Jackson: That’s correct. th Mr. Mayor: Thank you so much. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 5. Mr. Lockett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to say I thank you very much for your presentation. You were quite clear and I also want to thank the Finance Department and the others that were involved for a job well done. Thank you. 24 Mr. Edwards: Yes, sir, thank you. th Mr. Mayor: All right, the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 4. Mr. Sias: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Edwards, once again I want to say thank you but somewhere soon I want to have an audience with you and somewhere where there’s telephonic or what. For a year and a half I think now about a year I’ve been chasing this word this phrase called net position. Mr. Edwards: Yes, sir. Mr. Sias: And I’m still not entirely happy. I’ve chased it through ACCG and I’ve chased it with our local finance folks and I’m still chasing it and I’m still not comfortable. I really want to get a clear concise understanding of net position. Mr. Edwards: All right, well I’ll try to give it you now but I will offer you I’ll be glad to come visit with you any time. We don’t have to do it telephonically I’m up in this area all the time so I can always visit with you. We can go through and talk about any of these things that any of you all might want to visit and talk about. But net position unfortunately in the world of government we’ve got all kinds of terms and GASB when they came about in the 1980’s one of their one of their goals was to make financials understandable. I think GASB kind of lost that one in the last decade or so. They’ve now got different vernaculars that they’ve ever had before. They’ve had fund balance, we’ve had unreserved fund balance, unassigned fund balance all kind of different things. We’ve had net assets, we’ve had retained earnings, we’ve had equity, now the term is net position. And net position to me is the residual between what you’ve got for assets and what you’ve got for liabilities meaning individually if all I’ve got to my name is my house, now let’s just pretend my house is worth $100,000 dollars but I owe $20,000 and that’s all I’ve got then my equity my net position is $80,000. The trick is understanding the net position for that matter even fund balance it does not coincide with the word cash because like I said in my example about my house if I’ve got $100,000 dollars house and $20,000 in debt but I have no money in my bank account, I look like I’m worth $80,000 but can you buy my lunch because I don’t have any money. And so when you look at net position and fund balance you have to kind of dive further into what it is. You heard me mention the General Fund has $24 million in fund balance, okay but only 2.8 of that is cash. And so again fund balance is just one part of measuring something and then you kind of dive deeper into how further do you measure it. And that’s what I said I can sit down with you we can look at different funds and talk about their strengths and weaknesses and I’d be happy to work with you all on that. Mr. Sias: And I will certainly hold you to that, sir. I’ll be looking forward to it. Mr. Edwards: Just let me know. Mr. Sias: I will. Mr. Edwards: Again I can extend that to anyone on the Commission. 25 Mr. Mayor: Thank you so much, Mr. Edwards, and the folks from Maulden and Jenkins we appreciate the hard work that you’ve done. Mr. Edwards: Thank you. Mr. Mayor: And most importantly we appreciate the hard work of our finance staff Donna, Tim, thanks for what you do. All right I think we’ve got a motion and second to receive th as information before. This is my one offer to the Commissioner from the 4 I guarantee you th that if you get a German Shepherd from the Commissioner from the 9 you’ll catch what you’re looking for. Motion Passes 10-0. Mr. Mayor: Good to see former Fire Chief Freddy Manning in the audience and our distinguished firemen over here keeping the public safe. All right, Madam Clerk, I think we’ve got a couple of items for we go into a --- The Clerk: PUBLIC SERVICES 6. Approve Change Order #16 on the new IT Building in the amount of $36,462.34 for removal and replacement of unsuitable soils discovered during construction of the new drive between the IT building and the Law/Engineering Building. Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes Mr. Rhinehart . Mr. Rhinehart: Yes, sir, thank you, Mr. Mayor and Commission. As you are aware we’re getting close to final stages of this project but still do have a few tasks to button up. This is work that actually took place back in the spring around March timeframe when they were excavating and putting in the new drive and pavement between the IT Building and the Engineering Building. And during the course of doing that they discovered that some of the base soil material was not suitable to get the compaction necessary to repave. They had a testing firm that would’ve been working with the project managers Heery and the general contractor Turner that would do testing and then that firm would recommend okay you’ve got out enough of the bad soil that you can now put back good backfill material, compact it, pave over it and expect the pavement to hold. And so unfortunately it took the subcontractors some time to get all their documentation back to Turner in terms of weight tickets all the tonnage of material and such that they used. Now we finally have that in hand we can give you a final tally of what they did and additional soil removal and replacement. And that’s what this change order is in the amount that you see on the agenda. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 9. Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I guess my problem with this was why and I think you explained it a little bit just now but why did it take so long for this to get surfaced to the topic to get over here. I think this Change Order #16 and I don’t know just the IT Building 26 this change order in general but I’m wondering why we hadn’t we don’t have something in place to catch this kind of stuff earlier in the game. I guess it makes me a little bit leery when it comes in fact this should’ve been caught probably before some other stuff had been done. But I did get an explanation and why you just explained that they didn’t get to the forefront as quick as needed. But I think we need to be mindful of that so those kinds of things just don’t continue to happen. Mr. Rhinehart: Yes, sir, I’d agree. Normal course this should’ve been to you a couple of months sooner but every time the subcontractors submitted their paperwork to facilities and to Turner to prepare it, the documentation wasn’t lawfully in hand so they said we can’t run with what we say is the final number when we don’t have it all tallied. Now they finally have it and so but you’re right this is a couple of months behind when you normally would have seen it. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 4. Mr. Sias: Move to approve. Mr. Lockett: Second. Mr. Mayor: Voting. Motion Passes 10-0. The Clerk: PUBLIC SERVICES 7. Approve Change Order #33 for the Municipal Building Renovations project in the amountof $89,947.27 with Turner Construction Company for modifications to the space behind the Commission Chambers for use as a courtroom when needed. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 9. Mr. M. Williams: Mr. Mayor, I guess my question here is this something we have to do? This has been talked about for quite some time and I know construction has already started, begun but this has been up in the air back and forth whether or not this is a courthouse and should we use it. And after we’re talking about $89 thousand and we’re $90,000 dollars if you round it off with Commissioner Hasan’s money is that something we’ve got to? Mr. Rhinehart: Mr. Mayor, if I --- Mr. Mayor: Hang on just a moment, Ted, continue, Commissioner. Mr. M. Williams: No, I just needed I was questioning that. And I know we’ve been approached about being a, using this facility for that and here are additional $90,000 not $89,000 if you look at it I think the question is is this something we have to do? 27 Mr. Mayor: Right, so I suspect that what Deputy Administrator Rhinehart is going to tell us is what I was going to tell you but I’m going to give him a shot at it. The Chair recognizes Mr. Rhinehart. Mr. Rhinehart: Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor and Commissioners, you’re quite right there’s quite a history to this. We went back and checked the minutes from the middle of last year. Obviously at that time you were making changes to the space planned in the building, the Clerk’s Office was being moved and there is specific discussion about the fact that on the books it’s still listed as a courtroom or that the Commission is meeting at the courthouse and so the judges of course said if that’s the case we would like the ability to use this either on an emergency basis or a temporary basis when you’re not using it. I guess the perspective I would offer is out of a $40 million dollars project $100,000 plus some change to accommodate the third branch of government being able to use the space from time to time at least in perspective is not a large amount. Obviously $100,000 is still a large amount by itself. The potential benefit to you of the additional restroom the secured detention and some final finishing to the space behind you is at least when they do need to use for a temporary basis sometimes might include things like code enforcement cases, parking violations other things that also were also of benefit to a growing government urban area that at least you can hang your hat on. There is some side benefit to the one additional piece that we would still have to fund if that helps. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 9. Mr. M. Williams: If I can respond. If we knew how much use I mean I probably could, I mean I’m trying to figure out if we construct something and use it once a year or use it once a month I mean would it be feasible to construct what we’re looking at constructing back here to do that. Now if I knew we were going to use it for a particular court reason, time or whatever I mean to construct a facility and I’m just asking the question. I mean I’m not opposed to it I just want to know is it a good use of taxpayer’s money, I guess that’s what I’m asking. Mr. Mayor: I think that’s a very valid question and I do share that same concern. Mr. th Rhinehart, you’ll suspend. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 6. Mr. Hasan: Mr. Mayor, I’d like to try to answer my colleagues question a little bit from my perspective. I just think once again it represents some poor planning in a very real way because we’ve got a brand new judicial center and we should’ve severed ties in my mind with the courts from even being in this building. So we’ve got a brand new building across the street and for us to be building for a lack of a better term jail cells behind us, it’s just ridiculous. I think it was just poor planning we should’ve done all that across the street and severed those ties and the judges had no control over this particular building here. Poor planning. Mr. Mayor: Thank you, sir, I appreciate that. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner th from the 4. Mr. Sias: Mr. Mayor, thank you, Mr. Mayor, but since along the line we didn’t have the I guess the fortitude to amend our Charter and take the courthouse wording out of it, it may not 28 have been that simple but from my perspective it is. So with that being said we’re stuck with . Move to approve. this Mr. Lockett: Second. Mr. Mayor: All right, so I’ve got a motion and a second --- Mr. Fennoy: And an inquiry. Mr. Mayor: --- okay and an inquiry. State your inquiry. Mr. Fennoy: Number seven says that modification to the space behind the Commission Chambers for use as a courtroom when needed. That means that the courtroom will be behind here? Mr. Rhinehart: No, sir, the --- Mr. Fennoy: I was just going by what I read I mean --- Mr. Rhinehart: --- no, sir, in order in order to use this room as the courtroom what the judges want is that then your committee room would be where the jury would meet. What was a closet behind you would be built for secured detention, that’s the expensive part, is that if they were having to detain people appearing before the court then the Sheriff or the Marshal can be guarding the people who are in secured detention which is what they’re building. Then there’s also an additional rest room so that the jurors or the judge can go to separate rest rooms when and if needed. And then there and so that’s, that’s really the work that’s behind this physical chambers so it can be used as a court room but the courtroom itself would be this room. Mr. Fennoy: Okay, all right. Thank you. Mr. Mayor: We’ve got a motion and a second. Voting. Ms. Davis and Mr. M. Williams vote No. Motion Passes 8-2. The Clerk: ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES 8. Update on the disparity study. (Requested by Commissioner M. Williams) Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Dean of the Commission Commissioner Williams. Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I asked for this to be put on the agenda quite some time back and Ms. Gentry was supposed to fast forward I think I said that they are speed dialing something to Ms. Holt to get back what we needed to go ahead and move forward with something we’ve been dealing with for quite some time, for in fact we’ve been dealing with it 29 too long. I’d like to get an update from her as to where we are and how fast will that speed dial because it’s really moving slow for lack of better words. Mr. Mayor? Mr. Mayor: Yes, sir. Mr. M. Williams: I want to move this situation and move this item to Legal if we can to not today but our next Legal meeting to put this on to talk about. I did want to get an update from Ms. Gentry but in light of some information I would love to not put this out today but be able to go into Legal and be able to discuss it for our next Legal meeting. Mr. Fennoy: Is that a motion? Mr. M. Williams: That’s a motion. Mr. Fennoy: Second. Mr. Mayor: We’ve got a motion and a second to refer this to Legal. Motion Passes 10-0. The Clerk: PUBLIC SAFETY 11. Approve a request to release the following items to all retiring firefighters with at least 25 years of continuous service with the City of Augusta Fire Department and/or they are medically retiring due to an on the job injury acquired while working for the City of Augusta Fire Department: Service Helmet (for sentimental reasons) and Badges and Class A Dress Uniform (for burial purposes). (Requested by Commissioner Guilfoyle) Mr. M. Williams: So moved. Mr. Hasan: Second. Mr. Mayor: Okay, I’ve got a motion and a second. The Chair recognizes the th Commissioner from the 5 the Chairman of Public Safety Commissioner Lockett. Mr. Lockett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m in complete opposition to the approval of this agenda item today. I’ve been in contact with the retired firemen that initiated this action and I told them I would support this as Chairperson of Public Safety as much as I could depending on the finances. The committee process was circumvented; I don’t know why. Our Chief is unavailable today because of training. I would recommend in fact I make a motion, substitute motion that this agenda item be referred back or referred to I should say committee not the next committee meeting but the one after that so that our fire chief can be here to answer questions. I don’t particularly care about the way this process was done. A letter was used in order to put this agenda item on there. It wasn’t requested by the fire chief and it wasn’t vetted by the Public Safety Committee. So I would move that it be sent back to not the next committee but the 30 committee after that so that we can discuss it like we do all agenda items that relate to public safety and other committees. Mr. Fennoy: Second. Mr. Mayor: Okay, okay all right. I tell you what, well that’s what, I’m going to try and get clarification on that. I have a main motion which is what you see before you with a proper th second. Commissioner from the 5 is that a substitute motion that you’re making? Mr. Lockett: That is definitely a substitute motion. Mr. Mayor: Okay. Do I have a second? Mr. Fennoy: Second. Mr. Mayor: I’ve got a motion and a second. The substitute is to refer this back to the committee, is that not true? Mr. Lockett: To committee but not the next committee the one after that, Mr. Chair. Mr. Mayor: All right here’s our posture. I’ve got a motion, I’ve got a substitute motion to refer back to committee. Let’s dispense of this first and then we’ll see where that goes. Mr. Fennoy: Roll call vote. Mr. Mayor: Okay. All right, Ms. Morawski. The Clerk: Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor: You’ve got a substitute which appears, Commissioner, we’ll take that issue first and then we’ll --- Mr. Hasan: I just wanted to make a comment first. th Mr. Mayor: --- okay. All right I’ll recognize the Commissioner from the 6 for a comment. Mr. Hasan: Yes, sir, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I’m somewhat in the middle in terms of this information I mean in terms of the request. I think it’s a very honorable request but also I agree that we have opportune time to put it before committee and it’s too easy to correct it and since it’s not before a full committee it’s not a present issue I think all of us up here for the most part I think we are in agreement with doing this, protecting and supporting our men and women in uniform and I don’t think we can correct it. I think Commissioner Guilfoyle intent is very honorable in terms of trying to get this done. Commissioner I mean also Chief James this morning I had the pleasure of speaking with him he is out of town he won’t be back next week at 31 the committee meeting so I think Commissioner Lockett was deferring to the next committee cycle. And let’s just, this is too simple to get corrected --- Mr. Mayor: I’ll give you --- Mr. Hasan: --- (unintelligible) committee and not violate that process in this instance. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor: Okay. Mr. M. Williams: Point of Personal Privilege, Mr. Mayor? Mr. Mayor: State you inquiry. Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, sir. As a previous fireman this is so simple I mean I don’t know why we’re straining camels and swallowing gnats. This is something that a fireman who’s done 25 years of service with a sweaty old helmet that’s been beat up and thrown down and kicked around that nobody else wants anyway. His uniform his last Class A uniform the dress uniform that nobody else is going to wear I don’t see, this is prolonging some stuff. Now we argue about a lot of stuff but this one thing I don’t understand. How can we not give a uniform to a man that’s been on the job for, risking his life for 25 years or more? Now if you check you’re going to find some of these firemen got a uniform they had but 30 days, Freddy, they didn’t make a private and we here we’re dickering back about who’s Chairman who’s committee we’re on --- Mr. Mayor: All right. Mr. M. Williams: This is not fair, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor: --- I understand I fully understand there’s a lot of passion in the room. th Here’s what our posture is. I’m going to recognize the Commissioner from the 8 for an inquiry and then we’re going to take up the substitute motion. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner th from the 8. Mr. Guilfoyle: Mr. Mayor, I appreciate this. Somehow I knew that this was going to get pulled and you know this act of do what I say not as I do mentality. And if you look at items agenda items from 6 to 13 none of that has been gone through the committee cycle. We didn’t have a committee because we was in class for the ones who opted. Yes, I did put this on there was no ulterior motive it showed respect no different than the respect of our military. That’s it in a nutshell. But if we’re going to draw a line in the sand to where everything has to go through a committee before it comes to the commission let’s draw it. Let’s set up an ordinance to where we cannot do that. Mr. Lockett: Mr. Chair, a point of personal privilege. 32 Mr. Mayor: Our posture as I indicated a moment ago is we have a substitute motion. th The Commissioner from the 8 provided a comment. We’re going to take up the substitute motion --- Mr. Lockett: Mr. Chair, I asked for a point of personal privilege so I think I’m entitled to that. Mr. Mayor: As I stated a moment ago our posture is that we’ve got a substitute. The Chair has recognized the Attorney for parliamentary procedure. We’ve got a substitute and I’d like for you to give me a ruling on what our superior motion is that we should be taking up at this time. Mr. MacKenzie: Sure, since the motion has not been voted on then the right posture would be to defer to the rules regarding the amount of time that each Commissioner is allocated. And if they exceed their time then it’s up to the Chair to grant any extensions. If someone objects to that then there’s another procedure that you can utilize for the objection. Mr. Mayor: And the superior motion the motion to take action on, is it not true it’s the substitute? Mr. MacKenzie: That’s correct. Mr. Mayor: Okay. All right. I’ve got a substitute motion with a proper second from the st Commissioner from the 1. That is what is before us at this time. Madam Clerk, I’d like to vote on that --- The Clerk: Roll call. Mr. Mayor: --- on the substitute motion. The Clerk: Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor: And that is to refer back to committee. The Clerk: Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor: All those in favor will vote yea all those opposed will vote no. That is correct, the Commission has asked for a roll call vote. The Clerk: Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor: Thank you. The Clerk: Ms. Davis. Ms. Davis: No, ma’am. 33 The Clerk: Mr. Fennoy. Mr. Fennoy: Yes. The Clerk: Mr. Frantom. Mr. Frantom: No. The Clerk: Mr. Guilfoyle. Mr. Guilfoyle: No, ma’am. The Clerk: Mr. Hasan. Mr. Hasan: Yes. The Clerk: Mr. Lockett. Mr. Lockett: Yes. The Clerk: Mr. Sias. Mr. Sias: No The Clerk: Mr. Smith. Mr. G. Smith: No, ma’am. The Clerk: Mr. Dennis Williams. Mr. D. Williams: No. The Clerk: Mr. Marion Williams. Mr. M. Williams: No, ma’am. Motion Fails 3-7. Mr. Mayor: All right, thank you. Thank you. I know this is a very important matter. We’re all concerned from a public safety standpoint for the service of our men and women. At this time we’ve got the main motion that’s before us. Those in favor will vote yea and those opposed will note no. The Clerk: Roll call again? 34 Mr. Mayor: No, ma’am. Mr. Lockett votes No. Motion Passes 9-1. Mr. Lockett: Mr. Chair, a point of personal privilege. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 5 Commissioner Lockett. Mr. Lockett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Mayor: Yes, sir. Mr. Lockett: Mr. Chair and governing body and everybody else, I was not in opposition to the agenda item that we voted on. I had a discussion with them and I myself was the person that initiated this. I explained to them I’m a retired federal investigator and it meant everything to me when I retired to be able to keep my credentials. And I said, sir, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I said but the only thing I want to make sure of as Chair of Public Safety is that the money is available. I’ve already discussed that with the Chief and so forth but I wanted him to be back to testify before this body. But lastly I don’t want anybody to come here and question my support for people in uniform. I have 50 years of government service. I support all men and women in uniform and I told this young man that so please don’t mischaracterize my comments to anybody. Thank you. Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your comments. All right, so there is one more item that’s on the agenda Item 13 and in a parliamentary perspective I believe in order for us to take action on this it will have to be removed from the table. And so right now we’ve got (unintelligible) thing that will probably need to happen. The Chair recognizes Attorney MacKenzie to speak to that issue and then we’ll decide what we do next. Mr. MacKenzie: Will you give me just a second? Mr. Mayor: Yes, sir. Mr. MacKenzie: In accordance with Rule 30407 it says the main motion can be brought back for consideration only if a motion to resume consideration is accepted by the Commission during the same meeting. The motion will die if not taken up during the meeting. (Unintelligible) on that motion but since it is a new meeting the lay of the table which is to postpone it temporarily would not apply. It can be brought back up for discussion but the body could take the same action they took previously if it’s the intent to table for further direction. Mr. Hasan: Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor: All right. So essentially the ruling is that pursuant to the rules that we have then before us this matter is again a new issue at this point. 35 Mr. MacKenzie: Correct. th Mr. Mayor: Okay, all right, the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 6. Mr. Hasan: Mr. Mayor, before we actually get into the item I think the Attorney’s cleared that but if my memory serves me correct I would think the Attorney would owe the body an apology because he was asked that question if I’m not mistaken by Commissioner Williams. Well, Commissioner Sias initially asked was it going to be this, this particular meeting which nd was June the 2 and could we bring that back at this particular time in this meeting or not. And then Commissioner Williams came back and said you asked the Attorney and the Attorney came back and said you know well you can do it at this meeting or you could do it in future meetings. And Commissioner Williams was asking him to show me that in writing he looked to have that in writing at that particular time you said here it is right here and you slid your agenda book to him if my memory serves me correct. So I think an apology is in order. You know, we all make mistakes but let us know a mistake was made in that regard basically what I’m hearing now maybe I’m wrong because you’re saying now that to table it meant it had to be brought back up in the same meeting. And now you’re saying that now since we’re not in the same meeting now we’re in a different place now. That don’t mean we can’t deal with it but that’s what I’m hearing you saying. Mr. MacKenzie: Sure if I may, there are several different methodologies that can be utilizes to table an item one is during the same meeting and one is forwarded to be postponed to a time in the future which is my understanding what was done here. I think in the previous instance there was not a clarity on exactly what could be tabled during that meeting or could be tabled to a meeting in the future. The other Commission rules do not prohibit an item from being placed on there even if it has been “tabled before” which is what my opinion has been today. Mr. Hasan: Mr. Mayor, can I respond to that? Mr. Mayor: You may. Mr. Hasan: I don’t have a problem with that but that’s not what he’s saying. As I’m talking I’m getting more information in that regard. My point is just be clear about that because now you’ve expanded that to mean that it could be then as well as could be in the future. But your initial response you gave the response that it had to be tabled brought back at the very same meeting. I understand when you give us the information give us all the information so we can make an informed decision. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Commissioner. Mr. M. Williams: Mr. Mayor? th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 9. Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, sir. I specifically asked that question whether it’d be tabled for that particular meeting or when. And after the meeting had been adjourned the 36 Attorney shared with me in the back of the room here that there were several ways. And I said to him you needed to say that when we were in session up there, you needed to say that when you were up front. So I take issues with what was just read and what we was told and we depend on legal advice to lead us in the right direction. Now I’ve been talking about not getting paid on the Planning and Zoning Board but I need to get another check. I mean something just don’t make good sense. But we’ve been told two different things on this item here now so as far as I’m concerned it had not been took off the table to be put back on the agenda, then it’s still on the table and somebody needs to take it off and put it back. But I asked that question if we’re going to table it when we’re going to address it again. And after the meeting the Attorney said there’s several different ways three different ways I think he said. Mr. Mayor: Well, I appreciate that. I know that this is an important issue and I don’t want it to distract us from the matter at hand and that is the issue around stormwater but the ruling, the ruling from our meeting back in June everything whether it’s Robert’s Rules of Order, Mason’s Rule et cetera when you lay a matter on the table it generally has to be removed from the table and whether that’s legislative procedure at local or state level. And so I will tell you that the Commission rules dated 1996 are probably a little unclear and need to be updated with regards to what those current rules are. All right, so here’s our posture. We’ve got again an item that’s before us and it is at this point ready to be debated on to move forward that’s where we are. So based on the ruling parliamentary ruling we have an item that’s before us Item 13. The Clerk: ENGINEERING SERVICES 13. Approve proposed Amendment to Stormwater Ordinance. (Tabled by the Commission in meeting June 2, 2015) Mr. M. Williams: Correction, Mr. Mayor, correction. This item is it coming off the table now what I mean is that what we’re doing or are we talking about the item? Mr. Mayor: That’s what I want to know. Mr. M. Williams: The Clerk is reading the item for sure, she’s doing her job, but my question is, is that item being read to be coming off the table or is that item being read to be discussed to vote on? Mr. Mayor: The Chair will entertain a motion. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner th from the 4. Mr. Sias: Mr. Mayor, thank you. Thank you I’ll probably throw at little additional confusion in this but I move that this item remain tabled until we bring it forth again. Mr. Mayor: That motion fails without a proper second. The Chair recognizes the th Commissioner from the 8. 37 Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, there’s three ways to table an agenda item. One you could table until the end of the meeting. The second one is table it to a designated time in the future. The third one you could designate it to be tabled indefinitely. Now if Commissioner Sias wants to table it to a certain date I’d be happy for that. Mr. Mayor: Commissioner, I think we’re beyond that point. Mr. Guilfoyle: Okay. Mr. Mayor: It’s already on the table and the question of the matter that’s before us is we motion to remove this from the table. need a Mr. Lockett: So moved, Mr. Chair. Mr. Hasan: Second. Mr. Mayor: We’ve got a motion and a second to remove from the table. All those in favor will vote yea and all those opposed will vote no. Mr. Guilfoyle, Mr. M. Williams and Mr. Fennoy vote No. Motion Passes 7-3. Mr. Mayor: All right, all right this item has been removed from the table and our posture now is that we are going to debate this issue, that’s where we are. Okay now what I’d like to do is I’d like to limit debate to 30 minutes. The Chair will entertain a motion. Mr. Lockett: So moved limiting the debate to 30 minutes. Mr. Fennoy: Second. Mr. Mayor: We’ve got a motion and a second. Mr. M. Williams: Mr. Mayor, I’ll tell you what, I heard some stuff. Mr. Mayor, explain to me how we’re going to vote to limit the conversation to 30 minutes. That’s a brand new one I guarantee you but I heard it. Mr. Mayor: Well, you know --- Mr. M. Williams: If we can do that, we can do it every week. Mr. Mayor: Now we can. We absolutely can and you know I’m new to this rodeo from a local standpoint but I’m not new to government and pursuant to your rules that you like to refer to me often about --- Mr. M. Williams: It was put out (inaudible). 38 Mr. Mayor: --- Rule 3.04.05 says that we can limit or extend debate. And we’ve got a motion and a second to do that. The Clerk: Mr. Mayor, who seconded that? Mr. Mayor: I think I heard it over here on this side. That was a motion to limit debate st that came from the Commissioner from the 1. The Clerk: Mr. Fennoy. Mr. Mayor: Yes, ma’am. The Clerk: Okay, thank you. Mr. Mayor: All right, I’ve got a motion and a second to limit debate to 30 minutes. All those in favor will vote yea all those opposed will vote no. I’m going to speak to Commissioner Williams as a comment and that is that as I understand it this government even before my arrival has been talking about stormwater since 2012. Mr. Fennoy, Mr. D. Williams, Ms. Davis, Mr. Lockett and Mr. Hasan vote Yes. Mr. Sias, Mr. Frantom, Mr. Guilfoyle and Mr. Smith vote No. Mr. M. Williams abstains. Motion Fails 5-4-1. Mr. Mayor: All right, we’ll talk about it until Jesus comes back. I have a direct line to him; I call on him every day. All right, this is where we are. The Chair’s going to recognize the Administrator to speak to this matter. Ms. Jackson: Thank you. Mr. Rhinehart and I have a brief overview of this where we are with the stormwater recapping a purpose of this proposal as well as the implications for it whether it passes or not. So I’ll turn it over to Mr. Rhinehart at this point. We have a Power Point presentation I believe it’s being cued up and we’ll go from there. Mr. Mayor: All right. Mr. Rhinehart: I think a good place to start in this since you have had a lot of debate for some time on this is where the auditors left off in their talking about our financial position. And they talked about how a lot of the number comes from an assessment of the value of your water lines, your sewer lines, your roads and of course your stormwater lines. And knowing that you’ve invested millions especially from SPLOST over the years in improving the storm system you then have and asset now of course that’s deteriorating. And so the main goal of this program all along it’s been debated for the last few years is how to fund the operation and maintenance of that stormwater system like you do for the water, sewer system, like you do for road maintenance when you do resurfacing and there hasn’t been adequate money in the General Fund to do operation and maintenance or to make repairs to the system. And knowing that nobody wants to raise property taxes then of course the city began to look at a fee for service like water, sewer or 39 like many other communities in Georgia and other states have done. That of course also then helps you then comply with the new stricter federal regulations on these systems. The federal government now treats a storm system like a water sewer system that you have to have an operating permit then you have to inventory the system. In the last SPLOST you approved several million to do that inventory. You have to report just like you do with the auditors and GASB on the condition of the system. The Finance guys look at it terms of depreciation, the engineers like Abie and his team look at it in terms of operating condition. And so there’s been a lot of debate about how we’re going to fund that operation and maintenance such as cleaning ditches, cleaning ponds, cleaning catch basins, mowing the grass that grows up in the ditch and causes flooding problems. And in order to maintain a system this size the consultants doing the study, the engineers on Abie’s team came up with the number of at least $10-12 million a year to do operations and maintenance. Just like you might spend $50 million in maintaining your water sewer plants or $20 million dollars operating the landfill and picking up the trash this is essentially that same kind of position that you’re looking at. Also included in this is being able to look at capital repairs that are needed. Just like any utility beyond operation and maintenance cleaning, sweeping, cleaning catch basins, cleaning ditches becomes some minor repair work. A lid has collapsed on a catch basin or a culvert pipe has deteriorated under the street or a channel is no longer adequate capacity and it’s beginning to back up stormwater and needs to be widened. And so a utility will usually do minor capital improvements on things that might be a $50,000 dollar price or a $100,000 dollar price or a $200,000 dollar price enough that you’re going to have to bid the work and hire a contractor but not enough that it becomes a major capital improvement. Those are kind of on the line between what you could use a fee for what you might use your SPLOST for because they are still capital there’s minor capital. In the current analysis that led to the recommended $19 million dollar program 10-12 million of which is operation and maintenance, $7 million of it is this minor capital improvement like pipe repair or catch basin replacement. In the ordinance that’s proposed it was anticipated in the Cost of Service Study they did that you would continue to count of SPLOST for about $5 million of that minor capital per year and then a couple million of it would be in the fee itself especially for things like rolling stock or minor capital repairs like catch basin repairs but there’s been discussion as you’ve been debating it that maybe you’d want to move all capital to SPLOST and reduce the fee. If you do that then you could move some of this minor capital to SPLOST and then just but you’d continue to need at least the $10-12 million per year for the operations and maintenance because you can’t charge maintenance to a SPLOST. That happens to be an operating expense just as auditors who were just here would state. Too bad they weren’t after this instead of ahead they could validate that. So that’s how we got to this point where you are now where we’ve been debating how much operating and maintenance, how much capital, what can we count on from the SPLOST, what do we need to fund either through General Fund Taxes (inaudible). The current ordinance you’ve got recommends 640 which would fund operation and maintenance plus a couple million per year for that capital. If you want to do as some of you discussed move all the minor capital over to SPLOST instead of doing some with the fee that would get the fee down to about 550 per ERU because there’d be a couple million coming out of that $14 million or so the fee would pay for. So it would go down from 19 minus 5 to 19 minus 7 and so then beyond that if you said we’re willing to accept a little lower level of service to maybe cleaning ditches as often, cleaning pipes as often, cleaning catch basins quite as often you could still meet the federal obligations to inventory and maintain the system, you can still deliver a basic level of service. If you went much below something like $5.00 dollars ERU you’d have 40 trouble adequately maintaining it in order to meet those federal obligations and deliver a good level of customer service to the people who depend on the system to operate. Now if the fee goes in place whether it’s $5.00, $6.00, $6.40 at whatever level then of course some of the major property owners like schools or major industrial facilities can then come in through the credit process that’s in the ordinance and demonstrate do they have on site detention, are they doing things beyond basic detention to improve water quality per the federal regulations. Do they have in place like filter strips along the pond or weir that controls more siltation from getting out? And if they have those kinds of things then through the credit manual that’s proposed in the ordinance they could get up to 65% of their fee reduced based on those engineering standards of how much of that additional improvement have they done on their own site which then doesn’t charge as much stormwater to the public system that the city has to maintain the ditches and pipes and such that we’re responsible for. Now if you decide to proceed with the utility and a fee, how long does it take to get the bills out? Well in previous action you authorized the software necessary to put it on the utility bill if you’re ready to go but we still need a period of time about five months in order to test the software, do the final training of the employees using it, train the customer staff that are going to get the questions, test the system adequately and then get those bills out. So that’s still going to be some time even if you go ahead and act sooner to let people know do some planning and the benefit would be they would know is it going to $5.00, $6.00 whatever the number that they can get ready for as we get the software tested and ready to send the first bills out. And at this point I think I’ll turn it back over to the Administrator. Ms. Jackson: I just want to take a moment to recap our history on the stormwater implementation process. Back in February of 2009 with the passage of SPLOST VI voters approved money for the implementation of the stormwater utility. At that point $3.5 million dollars was set aside for the program. Obviously in terms of the ballot and what went out on that it did not specifically say stormwater utility on the ballot but that was clearly listed in all of the backup materials. And I understand in the various public meetings that were available that line item was completely spelled out. Following that in October of 2013 Augusta hired AMET to perform a rate study and develop a business plan for the stormwater utility and out of that rate study came the recommendation for the$6.40 monthly charge per ERU. Also following that in February of last year our Engineering Department was approved by the Commission to hire consultants to do a mapping inventory of our system to determine what we have, what structures are out there, how those structures would need to be managed and maintained in order to implement fully a stormwater utility program. Finally in March of this year as Ted just referenced you all approved the ENCRESTA billing system which will be billed through the Augusta Utilities Department and they have been given a notice to proceed. There are a number of items that they services that they can provide for us that are helpful to implement the stormwater utility as well as other services that we just need that would benefit our organization and then now moving forward to integrate that into the system. In terms of that’s what happened in the past, let’s talk about what’s happening now in terms of next steps. I mean essentially we’re at the final step here all the other presteps that have been taken to implement the stormwater utility or what we call the Phase I steps. Phase II is approving a draft ordinance. We have the ordinance, draft ordinance that has been provided in your booklets it is written for the $6.40 per month level based upon what was the recommendation of our consulting firm and it st shows an effective date of July 1. Obviously we passed that date; we would ask today if it is 41 the will of the body to approve that that we look at an effective of January 1, 2016. That would allow us five months roughly 5 ½ months for the implementation of the billing system and development of operating procedures to complete the process. Also we understand that the fee is still under debate but we had to write the ordinance for some number and it was written the recommended number. We understand that that number may be subject to change per your discussion today. In terms of alternatives the last thing I’d like for you all to consider is you know if this program does not go through what happens, what are the alternatives for us. One of the best things I think that has come out of this process so far that in all of our discussions I think I’ve heard just about everybody on the dais indicate that they understand the need for us to do something related to better operations and maintenance of our stormwater system. Obviously a major question has been do we do that now or do we wait until sometime later in the future and that is certainly a decision that is within your hands. I do want to make clear though that there are some consequences to not or delaying not making this decision or delaying the decision. First is that we get further and further behind in our quest to comply with more strict federal and state regulations. Unfortunately you know this is not something that we just came up with that we thought was nice to do; there are federal and state regulations with which we have to comply. Our Engineering department has been very deft in the past in dealing with the regulators in saying you know we’re doing this, we’re inventorying the system, we’re doing the mapping, you know giving the indications certainly that we’ve taken some progressive steps but until we actually put a program in place and we fully fund that program we are going to have a significant problem continuing to satisfy those federal and state regulators who are expecting certain things to happen so that we can maintain our permit. Next thing I have to be very clear right now we have a very haphazard approach to management. What happens is that a Commissioner or a neighborhood or citizen calls our Engineering Department and the Engineering Department tries to jump out and respond to whatever they’re getting called about which is a squeaky wheel sort of system. I mean it’s not a systematic approach to maintenance; it’s maintenance when we get a phone call which I don’t think is really fair to citizens across the board in our county. But that’s what we’re doing now and it’s been very haphazard and I think most of us would agree it hasn’t been entirely effective. Third is one of the issues we talk about now as we’re going into the discussion of a SPLOST referendum. One of the few questions that we always get asked is can we maintain what we build. We ask those who are requesting SPLOST funds from us to say you know tell us what is your funding stream that you anticipate to take care of whatever it is that you build. If we’re in a situation where we use SPLOST money to make major storm drainage improvements which we’ve done some in the past admittedly not as much as we probably should have but we’re in the process of doing some right now with the current SPLOST funds that are available we would anticipate doing more of those with future SPLOST funds if they’re made available to us by the voters. We have to be able to maintain whatever is that we put in place. All the big pipes and sophisticated drainage systems that we’re laying, the detention ponds that we’re creating we have to have some provisions to take of those structures once they are created. So I think that’s it, Mr. Mayor, for our overview of where we are right now. We’d be willing to entertain any questions. Engineering staff is here if there are any detailed questions beyond what Ted and I can respond to. So we take the floor back to you, sir. Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Madam Administrator. Don’t go anywhere, I think you’re going to have a couple of questions. And I’m going to start with the gentleman who has not spoken th today Commissioner from the 7 Commissioner Frantom. 42 Mr. Frantom: Thank you, Mayor. So obviously you have read that I feel like the SPLOST needs to become, come before stormwater. My question is what are the implications if SPLOST fails? You know you have $7 million in there let’s say we started a $5.50 rate today are we going to have to go back to the citizens in your mind and say it’s nine, ten, eleven or what’s the implications there? Ms. Jackson: If we’re in a position where we do not get the money for the capital improvements that we’re talking about at least at that point we would still have $10-12 million dollars available to do the basic type maintenance type functions that Ted described earlier. So we would at least be in a position where we could maintain what we currently have. We couldn’t build anything new but we could better maintain what we currently have. Mr. Frantom: In your mind is this the max that we can put in stormwater inside of SPLOST? Ms. Jackson: $7 million dollars is the max. We’ve turned that number over a number of times and tried to turn it upside down and any which way to see what else we could do. Basically the way the stormwater program was designed by the AMEC Consulting Group was that they envisioned $5 million dollars per year from SPLOST. I think part of that was because they thought that was perhaps the most that this body would be willing to approve and the public would be willing to approve. After hearing the discussion from all of you I think most of you said well what’s the most that we can take out of SPLOST. If it’s your will to put that on the referendum or we can get it approved we do believe we could add $2 million dollars a year for those minor capital improvements that category that Ted spoke of. And if you need him to speak on it a little bit further detail we certainly can do that. But if we up it from $5 million dollars to $7 million dollars I think that’s the maximum contribution that SPLOST could make to the stormwater program that’s being designed for this purpose at this time. Mr. Frantom: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. st Mr. Mayor: Thank you. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 1. Mr. Fennoy: Yes, Mr. Mayor, I’d like to make a motion to approve at $6.40. Mr. Lockett: Second. th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 4. Mr. Sias: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to say clearly from the beginning I’ve always been in support of a comprehensive stormwater program and a fee to get, to take care of our stormwater drainage system that we have here in Augusta that’s in real bad shape. But as we look at this ordinance there are some things that I feel that’s important to be in there. I’m in complete support of it whether it be at $6.40 or $5.00 dollars or $5.50 because in going out through the neighborhoods it’s not the fee itself, it’s where you spend the money. And in one of the, if I may, Mr. Mayor, since we don’t have a limit here this time I would like for us to insure 43 that we have a couple of designated things for this particular item rather we can’t put it in the ordinance in some cases but we may need we need a commitment to it. For our SPLOST we need a commitment of anywhere from $30-45 million to go into this and from $5-9 million per year. We also I believe may have been included (unintelligible) as a standard operating procedure that we discussed with the engineers. And if I may ask, Mr. Mayor, can I pose a question to Mr. Ladson while I have the mike. Is that okay, Mr. Mayor? Mr. Mayor: Anything you say (unintelligible). Mr. Sias: Well, I’m asking permission. Understanding that the SOP items have been included I’m not looking for the whole thing about it but basically have we got the SOP concept locked in? Mr. Ladson: Yes, sir, I think in the original request for the SOP I think it stated from 30 to 60 days and the majority of that information we actually have. Mr. Sias: And the idea and the concept behind the SOP was to have a methodology for the operation and to be able to quickly have commissioners on board with where you were and being able to show the public what was being done. Am I correct? Mr. Ladson: That’s correct. Mr. Sias: Thank you, Mr. Ladson. And, Mr. Mayor, just one other thing I think we’ve had consideration of an oversight committee and I just want to make sure those things if those things are included then I can, I will support this stormwater fee and the process we need at this program in its entirety. Thank you, sir. Mr. Mayor: Okay, all right I know there’s going to be a lot of discussion. I’m going to thth go to the Commissioner from the 8. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 8. Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The presentation that Mr. Rhinehart done, you talk about totals of $19 million and then take out the $7 million that will leave $12 million dollars for the fee. The plan that was originally proposed to us through the consultant company wasn’t it $17 million, seventeen if memory recalls $17.8 not $19? Mr. Reinhart: They were showing that, they were showing a five year Cost of Service Study and so you’re right. Your one it started a little lower than by your five it was up to nineteen and so that’s why in that first slide I was on average you’d be $10-12 million a year for operations because they had a flat $5 million a year towards capital coming from SPLOST. Mr. Guilfoyle: All right wouldn’t --- Mr. Reinhart: So it goes like from $17-19 over five years and that’s based on a lot of assumptions their accountants do about how much growth will there be in the community with new impervious surface, how many people pay the bill on time or do you chase a little bad debt and then how many final credits do you give out. So they have kind of a range of estimates 44 that’s why they start a little lower seventeen eventually grow to nineteen and thus that first slide said after you net out your projected $5 million in SPLOST you’d have 10-12 for operations and maintenance. Mr. Guilfoyle: Wouldn’t through the longevity of this program that we have it’s no different than preventive maintenance. Once you get it replaced let’s say a pipe in the ground, with the new pipe I think it lasts 50 years whatever at that point the cost of maintenance should decline. Is that correct? Mr. Rhinehart: Although in a stormwater system this large a lot of what that maintenance cost is is cleaning because there’s siltation, there’s debris, there’s grass that’s growing and filling up a ditch. And so they’re doing a lot of --- Mr. Guilfoyle: We know about that. Mr. Rhinehart: --- cleaning and so it you’re right that what we’re probably calling more minor capital is the fact that over the course of that 30 or 50 year life of that pipe or that concrete catch basin or lid on top of it some of them will break and require minor repair or replacement but the pure maintenance of it is mostly cleaning the system as opposed to what you have like with the waste water plant where a lot of the maintenance costs itself is PM on greasing a pump or PM on replacing a filter for instance. Mr. Guilfoyle: Has any thought or consideration has been given in through the consultant company since you’re so knowledgeable on this, Mr. Rhinehart, is that whatever a district produces in revenue or a fee it remains in that district? Mr. Rhinehart: The challenge with the utility concept like this is that for it to be a legal fee which the lawyers would call equal protection under the law that you’ve got to show that the level of service matches the cost of service. And so for the system as a whole what they’re saying is how frequently you clean ditches, clean catch basins, clean ponds, repair pipe needs to be at equal levels of service across the system whether you’re in a rural area or urban area commercial property, industrial property you’re receiving that equal level of service --- Mr. Guilfoyle: But not at an equal level of charge. Mr. Rhinehart: --- well it’s the same cost of service --- Mr. Guilfoyle: Okay. Mr. Rhinehart: --- based on the amount of impervious surface. So just like water’s based on how many gallons you take the stormwater fee is based on how much impervious surface then creates discharge of stormwater to pipes and the ditches. Mr. Guilfoyle: Mr. Rhinehart, thank you for your time. Mr. Mayor, I’d like to make a motion to deny the proposed amendment to the stormwater and to direct the Administrator and 45 Finance Director to make any necessary budget adjustment to make up for the lost projected revenue from the stormwater service. Mr. Grady Smith: Second. Mr. Mayor: All right, I’ve got a motion and a second, substitute motion and a second, that’s what’s before us at this time. All right the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the th 9. State your inquiry. Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I’m listening and hearing conversation as if we’ve already passed the SPLOST. I mean this sounds like we already got that and if we have I’ve got no problem supporting this. But my problem is if we do this SPLOST early like this body wants to do in November there’s only one thing on the ballot it’s going to be a very low turnout. It’s been even lower when we have a small turnout with Commissioners more than one’s been very low. So with the SPLOST on it by itself it’s going to be a very low turnout. We have not sit down and formulated a list of projects that we’d like to see, we had not talked about that. And now if we pass this fee and we’re calling it a fee, it’s not a tax do we think that the general public’s going to say okay that SPLOST is just as important. I think I mean I know we need to do something, I heard the Administrator she said earlier that we all up here know that something’s got to be done. The rain we had the other day any street’s you’re riding you know I see a problem. I know we need to do something but first things first I think. And if we go ahead and pass this today ya’ll may have the votes to do that then I think we’re going to shoot ourselves in the foot sort of when we get ready to do the SPLOST because people are going to have a low turnout now. If we’re going to do it next March people got time to hear where you know go back and lay down and think about it and say well maybe I’ll go ahead and support it. But right now in your face I think we’re going to lose more than we’re gaining. I still say I think we need to do it but remember we lost a SPLOST last time because, well, it was set up bad. And if the people came out in numbers and say it was bad what do you think the haters are going to do. The people who strong ain’t going to come, Grady, when they really say I’m going against it. Those aren’t going to come out there. We can’t control that. So we got to do something and a SPLOST that’s going to excite the community that want to do that that want to put a packet together and say hey I don’t care about a stormwater fee. If ya’ll are going to do this I’m going to be with you but just to not show nothing and ask the people to do that whether it’s $5.00 dollars or $6.00 dollars it don’t add up to me. The other thing is the enterprise we know what we’re doing with Tom Wiedmeier he’s sitting back there look at him smiling and he didn’t do that himself he’s over that department but when you set an enterprise up, who’s going to control. I mean it’s out of our hands. And I hear people say well we can pull it back in, no, when you set that enterprise up and it gets going and every unit is being built up from that point on is going to continue to add to it, add to it, add to it. Ya’ll done lost me man I’ve been here getting gray headed for don’t laugh, Sean, you’re getting gray headed too now. Mr. Frantom: I’m already losing my hair. Mr. Mayor: Well, I’ll tell you I can’t speak to that losing hair and thank God I want it to th turn gray. But the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 6. 46 Mr. Hasan: Mr. Mayor, you’ve got hair to talk about. I’m the one who can’t speak about losing hair. But I do have some Rogaine for you, Commissioner Williams, if you need some. But you know, Mr. Mayor, it’s, my colleague Mr. Williams made a lot of great points and all the commissioners have in inquiring about the but one thing for sure when he said put first things first I think we you look at it from that perspective alone from the slides that we we’re been shown we’re been doing this since 2009; we didn’t just start this. 2009 this body by way of SPLOST allocated three and a half million dollars for this particular program so we’re about going into six years now trying to make a decision about what needs to be done. I also agree that SPLOST is something that the SPLOST I mean I mean to say SPLOST now SPLOST is something that we should be concerned about. But always remember we do determine what goes on the SPLOST. This body does determine what goes on it so we can make it as attractive as it needs to be with the support of this body to get the job done at the end of the day. I will be honest with you all. I’m sure in my district there’s some of my constituents who probably wants no part of the stormwater but I will tell you I have not spoken to them yet. All of mine have been understand the need of it understand the marriage between those two the stormwater as well as the SPLOST just do it. One of their main concerns was about protecting the integrity of the process, process meaning that the money and the things will do what it says it’s supposed to do at the end of the day. And I don’t think we need to make that decision and we get behind each other and we push the SPLOST through at the end of the day. I think we ought to do that. Sometimes as leaders elected officials people choose us to make the tough decisions, they’re not privy to all the information that we have at our disposal and we have to make those decisions. We can’t fear about the consequences at the end of the day. If I make a bad decision or get recalled or what have you if I’m comfortable with it I can go to the house I think I’m still welcomed there. When I left this morning I was anyway. I don’t know what it looks like now but I’m prepared to live with those consequences of doing something we know that needs to be done. All my calls, all my calls literally all my calls I will tell you I can give you a list of my constituents that are in my district and out of my district that I have been blessed by the department heads and things who work with me to answer those calls of duty so the taxpayers can get that which they’re paying for. Those things have been stormwater related nothing else but stormwater related and we need to do this. We need to do this and just look our people in the face and say Augusta’s going to be a better place, there’s no doubt in my mind. For the last three or four months that we’ve been looking at this and when I took office early I clearly understood that 2015 was going to be a tough year for us that we’re going to have to toughen up or suck it up. And some will say excuse the terminology because some tough decisions are going to have to be made. But those decisions that we make today are that we make going forward. Those decisions will give us a foundation to do great things in this community and we cannot ignore that or run away from it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for your time. Mr. Mayor: All right thank you, sir. We’ve got a, we’ve got a substitute motion that’s before us and a proper second to deny this motion. I believe that was your motion Commissioner th, from the 8 is that correct? Mr. Guilfoyle: Yes, sir. Mr. Mayor: Okay. All right that’s what we’re going to take up now. We’ve got a motion to deny and we’re going to vote on that now. Voting. 47 Ms. Davis, Mr. Frantom, Mr. Guilfoyle, Mr. M. Williams and Mr. Smith vote Yes. Mr. Fennoy, Mr. D. Williams, Mr. Sias, Mr. Lockett and Mr. Hasan vote No. Motion ties 5-5. Mr. Mayor: Does this body want to reconsider this action? The Clerk: The Mayor votes No. Mr. Mayor: All right, the motion fails. I don’t have a long speech but since --- Mr. Speaker: (inaudible). Mr. Mayor: --- that’s correct, the substitute motion fails. All right, here’s where we are. We’ve heard from the Administrator and her staff, we’ve heard from Engineering, we’ve heard from the consultants. This is an important issue. I stayed out of this issue until the point in time where we appear to get bogged down. I’ll offer some suggestions in writing to those who were engaged in this issue. As I’ve said all along in listening to the constituents across this county what I’ve consistently heard is that there’s interest in if we’re going to do it tell people what we’re going to do, how we’re going to implement it and when. What I’ve heard today is that if we implement this and move forward we’re going to have an implementation date of January 1, 2016. I can support that. What I’ve also heard loosely is a commitment to SPLOST on the order of $30-45 million. I can support a $45 million dollar commitment to SPLOST with the understanding that that $9 million appropriation each year over the 5 year period of time does not reduce the base rate but rather allows us to focus on capital projects, large capital projects. I’m committed to that. I’m committed to $45 million being dedicated and I think our citizens wanted to hear from us with regards to what are we committed to as it relates to infrastructure in the city. I too share the sentiment that we need to do something transformative in Augusta. For years we pass one SPLOST after the other and limped along as a city taking care of small cap projects but never really tackling the big projects to say that we’ve substantially gotten anything done in a community, in a neighborhood, in a subdivision. I want to see that get done this time where we tackle a large cap project whether it’s east Augusta, National Hills if it’s a $15 million dollars project I want to see it get done so that four years from now we can all walk away from the table and say you know what we’re not talking about it 20 years down the road. I’ve also heard that we’ve got a credit process in place that we’re ready to implement. What I’ve heard is that the engineering staff is ready to work with residents and the commercial industry area to make sure that we fully implement that. I can support that. What I’ve also heard from our engineering folks is that because the public asked what is it going to cost me. If I’m a resident at 1525 Sassafras Lane what is it going to cost me on a monthly basis? What I’ve heard from our engineering staff is that they are prepared to within 30 days put an insert into the water bills that allows a resident to know where he or she can expect to pay. I think that’s a good thing. What I’ve also heard from Engineering that within 60 days they are prepared to be able to put that same information on the city’s website so that John Doe who lives at 1524 Sassafras Lane can in fact go there and see what he or she might particularly be paying. I’ve also understood that in our ordinance that’s being proposed is a review that probably speaks to the concerns of the th Commissioner from the 9 that every five years this issue of stormwater the success of the 48 program would be reviewed by subsequent commissions whether those of us who are here today are here or not but it would be in the ordinance that every five years that would be under review. I can support that as well. And so given our posture where we are those are the things that I can support as it relates to stormwater if we move forward with it along with a base implementation rate of $5.00 dollars. As I’ve heard from constituents all across the entire county from west Augusta to south Augusta, parts in between, whether it’s Arcadia, whether it’s Georgetown that’s what I’ve heard. And so on the basis of that we have before us those things. Since I don’t get a chance to vote unless this is in a tie I probably won’t get an opportunity to make sure that those things are in there but at least you know what I want. Mr. Hasan: Mr. Mayor? st Mr. Mayor: All right, the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 1. Mr. Fennoy: I think Commissioner Hasan was first. Mr. Mayor: Okay. Mr. Hasan: Go ahead. I’ll let somebody else say something before I say something. Mr. Fennoy: Mr. Mayor, what I have heard for the past ten, fifteen years that the people in East View are tired of the flooding that takes place. This project alone according to the Engineering Department it would take about $18 million dollars to do this project. Now they have had the flooding issues down there for more than 40 years and so far they’ve gotten nothing but promises. I was by one of my constituent’s house last night and he said he’s tired of cutting the trench that runs along his house, that’s not his responsibility. And what I relayed to him is what the Engineering Department relayed to me is that once the stormwater fee is passed we will be able to see instant results. And I asked him what did he mean about instance results he said the cutting of the trenches. I think that the people that live along East Boundary, people that live along Laney Walker, I think they’ve waited long enough. I think that they have been looked over too many times that they have been money promised to them that have been taken away from them and given to other projects. And it’s time that we as a commission look at that and say that we’re going to do something about it. Most of the people I’ve talked to don’t mind paying the $6.40 but they don’t want to pay the $6.40 and see other projects worked on because they have been put on the back burner for so long. They don’t mind paying the stormwater fee and they don’t mind supporting SPLOST because they know the importance of SPLOST. And it could be a good marriage. To delay the stormwater fee until after the SPLOST I mean there’s no guarantee that SPLOST is going to pass in November. If it doesn’t pass then we’ve got a real big problem because we still don’t have any money for maintenance and we don’t have any money for projects. So I support this stormwater fee. I support SPLOST and I’m asking my colleagues to look at the big picture. I think when the Mayor ran for Mayor he ran as One Augusta and continues for this campaign to be One Augusta and include people in the processes that have been excluded for the past 40 years. Mr. Mayor: Thank you, sir. 49 Mr. Lockett: Mr. Mayor, call for the question. Mr. Mayor: We’ve got a call for the question. Mr. Fennoy, Mr. D. Williams, Mr. Sias, Mr. Lockett and Mr. Hasan vote Yes. Ms. Davis, Mr. Frantom and Mr. G. Smith vote No. Mr. Guilfoyle and Mr. M. Williams abstain. Motion Fails 5-3-2. Mr. Hasan: Mr. Mayor? th Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 6. Mr. Hasan: Mr. Mayor, I think two abstentions is illegal, isn’t it? But anyway, Mr. Mayor, I’d like to ask the Administrator based on what she saw here in these votes is there anything that this body can do in the meantime that will, you know, keep you moving in the direction that you need to be moving into? Mr. Mayor: So, Madam Administrator, before you address that I want to remind this body that you always reconsider your actions. That is an option you can always reconsider your action. Madam Administrator. Ms. Jackson: In terms of implementation, sir, we have, I have consulted with the Engineering Department in regard to the implementation of the billing system. As we indicated during our presentation that has started at this point and because there are other benefits to the organization associated with having that software installed we are proceeding now to follow up to do that. So given the fact that that process is already moving along I’m not sure there’s anything (unintelligible). Mr. Mayor: Thank you, ma’am. We still have business going on. This is not a proper time to leave, we still have business going on. The Administrator has the floor. Mr. Hasan: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, she answered (unintelligible). Mr. Mayor: I think it’s important and right for us to stay until the business is finished. All right any other questions before this body? The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the th 4. State your inquiry. Mr. Sias: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to request that the body not necessarily for a final, well, that we can reconsider this item for today. And with the, if we reconsider then we’ll be able to table it if necessary with a specified time to bring it back. So basically my request, Mr. Mayor, I move that we reconsider this item. Mr. Mayor: That motion fails without a proper second. 50 Mr. Hasan: Is that today, Mr. Mayor, I’m trying to figure out was that today or (unintelligible). Mr. Mayor: That is correct. Mr. Hasan: So it could go back on the agenda then. Mr. Mayor: Well, you know you could always come back and talk about it again. All right, this meeting is adjourned. [MEETING ADJOURNED] Nancy Morawski Deputy 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 Regular Meeting of The Augusta Richmond County Commission held on July 7, 2015. ______________________________ Clerk of Commission 51