HomeMy WebLinkAboutRegular Commission Meeting April 19, 2016
REGULAR MEETING COMMISSION CHAMBER
APRIL 19, 2016
Augusta Richmond County Commission convened at 2:00 p.m., April 19, 2016, the Hon.
Hardie Davis, Jr., Mayor, presiding.
PRESENT: Hons. Lockett, Guilfoyle, Sias, Frantom, M. Williams, Smith, Fennoy, D.
Williams and Davis, members of Augusta Richmond County Commission.
Absent: Hon. Hasan, member of Augusta Richmond County Commission.
Mr. Mayor: Good afternoon, everyone. I call this meeting to order. The Chair recognizes
Madam Clerk.
The Clerk: Yes, sir, at this time we will have our invocation delivered by Imam Jamal
Daoudi, The Islamic Society of Augusta, after which we’ll have our Pledge of Allegiance. Would
you please stand?
The invocation was given by Imam Dr. Mohammad Jamal Daoudi, The Islamic Society of
Augusta.
The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America was recited.
The Clerk: I call your attention to the Recognition portion of our agenda. We’d ask our
H.R. Director Mr. Loeser to please come.
Mr. Loeser: Thank you. Good afternoon my name is Michael Loeser, your Human
Resources Director. Today we are happy to recognize our Years of Service Recipients. For the
month of March there are 18 5-20 recipients and two 25-50 year recipients of which one is here
this afternoon. Once again let’s congratulate all of them and I will call down the 30-year recipient
in a minute. (APPLAUSE) Debra C. Freeman Information Technology, 30 years of service.
REGOGNITIONS
Employee of the Month
B. Congratulation! – Ms. Tangela Gibson, Augusta 911 Department as the April 2016
Employee of the Month for Augusta, Georgia.
The Clerk: Now we will add congratulation to Ms. Tangela Gibson she’s with our 911
Department (APPLAUSE) she’s our April. We’re headed to the Delegations, Mr. Mayor?
Mr. Mayor: Yes, ma’am, first presentation, Madam Clerk.
The Clerk:
PRESENTATION(S)
A. Presentation by Peachtree Recovery Services. (Requested by Mayor Hardie Davis, Jr.)
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Mr. Speaker: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Todd Rhoad. I’m with, sorry ---
Mr. Mayor: Thank you so much, Mr. Rhoad. I want to share with the Commissioners. I
had the great portion of our meeting Mr. Todd Rhoad a couple of weeks ago one started by way
of email and then he came to visit us here in the City of Augusta. The Chair has some interesting
information that very well may be an opportunity for us as a city and I wanted to make certain that
you all had an opportunity to not only see but hear the presentation that he shared with me on last
week. I hope that you’ll ask questions after we are complete with the presentation and we’ll go
from there. Thank you so much. Mr. Rhoad.
Mr. Road: Thank you, Mayor Davis. Once again my name is Todd Rhoad with Peachtree
Recovery Services. We’re out of Suwanee, Georgia so we had a nice little three-hour drive to your
beautiful city this morning. But we want to tell you a little bit about our service what we do, what
our primary focus is and it’s basically dealing with the property damage claims caused by traffic
accidents. So these are usually third party insurance claims that we do on behalf of cities and
counties and states. And as we walk through we’ll show you know what kind of source of revenue
that this service can provide. What kinds of types of damage are we talking that typically occur
from these traffic accidents? It’s everything you’re not self-insured for. Most cities and counties
are self-insured most of the time this is your fleet; these are your buildings. Everything else in the
city property damage wise, guardrail signs, drainage structures, HAZMAT incidents, signals,
paving all of that stuff is insured as well except it’s insured by the people who damage it. There
are two laws in Georgia that basically, the first one basically says that anyone who damages
government property has to pay for the cleanup and the repair. The second law addresses the
automobile insurance that requires every driver to have $25,000 dollars of property damage
liability coverage so both of those laws cover the repair and replacement of any government
materials that are damaged during a traffic accident. And as you can see from some of those
examples some of the costs are fairly minimal, you know, from a downed stop sign at $185.00 to
damages on bridges. And we’re looking at one city now who’s got to replace a bridge due to an
accident so it’s a $250,000-dollar claim. A lot of these things are covered by insurance policies,
we just have to pursue them which is Peachtree’s primary focus. Now what does that mean to
Augusta Richmond? What we did was we went back to the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety
pulled a lot of data on a yearly basis and take a look at the number of traffic accidents that you
had. I can’t validate that these are all the accidents that actually occurred but I can tell you this is
what the state reports every year. So our analysis that we’re going to present here the estimates
we provide here are based off state published data. So as you can see 2013 8,800 accidents were
reported and that is typically where we pull a lot of the information for these accident claims is
from those police reports. So if we go back and take a look and consider the 8,800 accidents or
police reports that were filed during the year 2013 there should have been around 1,700 damage
claims that came from all of those accidents that year. Now naturally you don’t have enough
information sometimes to file all of those claims so typically we would expect you to be filing
somewhat less than 1,000 claims. And then there are a myriad of reasons why some of those are
difficult to actually recover on or they get negotiated down for example you have a HAZMAT
claim. And in cities who don’t have ordinances that basically stipulate that the Fire Department
or the HAZMAT Team can actually file a claim then you end up then going into a negotiation with
an insurance company. So if you have a $20,000 claim you don’t have an ordinance you’re going
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to negotiate down to something less than that. So you should have had around 750 paid claims in
that year of 2013. Now a lot of these numbers are built on a 10,000 accident case model for the
State of Georgia. That’s one of the activities I get to engage in a lot is building these models so
you’re basically looking at 10,000 accident reports and then creating these statistics from those
models. To give you an idea in the State of Georgia the average claim is around it’s a little over
$1,000 dollars and again that’s looking at the labor, the gas to get to the site, all the materials for
both the cleanup and the repair. So you multiply that times the 750 claims that should’ve been
paid in the year 2013 it should have been recovering close to $800,000 for that year. So that’s
looking at 2013. So then what we try to do is we try to take some estimates looking at 2015 and
beyond. 2014 was the last year that I can get the published data from the state so we made some
estimations beyond that. And basically what we took was a minimal growth in population and
travel through the city as well as escalations for labor and materials. So you see a change of
roughly about 1 ½% in the years beyond 2014. So you can see that you’re still going to have
somewhere less than 9,000 accidents now through 2018. So what does that mean for you?
Peachtree Recovery Services typically engages in a three-year contract and the reason we do that
is because these property damage claims in Georgia have a four-year statute of limitations meaning
that if the accident occurred four years ago and that claim has not been filed on it, we can go back
and take a look at that claim and process a claim with the insurance company which is what you
do. You engage in a contract with us this case you’ll get know the four-year statute going back to
2012 plus all the current years 2016 to 2018 so we’ll give you seven years of claims recovery in a
three-year period. Typically, the four-year statute in Georgia is pretty good; you get a lot of
recovery in a short period of time. But as you can see going across and the number of accidents
from 2012 to 2015 it’s a pretty large number which is why most cities, counties and states don’t
engage in a lot of these because they just don’t have the resources to do it. It is a lot of police
reports to review, it’s a lot of assessments to make, it’s a lot of investigation and then of course
working with the insurance companies to insure all of that money comes back to the city. So as
you can see the total value to the city is potentially over $5 million in that short period of time.
My partners have been in the insurance company for you know well over 23 years. They’ve been
looking at these occurrences for quite some time so typically the way you’re tipped off at these
kinds of things is that when a traffic accident actually occurs, an accident report comes out the
driver files a claim with their insurance company. The insurance company pulls the police report.
They look and see that there’s property damage to the city you know for whatever the damage is
they will make their own assessment. The insurance company puts money aside waiting for the
city to make a claim. If that claim is not made within 90-days they throw it back in their general
fund and they keep it. So we think having seen this for many years there’s a lot of possibility
sitting out here for the city. And overall for the State of Georgia it’s a $100-million-dollar industry
sitting out there. So what are the other added benefits you know to this idea? Well, it’s minimal
access to local resources but one of the things we went and we’ve developed a relationship with
the state to gain access to the police records because naturally I can’t spend a lot of time working
with your police department because that’s not a benefit to you. So we have found resources that
we can go to gain access to the redacted data based on the Open Records Act. So we can get that
data without tasking any of your resources here locally. It’s transferring the management of these
claims to the contract we basically do all the work, we read those reports, initiate all the claims
and bring the recovery back to the city. We also maximize financial recovery which means we
look at every single one of those claims whether the accident report identifies any property damage
or not because sometimes we know they do get created incorrectly so we read all of the police
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reports to make sure we’re getting the maximum recovery for the city. The recovery is direct
deposited while we collect it, we keep our fee from it and send all the money back directly to the
city. It also allows you to reallocate your local resource so those in the Risk Department, HR
Department that are actually dealing with these claims can focus on their other priorities. We take
care of all of the accident claims with management process.
Mr. Mayor: Mr. Rhoad?
Mr. Rhoad: Yes.
Mr. Mayor: Your time has expired ---
Mr. Rhoad: Okay.
Mr. Mayor: --- for the presentation.
Mr. Rhoad: All right.
Mr. Mayor: I want to give you a few minutes to answer a few questions, I think that there
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probably might be several. All right the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 8 our
Finance Chair, Commissioner Guilfoyle.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Rhoad, thank you for doing your presentation.
Your presentation is just based off estimates, it’s like trying to read the stock market in the future
is that correct?
Mr. Rhoad: Well, the 10,000 accident model is actual. I mean it’s real 10,000 accidents
out of the State of Georgia. That’s basically how we establish what these estimates are. The other
part of it is that the number of accidents that we’re getting from the state are published, the state
puts that out. So we are making estimates from actuals.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Have you reached out to our Risk Management group that we do have
currently here within our government?
Mr. Rhoad: Yeah, we have reached out and the number of claims is considerably shorter
than what we, smaller than what we think it should be because there’s a lot of potential there in
what we reach out to a lot of cities and counties as well. And what we try to do is take a look at
what you’re getting compared to what we estimate and then we offer our resources based on that.
So we think that there’s a lot more potential here considering the number of accidents you have
that you could reallocate those resources on something else and we could manage all of those
claims.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Mr. Rhoad, would you tell me a little bit about your company, how long
you’ve been in operation?
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Mr. Road: Yes, we started last year, I come from the federal side. I’ve been running
projects for the DOD for 18 years, a Master’s Degree in EE and an MBA. Basically I partnered
with a couple of people with over 20 years in the insurance business in property damage claims.
We’ve been talking about the business for many years and basically decided that last year would
be a good time to do it so I started the company up early last year, spent several months building
the database model that we would evaluate the data for all of the cities and counties. We’re
currently working with the City of Newnan, working with Montgomery in Alabama and Winston-
Salem in NC.
Mr. Guilfoyle: How many employees do you have?
Mr. Rhoad: We have three currently.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Okay and your office is in ---
Mr. Rhoad: In Suwanee.
Mr. Guilfoyle: --- in a commercial district or residential.
Mr. Rhoad: It’s in Forsythe County, it’s residential currently.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Mr. Mayor, if you don’t mind if we could hear from our Risk Management
team so they could have a reply in regards to this. I know that if this body decides to move forward
we’d have to go out through our procurement process. But I know that Mr. Rhoad was talking
about actual numbers from other cities but I would like to hear from Donna Williams that’s over
our Risk Management if it’s okay sir so that she could actually say to make sure we ain’t
duplicating services or anything, sir.
Mr. Mayor: All right so before we do that we’re going to take questions with Mr. Rhoad
first and then I’ll recognize our Finance Director Ms. Williams. Let me further state for the record
that the goal today is not to try to decide whether we enter into any procurement services but rather
for you to hear a presentation. That’s why we’re here, just to hear a presentation so that we will
be aware that this opportunity exists not only for the City of Augusta but for other communities
just like ours, that’s the express purpose and ultimately to have a motion to receive this as
information. And if we so decide to move forward with anything then we’ll have a further
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conversation. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 9 Commissioner M. Williams.
Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I guess my first question would be what cost
would this be to the city. Why even entertain you know whether it’s going to be a benefit or not
so Mr. Rhoad can you tell me about what the cost would be for the City of Augusta to take on your
services?
Mr. Rhoad: Yes sir, 15%.
Mr. M. Williams: 15% (inaudible). The other question I guess I have is that we’ve got
several staff attorneys and other lawyers that’s here and sometimes I even put on a lawyer hat
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myself up here but it don’t do me much good but I put it on sometimes. Wouldn’t that be something
that we could do in-house with staff that we already have versus having an outside agency to do
that?
Mr. Rhoad: I would say in less than half of the cases we see recently we just submitted the
RFP with Columbus’ consolidated government. They actually have an attorney that is a Risk
Manager and they have one person who’s actually processing the claims. You have about 8,000
accidents per year. They have about 12,000 accidents per year and after several discussions with
their risk manager they recognized very quickly that the quantity of accidents you have to look at,
the skill set you have to have in working with the insurance companies for getting a lot of these
claims processed and negotiating it as well ties up a lot of resources. So typically most cities and
counties only have one or two people to do these claims and we found that to be for lack of a better
word insufficient in terms of making the recoveries. A perfect example is go look at the state case
of Georgia. Georgia did this in 2012; they outsourced it. In 2008 to 2012 they recovered $1 million
a year. As soon as they outsourced it they recovered $5.4 million the first year. The opportunity
is there; you just need the resources to put on it.
Mr. M. Williams: Well and I understand that and that was my question about having staff
that can do this. I think if we was focused on it I don’t know Ms. Williams’ is back there she can
enlighten us. But if we was focused on that with our staff then that 15% that we’re paying out we
could bring that in-house as well. I mean I’m just ---
Mr. Rhoad: Well, 15% is actually pretty low. You can go and look at some other
companies that do this they’re considerably larger than we are but their rate is up to 30%.
Mr. M. Williams: So if we didn’t acquire, would there be any cost if we didn’t get any
percentage? In other words, if we didn’t bring in any other additional revenue would we still be
under some contract? Will there still be some costs for this government to pay you?
Mr. Rhoad: That’s the benefit, no sir, it isn’t.
Mr. M. Williams: Okay I’m ---
Mr. Rhoad: We’re motivated to chase quantity for the city because if the city doesn’t get
paid we don’t get paid.
Mr. M. Williams: --- okay.
Mr. Rhoad: And there’s no cost for contracting either, for signing a contract either.
Mr. M. Williams: That was my question.
Mr. Mayor: Any other questions from the members of the Commission for Mr. Rhoad?
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All right the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 5 Commissioner Lockett.
Mr. Lockett: Mr. Rhoad, how are you doing?
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Mr. Rhoad: Very good, sir, thank you.
Mr. Lockett: Are you affiliated with either of our professional organizations the Georgia
Municipal Association or the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia?
Mr. Rhoad: I am very familiar with it but we are not a member of it yet.
Mr. Lockett: Okay.
Mr. Rhoad: The only organization we’re a member with is PRIMA for the Risk Managers
Association.
Mr. Lockett: And the question was asked but I didn’t understand what the answer was.
You’re charging you say 15%?
Mr. Rhoad: 15%.
Mr. Lockett: 15% and if you don’t collect anything we owe you nothing.
Mr. Rhoad: That’s correct, sir.
Mr. Lockett: So basically what you’re saying is your company would be in a position to
possibly collect in instances where we as a government with our current organization would not
be able to is that correct also?
Mr. Rhoad: Yes. One way to look at that is if we can recover 15% more than the city does
it’s worth it.
Mr. Lockett: Okay, thank you very much.
Mr. Rhoad: Thank you.
Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Mr. Chairman Lockett. All right the Chair recognizes Finance
Director Williams. All right, Todd, if you’ll just step aside for just a moment, sir, this is our
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Finance Director. All right and I’m going to direct this back to the Commissioner from the 8 to
ask a question.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Donna, as far as you over Risk Management, tell me what Risk
Management actually their protocol when the accident does happen to make sure we’re not wasting
taxpayers’ dollars to try to find every ---
Ms. Williams: Correct, currently the system that we have in place is a cooperative
arrangement with the Sheriff’s Department. Any time there is an accident report with any damage
to any city owned property that report is forwarded to Risk Management. Our Claims Adjusters
in Risk Management review those reports. If there is insurance information on the accident report
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they get in touch with the insurance agency, they send, one of our folks go out they review the
damages and make sure that it is indeed property that belongs to us and we proceed that down the
normal channels for recovery through the insurance agent. If there is no insurance involved or it
becomes a more cumbersome process, then we have taken those through the court system to
attempt to get recovery from the folks that did the damage to our property.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Do you see a, Mr. Mayor may I continue, sir?
Mr. Mayor: You may.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Do you see approximately five weeks $6 million dollars over the past seven
years I believe it was?
Ms. Williams: I would like to get some additional information from our Risk Management
Section as to the number of claims and the damages that we have recovered. I was a little, caught
a little flat footed by this item today but I’ll be happy to get some additional information and get
back to you guys with what the information that we have. Or should you decide to pursue a
different avenue you would go through normal procurement process to do something like this.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Donna. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Mayor: Absolutely thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Let me reiterate one more
time. This is a presentation; it is not a motion this is not a request for action other than this is
something that was brought to us and we’re hearing it for the first time. The Chair recognizes the
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Commissioner from the 4 Commissioner Sias.
Mr. Sias: Thank you, sir, move to accept this as information.
Mr. Lockett: Second.
Mr. Mayor: Very good. All right voting. Thank you, Mr. Rhoad, for sharing this with us.
I’m sure there will be more discussion.
Mr. Hasan out.
Motion Passes 9-0.
The Clerk: And Mr. Mayor and members of the Commission I think Commissioner Hasan
would not be in attendance at today’s meeting.
Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Madam Clerk. Many of you are aware that we had a home going
celebration for Commissioner Hasan’s mother on yesterday. I encourage all of us to keep him
lifted up in our prayers. Thank you. Madam Clerk.
The Clerk:
DELEGATIONS
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C. Mr. Joey Traina regarding Street Justice Summit 2016.
Mr. Mayor: All right, Mr. Traina, you have five minutes. If you’ll state for the record your
full name and your address.
Mr. Traina: My full name is Joseph Paul Traina, address 1933 Fenwick Street, Augusta
Georgia 30904.
Mr. Mayor: Thank you.
Mr. Traina: Would I be able to send a piece of media to the screens up here via email or -
--
Mr. Mayor: All right, do you have it on a thumb drive?
Mr. Traina: I have it on a, I have it on an email I can send it to someone so they can post
it up or I can put an image ---
Mr. Mayor: Well ---
Mr. Traina: --- on the screen.
Mr. Mayor: --- given the time ---
Mr. Traina: Okay.
Mr. Mayor: --- can you print it out?
Mr. Traina: I can paint you a picture if I need to but that’s a visual picture, that’s fine. I
sent it to a few places but it wasn’t clear that that was, that was the key location. Okay, so moving
ahead.
Mr. Mayor: Suspend for a moment, sir. Do we have something?
The Clerk: No, sir.
Mr. Traina: Where do I need to send it?
The Clerk: For now?
Mr. Mayor: At this point we don’t have that and you’ll have to speak to this matter without
it ---
Mr. Traina: That’s fine.
Mr. Mayor: --- unless you have it available on thumb drive.
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Mr. Traina: No, no we’re going to use, yeah it’s a simple flowchart that I can definitely
explain it to the presentation, no problem.
Mr. Mayor: All right so here’s what we’re going to do given that we’re going to start the
clock now.
Mr. Traina: Okay.
Mr. Mayor: Thank you.
Mr. Traina: Street justice. It’s a quick and organic movement that’s formed, born of the
urgency to reach and enrich Augusta’s youth and young adults especially in our underserved
volatile corners of the city where a collection of citizens who seeks effective action from our
leaders and peers in the community sustain the mission of our movement. We hope that by
honestly seeking solutions to youth and young adult violence, unemployment, dropout rates and
incarcerations and in concert with and not competition with Augusta’s government and non-
governmental agencies that we can create a culture of progress pursued and value added for the
next generation. Now while crime numbers have taken a downward trend as of recent years
nationally our local murder, burglary and assault rates this year could outpace last years and we’re
garnering national attention from the types of crimes younger and younger folks are participating
in. Many causes to blame, many strategies to implement many good people trying to frame a
discussion around solutions and many others simply trying not to get caught in the middle of the
next incident. With a county of nearly 200,000 sixty some odd different neighborhoods, nine
districts and the ten of you we’re here to ask three things, just three. First we ask that you in
partnership take the active role from your stations to prioritize plans to demolish and repurpose
abandoned and condemned properties. We understand not all are owned by the city and we
understand there are steps that involve code enforcement and legal departments to resolve the
blight but we are looking to turn to you as our elected officials to take the helm of cleaning up and
revitalizing our neighborhoods. When we neglect to direct real attention and meaningful dollars
to leveling these eyesores we are essentially putting up signs that say come here to do things you
want to get away with. Just last week a man was found dead in the property between the house I
grew up in and blocks over the house I live in now. Now we ask and that property in particular
had been condemned since October so please assist street justice and show us how to best partner
with you all to help identify these properties and see them redeveloped. Number two and it
wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t also turn to the gallery and turn to the city to take ownership of our
civic responsibilities as citizens we complain sometimes about being like we can’t get to the table
when really we aren’t sure there’s a there’s not a chair already set for us. With the exception of
this diverse formation of citizens I realize there are ways to get things done that many of us just
aren’t accustomed to practicing so we’d like to make sure there’s flow of communication and in
that we designed this chart which I’ll be explaining. The center is homes of course it starts and
ends in the home we understand that but how do we facilitate better communication between the
home, the Mayor and Commission, schools and public safety. We point to a channel with
neighborhood associations and I reference the 66 some odd neighborhoods that exist in Augusta,
not all of them have neighborhood associations but for those that fall within your districts we’re
asking that you seek out those who can best form these relationships between the homes, the
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neighborhoods, the housing developments, the citizens, the schools, the students there and you all
so that we can keep a conversation going. Obviously your work is important; decisions are made
here on a monthly basis. We’d like help be a part of those and make sure we can hear what’s going
on and effect revitalization of those neighborhoods. Some neighborhood associations already
exist. We’ve taken a study of those they have liaisons with Public Safety; they have liaisons with
the school and a lot of times they get you all to show up. Now there are some neighborhoods that
don’t have those and we would urge you and folks that you’re aware of or folks that you have yet
to be aware of to help form those so that we can bridge those gaps and link those communities.
Number three. The third thing we’d like to do is invite you to our street justice summit this year.
It will be held this summer. We’re locking down venues but in preparation for that. We’d like to
meet with each of you and make sure we go on record talking to you and how we can assist in
creating a summit that attracts your leadership, attracts leadership of Public Safety and other
departments that need to be there so that when citizens come to talk about what they don’t like or
talk about what they’d like to see changed there’s a two-way conversation happening at that
summit. We have a shared history in this city but sometimes we aren’t sharing in that history and
we’d like for that summit to be place of venue to where all of us can join in the conversation there.
Now I’m throwing on a bonus, this isn’t exactly part of the three but I’d like for us to carry on a
conversation just following this presentation about the things that may have perked your interest
during the conversation. When it comes to abandoned buildings, when it comes to youth
programming those are the conversations we’d like to leave here feeling better knowing that there
is something you’ll be doing in the next 30 days if there is something you’re already working on
that we need to know better about we need to take to our constituents and we need to take to our
members in the community. Is that the time? So that’s our bonus here, are first being of course
taking after grow in creating lists and creating actions as far as demolishing these properties.
Number two, working in your districts to identify the neighborhoods that need neighborhood
associations and facilitating the creation along with partnering with our members and the third
planning to attend our street justice summit in June. And if you can’t attend at least having had a
conversation with us prior to to let us know what your intentions are to help the numbers as they
pertain to youth violence and young adult opportunity.
Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Mr. Traina, your time has expired now. All right the Chair
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recognizes the Commissioner from the 8 for a question.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Joey, thank you for coming before us. I’m looking at your flow of
accountability here. I went ahead and forwarded it to the Administrator so she would have it as
well. I understand underneath the Mayor and Commission you’re requesting us to tear down and
demolish buildings. Last year we had implemented $750,000 dollars a year to tear down the
blighted buildings whether you know that or not. Just to walk up to a building and tear it down
you cannot. You have to find out who the owner and do a lot of research because a lot of times
people pass on and leave it to their heirs and their heirs leave it to others so the government is
doing the job as far as blighted buildings. Commissioner Bill Fennoy has been focusing on that
over these past years and it takes time. So I don’t want you to think we are ignoring it there is a
dedication to tearing them down.
Mr. Traina: Can I follow up to that?
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Mr. Mayor: Go ahead.
Mr. Traina: Where can we direct our folks to following audits of that money being spent
or those properties being demolished?
Mr. Guilfoyle: Yeah, there should be. We should have it on the website where under our
transparency it should show some accountability for it. Our Code Enforcement is the one who
goes out and verifies, takes them to court and we get a court order to tear it down but this ain’t
done in a month.
Mr. Traina: Of course.
Mr. Mayor: All right I’ve got a couple other questions here. The Chair recognizes the
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Commissioner from the 5.
Mr. Lockett: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Traina, one of the problems is as my colleague
indicated often times you don’t know who has actual ownership of the property, that slows it down.
But another thing that’s happening we’re tearing down many blighted structures but at the same
time we’re tearing them down more blighted structures are being created and that is a problem that
we have. We have homes that are being destroyed by fire and they sit there in that state year after
year after year. And I agree with you wholeheartedly we need to do something about that. We
are trying but we need to pick up the pace a little bit because if we don’t ten years from now we’re
still going to be going through the process that we’re going through now. So thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
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Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 9 for a question.
Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Traina, we had just listened to the stuff you just gave
and we could solve the worse problem not just Augusta’s problem we could solve a lot of stuff.
But let me say this Commissioner Lockett’s touched on it. We’ve got a lot of abandoned properties
and we allow it to be boarded up for too long. But because we’ve got absentee land owners and
stuff and in Atlanta there’s a program where you have to have somebody in your city that that they
can officially go to for your property. You just can’t leave property and say well I don’t know
who owns it. We’ve got to get very aggressive about that but that’s going to cause some other
problems as well not only that but Commissioner Lockett touched on the burnt properties. There’s
some properties that’s not it wouldn’t consider it to be torn down the structure burnt so bad that
it’s less than a frame but it’s still sitting there and it is a sore eye along with the boarded up stuff.
I plan to get with the Fire Chief and I know he hears me over there to take photographs of all of
these properties that really don’t need demolition. They’re already burnt to the ground, it’s just
frameworks standing there. We shouldn’t allow that to happen either but because of the finance
because of the monies we keep turning our heads I’ll say turning our heads we keep saying well
we don’t have it. If there’s no insurance to take care of the properties, somebody still owns it and
if they own those properties I think my personal opinion is they need to do something with it
whether they turn it over to the city or they borrow the money. Somebody’s got to do something;
we just can’t walk away and let that exist any longer. People inherit properties from their
grandparents and even their parents and they are divided, they leave town, they go somewhere else
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and they don’t know what to do with it. We have got to get aggressive and that’s not going to
solve our problem but that’s going to help us clean up. In the inner city where I represent half of
this county at the lots are so small til if you take a house and tear it down or remove it’s not enough
room on that one particular lot to do anything with it so then we’ve got another problem. So we
just can’t give up but I just think we’ve got to understand how the problem has been compounded
so long and so much that we’ve got to get aggressive and do some things. There’s a house next
door, we ought to be able to sell that property at a reasonable price to that neighbor next door if
they’re going to take it in and take care of it and do something with it but we leave those then it
comes to a lot that’s overgrown and then we’ve got rodents that’s all over the place. So I think
there’s some things we can do, I think we are doing some things. I appreciate your effort I think
that you’re doing a great service as young man interested in this particular area where we need to
address it so ---
Mr. Traina: Are there other ordinances that you all have already looked over that we may
be able to press for as far as the city being able to take over certain properties after a certain amount
of time condemning or abandoning?
Mr. Mayor: All right so, Commissioner, before you answer that all right so I think what
our best posture is for us to direct Mr. Traina since he’s got a number of questions as it relates to
vacant, abandoned, blighted, dilapidated properties we have our fine Planning and Development
Director who oversees License and Inspection and Code Enforcement who is able to summarily
answer all of those questions to provide them with any data that you might need in answering that.
And so I’d like to direct you to Ms. Melanie Wilson who’s standing in the rear of this chamber
and she will be able to answer those as well as provide you with any hard data that you need in
order to move forward. I think what he asked of this body or three primary things he’s indicated
what those are I think it’s important as you heard from the speakers already there are a number of
things that people are doing engaged in addressing the issue of youth, children and also adults. I
want to applaud the efforts of our Sheriff as crime has continued to go down since 2012 upon him
taking office. The community policing efforts that are initiated in our city have made Augusta and
example for others to follow and we can be proud of those efforts as crime continues to go down.
Yes, we’ve had a series of things that have happened over the last few weeks but again we applaud
those efforts as it relates to community policing. I’m going to take one more question from the
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Commissioner from the 1 and then we’re going to dispose of this matter. And I want Mr. Traina
and Mr. Montana to meet with Ms. Wilson right outside. All right the Chair recognizes the
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Commissioner from the 1.
Mr. Fennoy: Mr. Traina, I have a list of over 200 houses that are scheduled for demolition
and it gives the status of those houses. I would guess about 80% of those houses are located in
District 1 and 2 and if you’ll see me after the meeting or later on this week I will make sure that
you get a copy of this list.
Mr. Traina: Thank you.
Mr. Mayor: Fantastic thank you to our Engineering Services Chair. All right, thank you
so much for your time.
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Mr. Traina: Thank you.
Mr. Mayor: All right, Madam Clerk, on to our consent agenda.
The Clerk: I call your attention to our consent agenda which consists of items 1-13, items
1-13. The Engineering Chairman has recommended for the consent agenda items number 16, 18,
19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26 and 27. So that would under Engineering portion with the exception of
item 17 and 25 those items he’s requesting that those items be added to the consent agenda. So
our consent agenda consists of items 1-13. For the benefit of any objectors to our Planning
Petitions I call your attention to:
Item 2: It’s a request for concurrence requesting a change of zoning from a Zone P-1
(Professional) to a Zone R-1A (One-family Residential) affecting property at 1946 Kissingbower
Road.
The Clerk: Are there any objectors to this Planning Petition? I call your attention to the
Public Services portion of our agenda. If there are any objectors to any of the alcohol petitions
special event licenses would you please signify your objections by raising your hand. I call your
attention to:
Item 3: Is for a request for an Alcohol Special Event License on property located at 2821
Washington Road Tin Lizzy’s Cantina.
Item 4: Is for an Alcohol Special Event License at 3064 Washington Road.
The Clerk: Are there any objectors to any of those alcohol petitions? Mr. Mayor, members
of the Commission, our consent agenda consists of items 1-13 with no objectors to our Alcohol or
Planning Petitions with the addition of those items as indicated under our Public Services portion
of the agenda with the exception of item 27 and 25, 17 and 25.
Mr. Mayor: Okay, are there any other additions to the consent agenda or motions to pull
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an item from the consent? Okay, the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 4.
Mr. Sias: Mr. Mayor, I would just like to know on the items that the Engineering Chair
recommended for the consent agenda if there were any person within the audience that had a
concern or objection on any one of those items.
The Clerk: Are you aware?
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Mr. Mayor: All right the Commissioner from the 1 are you aware of any concerns from
the audience or other petitioners about these items that you’ve added to the consent agenda?
Mr. Fennoy: None that I’m aware of.
Mr. Sias: I’m good with that.
Mr. Mayor: All right, sir, thank you so much.
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Mr. Lockett: Mr. Mayor?
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Mr. Mayor: All right the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 5.
Mr. Lockett: I just have a question, it’s a little confusing to me. Look at agenda item
number 23 and I think there are a couple of other are similar, it says approve and receive as
information.
The Clerk: Commissioner Lockett, normally when these items are on committee if they
are received as information that’s the official action taken.
Mr. Lockett: Oh, that is okay.
The Clerk: Yes, sir, we didn’t have committee on last Tuesday and that’s the difference.
Mr. Lockett: You answered my question, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mayor: Very well, all right, anyone else?
Mr. Lockett: Move to approve.
Ms. Davis: Second.
CONSENT AGENDA
PLANNING
1. FINAL PLAT – HAYNES STATION SECTION 6-S-855 – A request for concurrence
with the Augusta Planning Commission to approve a petition by Cranston Engineering
Group P.C., on behalf of COEL Development Co., requesting final plat approval for Haynes
Station Section 6. This residential subdivision is located on Clifford Street adjacent to
Haynes Station Section 4 and contains 86 lots. DISTRICT 3
2. Z-16-14 – A request for concurrence with the Augusta Planning Commission to approve
a petition by Gene ice McCoy, on behalf of Real McCoy Properties & Estates LLC,
requesting a change of zoning from Zone P-1 (Professional) to Zone R-1A (One-Family
Residential) affecting property containing .4 acres and is known under the present
numbering system as 1946 Kissing bower Road. Tax Map 071-3-137-00-0 DISTRICE 2
PUBLIC SERVICES
3. Motion to approve a request by Michael Everson for Tin Lizzy’s Cantina located at 2821
Washington Road for an Alcohol Special Event License for May 5, 2016 (Cinco de Mayo in
the parking lot). District 7. Super District 10. (Approved by Public Services Committee April
12, 2016)
4. Motion to approve a request by Melissa Outlay for MI Rancho 2, located at 3064
Washington Road for an Alcohol Special Event License for May 5, 2016 (Cinco de Mayo in
the parking lot). District 7. Super District 10. (Approved by Public Services Committee April
12, 2016)
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5. A motion to approve a Contract with Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, LLC for the
Leasing of Transit Bus Tires. Bid Item 15-231. (Approved by Public Services Committee
April 12, 2016)
6. A motion to approve the purchase of five (5) Paratransit Cutaway Vehicles from National
Bus Sales of College Park, Georgia. Bid Item 16-120. (Approved by Public Services
Committee April 12, 106)
PUBLIC SAFETY
7. Motion to approve entering into a Mutual Aid Agreement with Columbia County to use
the GEMA Mobile Operations Center and Land Mobile Radios in the event of emergency
communication failure. (Approved by Public Safety Committee April 12, 2016)
FINANCE
8. Motion to approve the purchase of 5 vehicles for Augusta Planning and Development
Department from License and Inspections Fund Balance (217-00-0000 fund). (Approved by
Finance Committee April 12, 2016)
9. Motion to approve the purchase of one emergency response vehicle for the Richmond
County Sheriff’s Office-Bomb Team Division using Federal Gant funds. (Approved by
Finance Committee April 12, 2106)
10. Motion to approve the purchase of one F150 pickup truck for the Richmond County
Sheriff’s Office-Criminal Investigation Division with funds from the Sheriff’s Capital.
(Approved by Finance Committee April 12, 2016)
11. Motion to approve Public Official Liability Insurance with RSUI Indemnity Company,
Option 1 for a premium charge of $68,695 for policy period April 19, 2016 to April 19, 2017.
(Approved by Finance Committee April 12, 2016)
12. Motion to approve the request for refund of taxes in the amount of $2,760.49 by Mr.
James Reed on behalf of his mother, Ms. Pensacola Reed, regarding an error involving her
senior exemption dating back to 2003. (Approved by Finance Committee April 12, 2016)
PETITIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS
13. Motion to approve the minutes of the regular meeting of the Commission held March 30,
2016 and Special Called Meeting held April 12, 2016.
ENGINEERING SERVICES
16. Review and approve River Watch Lights – Location 2 & 3 Service Points, as requested
by Georgia Power. Hereby grant and convey to said company the privilege and easement to
go in, upon, along and across that tract of land owned by Augusta, Georgia as 1420
Eisenhower Drive and 1557 River watch Parkway.
18. Approve adding $40,000 to Georgia-Carolina Paving purchase order for repairs to
asphalt and concrete paving that are necessary after utility repairs have been made. This
contract will allow timely and professional repair of paving cuts.
19. Consider approving an Easement Exchange Deed and Maintenance Agreement with
Augusta Village at River watch, LLC and GTC River watch, LLC.
20. Consider proposal from Pond & Company to provide engineering design services for the
Beckman’s Road Phase II 8” Water Main project in the amount of $36,840.00.
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21. Motion to authorize condemnation of a portion of Tax Map 059, Parcel 320, due to liens
of the subject property, which is owned by Terry Prince and Betty Prince, for a temporary
construction easement in connection with the Discrepancy with the Right of Way of Martin
Luther King Jr. Blvd., more particularly described as 232 square feet, more or less, of
permanent utility and Ingress/Egress easement and 167 square feet, more or less, of
temporary construction easement.
22. Consider approving award of construction contract to Blair Construction, Inc. for the
West Eagle Green Water Meter Replacement Project in the amount of $27,950.00. Bid item
#15-241.
23. Approve and receive as information the Emergency Creek, Drainage Pipe and Level
Road Repair project at 1886 Lovers Lane in the amount of $59,710.87 for Georgia Carolina
Paving Company as requested by AED
24. Approve the continued funding of the current On-Call Field and Laboratory Testing for
Soil and Construction Material, and Geotechnical Inspections and Investigation
(CMT_Geotech) Services contract in the amount of $1,000,000. Funding is available in
Transportation Investment Act (TIA) Projects Funds and TIA Discretionary Funds, as
requested by AED.
26. Consider proposal from McKim & Creed to perform RFP 15-189 flow monitoring
analysis of the Spirit Creek Sanitary Sewer Basin.
27. Approve Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between Augusta, Georgia and the
Georgia Department of Transportation (DOT) to replace and maintain new roadway
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lighting along Walton Way (SR 4) between 13 Street and 15 Street as requested by AED.
Mr. Mayor: We’ve got a motion and a second. Voting.
Mr. Hasan out.
Motion Passes 9-0. [Items 1-13, 16, 18-24, 26, 27]
Mr. Mayor: Thank you. All right ---
The Clerk: I believe we’re at item number 14, Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Mayor: I believe we are, Madam Clerk.
The Clerk:
PLANNING
14. Z-15-15 – A request for concurrence with the Augusta Planning Commission to approve
with the conditions stated below a petition by Manpreet Singh, on behalf of Bush Field
Aircraft Company, requesting a change of zoning from Zone A (Agriculture) and Zone HI
(Heavy Industry) to Zone LI (Light Industry) containing 3.68 acres and is known as 3980
and 3982 Mike Padgett Highway. Tax Map 184-0-081-03-0 and 184-0-085-00-0 – DISTRICT
1 1. The only use shall be a convenience store and truck parking only. 2. Ensure that the
property complies with all aspects of the Tree Ordinance and applicable landscaping
standards. Retain a minimum of 25 feet of the existing trees and erect and maintain a six (6)
foot privacy fence along the northwest property line. 3. The project site plan must comply
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with any other ordinances and regulations in effect at the time of construction. 4. The owner
must extend, at their expense, the sanitary sewer line to the subject property and connect to
the service, following the guidelines and specifications of Augusta Utilities. 5. All curb cuts
must be approved by the Traffic Engineering Department.
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Mr. Mayor: All right, the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 8 and also Director
Wilson if she’s needed to answer a question.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Mr. Mayor, I’ll wait until, are you going to say any of this?
Ms. Wilson: Basically I was going to make a note that this was a rezoning request from
Agriculture and Heavy Industry to Light Industrial zoning uses. The proposed use is for a
convenience store and truck parking only and we had three concerns. Citizens present at the
Planning Commission meeting staff went and did an analysis and a review of their request and we
have the following findings that the surrounding land uses are predominately light industrial with
limited older residential properties. That it is situated on a multi-zoned property which is
Agriculture, Light Industry and Heavy Industry zoning districts. Right now they have no direct
access to public water and sewer excuse me direct access to public sewer in that Mike Padgett
currently is being widened from two lanes to four lanes with a turning lane that the Traffic
Engineering has advised the developer that they would have to provide right-of-way easements on
Goshen Industrial Boulevard if a curb cut is approved. And accel and decel lanes may be required
so we haven’t gotten a final plan but as they go through the review process those are the things
they might have to do. And this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan. At the meeting
the Planning Commission the following recommendations were made. It was recommended with
approval with the commission. The only use shall be a convenience store with truck parking only
no overnight, insure that the property complies with all applicable aspects of the Tree Ordinance
and other landscaping standards. They have to retain a minimum of 25 feet of the existing trees
and erect a 6-foot privacy fence along the northwest property line. The property must comply with
any other ordinances and regulations in effect at the time of construction. The owner must extend
at their own expense the sanitary sewer line to the subject property and connect to the service
following the guidelines and specifications of the Augusta Utilities Department. And all curb cuts
must be approved by the Traffic Engineering Department. So that was the recommendation of the
Planning Commission at their last meeting. The developer was present there and agreed to those
conditions. They are here as well as the three people who were against the rezoning request and
will be able to answer any additional questions that you may have.
Mr. Mayor: Okay, Commissioner Guilfoyle.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor, I was reached out by the homeowners
that was actually a retired vet that actually served in on in Korea and he’s going through some
health issues. And the gentleman that lives behind him is Mr. Collins this was predominantly a
residential when they actually moved there back in probably the 60’s, the 70’s. Now that the
industry has taken over there they are the last basically survivors of the you know where they’re
at as far as living residential. I realize that progress must happen and I understand that the owner
is going to put in a convenience store. I couldn’t speak during the Planning and Zoning meeting.
This is not in my district. This is in Mr. Fennoy’s and Mr. Williams but I was here on behalf of
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them. And I could not speak during the Planning and Zoning so I held my words until today. Now
we’ve got to make sure that I notice that we’ve got the northwest fence to be put in but we need it
on the east side where Mr. Collins resides at. So I just want to see if that’s going to be a problem
and the owner who’s going to be putting in the convenience store, his words not mine where he
just had used the word truck stop, he’s not going to promote overnight stay for the trucks but we
need to verify that that’s not going to happen.
Ms. Wilson: He’s here and you’re more than welcome to add as a condition that there
would be no you know that you strongly encourage him not to advertise for overnight truck stay.
Mr. Guilfoyle: I would be happy to, thank you.
Ms. Wilson: The applicant’s here.
Mr. Guilfoyle: May I continue, Mr. Mayor?
Mr. Mayor: Okay hold on just a moment, sir. All right if we can have the petitioner please
come forward. Okay, all right, if you’ll state for the record your name and your address.
Mr. Singh: My name is Manpreet Singh, my office address is 1898 Gordon Highway
Augusta, Georgia.
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Mr. Mayor: Thank you. All right the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 8.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Singh, do you have a problem about putting
a privacy fence not only on the north side but on the east side as well where it would be behind
your convenience store?
Mr. Singh: Yeah, I don’t have a problem putting up a fence. The only problem it could be
putting like 25 feet of the space in the back.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Right.
Mr. Singh: It would be a very limited amount of space.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Right but under those conditions.
Mr. Mayor: I don’t know where that came from but since there was a pause,
Commissioner, pause for a moment. Ms. Wilson, can you approach? Are you able to pull this
location up on the screen please?
Ms. Wilson: I can pull (unintelligible) presentation ---
Mr. Mayor: Fantastic.
Ms. Wilson: --- that has maps.
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Mr. Mayor: You’re talking north side, east side, west side, I want people to see what you’re
talking about.
Ms. Wilson: Okay, the property that you see that’s highlighted is the property that is in
question with regards to the rezoning. What you see in front of the property is Mike Padgett and
Goshen Industrial Parkway is located on the east side. This gives you a little bit better picture and
shows you the different zoning classes. The fence that was being requested is located in the
agricultural area which is coming from the northwest area of the property and I think there was a
request by Commissioner Guilfoyle to run that fence along the rear of the property. This is the
rezoning request that you have now which is shaded into the light industrial. And again that’s the
aerial.
Mr. Mayor: All right.
Ms. Wilson: And again this gives you a quick view if you want to see what’s around it. I
don’t know if a lot of you had that opportunity to go out and look at the site but the site that you’ve
got is a view of the subject property and it’s facing Mike Padgett Highway. And this is the Goshen
Road Industrial Boulevard. You can see this is where the construction is taking place for the
widening. Again you can see there’s some heavy industrial uses already there at that intersection.
It’s also a signalized intersection as well that’s there.
Mr. Mayor: Okay.
Ms. Wilson: And I’ll be glad to go back if you’d like to the main maps since you have
some questions about fencing.
Mr. Mayor: Commissioner Guilfoyle.
Mr. Guilfoyle: So for clarification as far as where the fence does not go it’s on Goshen
Industrial Boulevard and Mike Padgett Highway so the other two quadrants will have the fence
between the homeowner north and then east where ---
Ms. Wilson: Right, that’s where if he’s saying that he would agree to do that that’s where
the fence would go ---
Mr. Guilfoyle: Okay.
Ms. Wilson: --- on those two areas.
Mr. Guilfoyle: All right and he’s not going to promote the overnight stay of trucks.
Ms. Wilson: He’s indicated that he’s not going to promote it.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Okay.
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Mr. Mayor: All right, the Chair recognizes Engineering Services Chair Commissioner
Fennoy.
Mr. Fennoy: Yes, one of, would there be showers located in the ---
Mr. Singh: No.
Mr. Fennoy: --- no showers. Okay.
Mr. Singh: That’s why (inaudible).
Mr. Fennoy: Okay and I’ve had an opportunity to talk to some of the homeowners out
there also and that was their concern. And their concern now is whether you will agree to the
conditions that Planning and Zoning have come up with. And what I was told by them is that if
you do they’re okay with it. And if they’re okay with it, I’m okay with it also.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Okay, everything’s good.
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Mr. Mayor: All right the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 9.
Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I’m just trying to wrap my hand around how
you have parking but not overnight. Now if you’re saying you’re not going to have showers and
all that stuff to stay for a week or so that’s one thing but if you’re going to have parking and
certainly somebody’s come in there at night and they’re going to be overnight because they can’t
leave. Listening to what Sean Frantom’s telling me about drivers and how they have to have so
many hours of sleep before they get back on the road. And so from what he said they don’t have
to be some overnight I’m just being plain I mean I want to ---
Ms. Wilson: You’re absolutely right and that’s why the condition is it that it’s not going
to be allowed it’s that he’s not going to go through and actively advertise it. The fact that the
convenience store will not have showers and some of the other conveniences that you have at some
of the other truck stop facilities that do kind of encourage and support overnight it’s going to
reduce the amount of trucks that will want to park there and stay overnight. But it’s not saying
that he can’t have overnight truck parking. We made sure that we did not do that.
Mr. Mayor: All right, fantastic. All right, the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from
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the 1 once more.
Mr. Fennoy: Motion to approve.
Mr. Lockett: Second.
Mr. Mayor: For the record I’m going to do that ---
Mr. Guilfoyle: With the conditions that ---
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Mr. Mayor: --- yeah, yeah all right just hold on just hold. All right, Director Wilson, if
you would for the record please state the conditions once more and then we’re going to go back to
the motion.
Ms. Wilson: Okay, that the use shall be for a convenience store and truck parking only.
Ensure that the property complies with all aspects of the Tree Ordinance and applicable
landscaping standards. They have to retain a minimum of 25 feet of the existing trees and erect
and maintain a six-foot privacy fence along the northwest property line and in this case the rear
property line which would be the east property line which has been agreed to by the applicant
that’s here. 3. That the project sit plan must comply with any other ordinances and regulations in
effect at the time of construction. 4. That the owner must extend at their expense the sanitary
sewer line to the subject property and connect to the service following the guidelines and
specification of the Augusta Utilities Department and five, all curb cuts must be approved by the
Traffic Engineering Department.
The Clerk: Promoting overnight stay.
Ms. Wilson: Oh, and well I guess in that the applicant will not promote overnight truck
parking.
Mr. Mayor: Okay, we’ve got a motion, I believe there’s a second. All right, so we’ve got
a motion and a second. Commissioner Sias the Chair recognizes Commissioner Sias.
Mr. Sias: I’m good, sir, I just want to make sure that the motion included all those new
conditions.
Mr. Mayor: All right voting.
Mr. Hasan out.
Motion Passes 9-0.
Mr. Mayor: All right thank you, sir, Mr. Singh, thank you. All right, Madam Clerk.
The Clerk:
PUBLIC SERVICES
15. Authorize Law Department to draft a Memorandum of Understandingamong Augusta,
the Augusta Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) and the Augusta Film Office, Inc., a
non-profit, for enhancement of film and entertainment business development in Augusta.
(No recommendation from Public Services Committee April 12, 2016)
Mr. Mayor: All right, this item came from committee with no recommendation. I know
the Administrator has worked on this as well there’s a variety of others. The Chair’s going to
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recognize the distinguished hairman of Public Services then we’ll go to the Administrator.
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Ms. Davis: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I know there’s been a lot of discussion at
the committee level and commission level, Administrator, Mayor and in the community. And so
really with all this discussion I believe that it’s good and productive overall for Augusta Richmond
County and will lead to good things. I do want to thank the CVB for all their efforts that they’ve
done and they brought those up to us. And to Mr. Owens in the Augusta Film Office for really
raising awareness of what can be done in the film industry. You know I’ve done some research as
far as from Ms. Jackson’s suggestions what other governments in Georgia are doing and as we
know that there’s different ways we can set this up and really benefit from that. So the
Administrator did bring to us a suggestion for an MOU so I appreciate that as well you know to
have these two groups really work together. But in my mind if this is going to be such a major
impact on Augusta, Georgia with all the opportunities that have been given for tax benefits in
Georgia I feel like the MOU would only be a short term fix. I don’t know if we really explored
another option which would possibly have the first point of contact being a part of this government
and then we’d work with the Augusta Film Office, the CVB and everybody else is involved in
whatever is coming to the table. So personally I need more conversations to look at that as well
before we move and don’t have a long term solution that can really benefit an economic
development in Augusta. I’m not saying we have the resources to do that now but, Mr. Mayor,
I’m just saying personally that’s what I’d like entertain more discussion about. Thank you.
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Mr. Mayor: All right I’m going to go to the Commissioner from the 1. I was coming to
you, Madam Administrator, but I’ll go down the line.
Mr. Fennoy: I yield to the Administrator.
Mr. Mayor: Okay, all right, Commissioner Williams, you do the same?
Mr. M. Williams: Yes.
Mr. Mayor: Okay, all right.
Ms. Jackson: At this point I just want to address the question posed by Commissioner
Davis as well as clarify what the proposed agreement would address. To some extent I’ve been
asked questions in response to questions I’ve been asked over the last several days. First in terms
of whether this is a short term solution. I think the answer to that question is yes but what I looked
at was the ability to do this for up to 24 months a two-year proposal where we would focus on
building the capacity within our community to do to truly enter into the film and entertainment
business. Right now while we’ve doing this for a while the CBV has had a camera ready
designation ready for a number of years. We have not concentrated on developing the crew depth,
the venues, and other resources necessary to really go after the film business. So that 24 months
would be an incubation period for a lack of a better term where we would set some goals and
objectives for ourselves who would look at what it takes to develop the resources to really get into
the film industry. So that would be that two-year period and at the end of that two-year period we
would evaluate where we are, we would look at have we been successful with the MOU that we
have in place. If we have to need to add more resources to the collaboration or does it then become
the time where we need to set up our own independent our own film office within the government.
I think I presented through the addendum materials examples of cities like Savannah that have
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really matured with their effort. I think Savannah and Atlanta are the only considerable size cities
right now that have developed their own film offices. The budget for the Savannah office which
of course would be closer to us is about a four-person office with a little over a $200,000-dollar
budget annually. Right now our Convention and Visitors Bureau is telling us they would ask for
additional resources in year two of this agreement and those additional resources would be in the
$80,000 dollar or less range. So, yes, this is the buildup period to get ourselves prepared for what
would be a permanent solution so that we could involve into a major player in the film industry.
The next question I was posed over the last week or so is how would we define this relationship
between the Augusta Regional Film Office, the CVB and Augusta. In Attachment 7 of the agenda
item that was presented we gave some ideas about how we break down those responsibilities. The
non-profit organization would continue to identify and develop a pool of critical resources and
services needed to support productions such as crew, talent facilities, stages, equipment and other
support services. They would continue to provide local education and training opportunities for
people in the industry here. They would assist the CVB with collecting photographs as needed to
keep our database current and utilize the talent of local photographers. And they would also
develop a relationship with producers and filmmakers. Some of the other tasks such as being that
camera ready designation for the state that would remain with the Augusta CVB. They would be
the first point of contact for leads from the Georgia Film Office. They would maintain the real
scout image database that they’ve been doing and they would continue to serve as a camera ready
service provider and facilitate communications between the various city departments and film
producers as needed. They would also have that task of calculating the economic impact of the
various projects. This I envision as a starting point for the conversation about how that MOU
would go but I think this gives some idea of how we would break down those duties. The other
question that’s been asked is who works for whom in this type of partnership and I think the answer
is ultimately everybody works for Augusta I mean Augusta would be party to the agreement. Right
now we have an agreement with the Augusta CVB that was done back in 2004. It’s not specific
to film but it describes the relationship between the CVB. In this agreement the CVB is an
independent contractor providing professional services to Augusta for marketing and enhancement
of our community. I would see this agreement as building upon that old agreement. It is outdated
at this point and needs to be updated anyway. But in such an agreement the Augusta CVB would
have specific roles and responsibilities, the Augusta Regional Film Office would have specific
roles and responsibilities and they would be providing those services on behalf of Augusta.
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Mr. Mayor: All right, the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 1.
Mr. Fennoy: Mr. Mayor, I would like to see whether the CVB has had an opportunity to
look at the Memorandum of Understanding and whether they’re okay with it. And also ask the
Augusta Film Office whether they’ve had ---
Mr. Mayor: So it hasn’t been drafted at this point ---
Mr. Fennoy: Okay.
Mr. Mayor: --- and all you’ve got at this point is a framework for what potentially could
be something that may work for us ---
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Mr. Fennoy: Okay.
Mr. Mayor: --- today. So that MOU has not been adopted or drafted at this point, it would
then have to be adopted. We’re not at that stage. What’s before us today is whether or not you
want to authorize the Law Department to move forward with drafting one. That’s the question
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that’s before us today. All right the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 5.
Mr. Lockett: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Last week the question was posed to Ms. Bowen
of the Visitors Bureau and Mr. Owens of the Augusta Film Office. I specifically asked the question
I said well yes and no response do you think the two of you can work together put forth a collective
effort to do what’s best for the community and the answer was yes from both of them. I completely
agree with the Administrator for two years, let’s give this a try. I mean I don’t see where we’re
going to incur any costs at all up front and it’s, we cannot afford to waste any more time. I know
Mr. Owens came in here a long time ago suggesting that we get involved and we didn’t really do
anything at all with it. Other communities are taking advantage of this. What are we going to do
are we going to sit idly by for Columbia County to pick this up and run with it and leave us in the
dust wondering why didn’t we do something. So I think really we should go on and give a heads
up for the legal team to go on and draft an ordinance something that the CVB, the Augusta Film
Office, and this government can agree with and go on and get busy rather than procrastinate.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mayor: I appreciate that, Commissioner Lockett. It’s not a rebuttal but Columbia
County doesn’t have the locations, the space that we have in Augusta Richmond County and
whatever they do there is certainly not consistent or equivalent with what we’re able to do here in
the City of Augusta. I appreciate my colleagues over there but our locations are probably some of
the best in the State of Georgia.
Mr. Lockett: Not if we don’t do anything with it, Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Mayor: Well, I think that’s debatable. All right I’m going to go the Commissioner
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from the 8 is that hand up or not? It’s not up okay. All right then I’m going to come down the
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line I’m going to go to the Commissioner from the 4.
Mr. Sias: Thank you, sir. Mr. Mayor, I would like to put a cap on this and by doing that I
would like to ask a request that you ask is the Augusta CVB is here and the AFO the Augusta Film
Office is here. I’d like to get an up and down yes or no do they agree with the framework and
move from there.
Mr. Mayor: Well, I thought ya’ll did that last week.
Mr. Lockett: We did.
Mr. Mayor: I thought ya’ll did that last week that what I understood I thought that was
why we were here today.
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Mr. Sias: I don’t think that was conclusive last week, Mr. Mayor, so I would like to get a
conclusive answer from the AFO today and the CVB today do they agree with the framework, my
question still stands.
Mr. Mayor: I appreciate that or ya’ll could just vote on it vote it up or down.
Mr. Guilfoyle: I make a motion to approve, Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Lockett: Second.
Mr. M. Williams: You’ve got that second, Ms. Bonner?
The Clerk: Yes, sir.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Mr. Mayor ---
Mr. Mayor: Voting.
Mr. Guilfoyle: --- before anybody votes apparently Brad Owens wanted to say something.
Can he take a minute of our time, sir?
Mr. Mayor: All right if I do that then I’m going to hold on, hold on. If I do that I’m going
to have to let the CVB speak as well.
Mr. Sias: That mean you just disregarded my request, that’s exactly what you did. I don’t
want to be ugly, Mr. Mayor, but I made a request to hear them.
Mr. Mayor: You did ---
Mr. Sias: And I think I deserve the respect of getting an answer.
Mr. Mayor: Well, I don’t disagree with you, Commissioner, and the last thing I want is for
you and I to be going back and forth today. We’re not going to do that.
Mr. Sias: Thank you.
Mr. Mayor: But if you want to hear from them I’m not opposed. I just know that that’s
what happened last week and your colleagues have further indicated that. And I think that’s why
we’re having this conversation today because of no recommendation based on that. All right so
here’s what we’ll do, Madam Clerk, we’ll give each respondent two minutes. All right and we’ll
go in this order I’ll hear from Mr. Brad Owens first and then we’ll hear from the CVB, two minutes
all right, in that order.
Mr. Owens: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think what I’m going to say is probably going to
make this vote a moot point. Last week after the meeting we had a vote of our board and we sat
and talked about how we could work together inside of this model that’s being put forward to do
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what we want to do. Our collective agreement is that this MOU will not work. The MOU as we
see it will not be a unification of services but be a division of services and we need a single point
of communication in the city for the film office. So we would like to say that we respectfully
decline to participate in the MOU at this time. We will continue to vigorously pursue our business
plan and work to bring films here as we’ve been doing for the past eight months. We will seek out
willing partners in our communities that would like to work with us to achieve our goals in bringing
the jobs and economic growth to the film industry in our area. We will assist any organization in
our city that’s willing to work to bring film productions to Augusta. We would like to say that we
figured that success would be rewarded in this community. We also would like to say that we
never intended controversy; quite to the contrary we thought that we would be welcomed with
open arms to this community to do the work that we’re doing and hopes of bringing this vital
economic stuff to the table. Unfortunately, it’s turned into this contentious argument between
groups that we never wanted. What we don’t want to do is have people from outside of this,
outside of our community see a divided effort which what should be united for bringing this
economic growth here. With that I would like to let you know that the producers have driven to
town today, the guys that have spent some money in our community. And the people are here
from Burbank, CA sitting here and there’s people from North Carolina sitting here that have spent
millions of dollars in our community and plan to spend millions more based on the efforts that we
work with together. And there was a couple of things that were shot across our bow last week
which kind of indicated to us that we would not be able to work together with the CVB and the
framework that’s put out. One of which this is the same thing that the CVB put on the table in
October that we rejected these two columns. We believe a cooperation for a unified goal is just
that, not divided efforts but concerted efforts so I would like to let you know that if you want to
hear from the people who have chosen to come to Augusta and spend the money they’re right here
with us today. I think that you’ll find that they were not able to be at the meeting last week but
are here to answer questions if you’d like to talk to them today. But at this time the Augusta Film
Office respectfully declines to participate in an MOU that we do not believe will achieve the goals
that are necessary to bring the film industry to Augusta. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Mayor: Thank you your time has expired. All right the Chair recognizes the
representative from the CVB.
Mr. White: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Commission. To address Mr. Sias’
question, yes, we are generally in favor of the recommendation by the City Administrator and look
forward to working on the best long term solution during the next two years to determine how
Augusta will be best represented in this industry.
Mr. Mayor: All right, thank you, thank you, Mr. White. Okay all right Commissioner
Guilfoyle, you had your hand up.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Yes, sir, with what just occurred I guess I need to amend my motion.
Mr. Mayor: Well ---
Mr. Guilfoyle: And um, motion to re-designate the CVB as the designation of the Camera
Ready Liaison for Augusta Richmond County.
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Mr. Mayor: --- well, I think that’s certainly appropriate but I don’t think it’s again with
regards to that. And I know you’re doing the right thing and I appreciate that. I don’t think it’s
required by us to do that. I think they can continue to function and operate until such time there is
a change. All right.
Mr. Lockett: Mr. Chair, I move that we accept this agenda item as information as
information only.
Mr. M. Williams: Second.
Mr. Mayor: I’ve got a motion and a second to receive as information. Voting.
Mr. Guilfoyle votes No.
Mr. Hasan out.
Motion Passes 8-1.
The Clerk: Item number 25, Mr. Mayor, or do you want to give them a chance to?
Mr. Mayor: Give them a chance to clear.
The Clerk: I’m sorry, Mr. Mayor, we’re at item number 17.
ENGINEERING SERVICES
17. Receive presentation on Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) from Cranston
Engineering as requested by AED.
Ms. Jackson: This follows up on some work that was contracted by our Engineering
Department to do a study related to our needs and follow up to the Americans with Disability Act.
Mr. Mayor: Madam Administrator, okay.
Mr. Murchison: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Commissioners, I’d like to do a brief presentation
on the ADA Self Evaluation and Transition Plan that we prepared for ---
Mr. Mayor: Would you state your name, sir?
Mr. Murchinson: I’m sorry, I’m Mitchell Murchinson with the Cranston Engineering
Group here in Augusta. The ADA Self Evaluation and Transition Plan we began this project back
in the summer of 2014 and it’s continued on until today. I just want to give a brief overview of
the project and then later on in the presentation I’ll mention where it will come back up you know
with a final report in a few months. As mentioned we had a, the project sponsor is the Engineering
Department with Abie and of course you know former Assistant Director Steve Cassell
spearheading the project. I’m with Cranston Engineering Group, we’re the prime lead consultants
on the project and we had Wendell Companies helping us with our policy development and
guidelines as well as APD for our public outreach. So the Self Evaluation and Transition Plan
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basically is a two-part project. The SE sometimes I’ll refer to it as the SETP for short and the self-
evaluation of course is a requirement of Title II of the ADA and it identifies the barriers and the
activities and programs for disabled people to participate in activities with the city. And the
primary focus of this project with the Engineering Department was within the public rights of way
so everything from the sidewalk in as well as city policy. Then the second portion is the Transition
Plan which takes the items that we’re evaluating in the self-evaluation portion and puts them
together in a transition plan that can be acted upon to remedy some of the deficiencies that were
that came up with. We also were able to use this to prioritize areas and I’ll elaborate on that in
just a minute. So I don’t want to read all these legislative mandates but basically there are a few
acts and codes and federal regulations that mandate this project take place and that was kind of
why we had to do it. It starts with the Rehabilitation Act 1973 to initiate that any disabled people
could not be excluded from participation in any activities or programs receiving federal assistance.
And then the main act is the ADA Act of 1990 and that gives the framework and guidelines really
for this project. This slide shows a few you know it’s kind of a 7.3 bulleted list of the main
responsibilities the city has within the ADA. It’s a designated coordinator and we do have a couple
of the Engineering employees acting as ADA Coordinators right now but that is really a fulltime
position. I know you all are working on filling that position. And you can read the rest of these
but basically it’s just doing self-evaluation and then putting together transition plans to implement
those items that were identified and all these come from the Title II. Okay this is just a brief
milestone timeline of the project. As mentioned it was started in May of 2014 that really started
our survey portion so evaluating all the features, sidewalks, ramps throughout the city. And then
in 2015 we had some public meetings, stakeholder meetings and between August and December
of last year and then currently we have a draft of the Self Evaluation Transition Report. We’re in
the final review stages of that right now and plan to put that out for public review either in the next
couple of weeks or next month. It’ll review for a period of 45 days and then once those any public
comments come back to us we’ll take those under advisement you know update the report and then
bring that report back to you for approval. So these are the elements of the project and you can
see which ones are completed the inventory that I mentioned Staff and Community Evaluation
that’s the public involvement portion. Program Development Policies and Procedures we
interviewed city employees looked through the documentation policies to see if anything didn’t
meet the ADA policies and then finally the Transition Plan. And as mentioned right now we’re in
the draft report and public review period. I’d like to take a few slides to kind of highlight some of
those items to tell you exactly what was done. So in 2014 and then we completed it last year we
did the evaluation of the facilities. When I say facilities that’s a sidewalk or a curb, ramp or a
crosswalk you know within the right-of-way. And you can see this list there were a lot of facilities
that were evaluated. We evaluated over 230 miles of existing sidewalks and we also evaluated
over 200 miles of needed sidewalks which to explain that those are areas that might have a worn
path where pedestrians are using you know using a pathway but there’s not a physical sidewalk
there. So we looked at all those and said well that could be a sidewalk a needed area we want to
put that in our program. You know almost 5,000 curb ramps and you can see the list. It’s a bunch
of features that were evaluated and complied into this report. So as mentioned we had two public
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meetings. The first was August 25 and the second one was in December of last year. The first
one was a little more well attended that the second but I thought they were both good public
meetings. We had, we did it downstairs in the Beazley Community Room. We had some
information all around the room and kind of did a quick presentation along with discussion you
know just a mixing and mingling time. One of the important things to note on the before these
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public meetings we did set up a website within the city’s existing website for ADA Self Evaluation
and Transition Plan so anyone in the city can go on and look at what this project is accomplishing
you know see the minutes from these public meetings, look at the presentation. And also there’s
a comment section and that’s important because part of the ADA Guidelines is to create a grievance
procedure. So that was done through the website and we also had physical cards at the meeting if
anyone had anything they needed to write down they could. And then we had a stakeholder
workshop in November of last year and this was very well attended and really had good discussion
through this workshop. We were able to collaborate, we went through impedance categories and
I’ll briefly explain those in just a minute but really it was a good round table discussion. We had
three tables worth of city employees’ department groups as well as public participation from a few
people in our disabled community. It really was a good workshop. And the barrier ranking scores
which I’ll get into here in a minute so that kind of concluded our self-evaluation portion you know
to look at the features in the field, evaluate the policies and procedures, do the public involvement
you know, go through stakeholder workshops see what people have to say about the ADA you
know features and what’s more important than others and then wrapping all that information
together in the Transition Plan is where we are today. And this is just a bulleted list of some of
the items in the Transition Plan to create the barrier removal, to do a brief kind of a high level cost
estimation for the Engineering Department to be able to put projects together. And then of course
updating and monitoring is going to vital to this project because once we deliver the information
if it’s never updated then it’s a static document, it really needs to be a living document. And then
finally would be the adoption which would hopefully happen later this summer when we bring it
back in front of the Commission. So our barrier ranking system the database that we were able to
compile the data and collect the data within is the geographical information system. This is kind
of an aerial view of the city and I know you can’t see all those individual dots but each one of
those is a feature that was collected so every ramp, every curb ramp, every section of sidewalk,
every crosswalk has a specific you know item label you know with all of the information. You
can look on the left side and see you know we checked the cross slope, the running slope, took a
few pictures of each one of these items and all that information is compiled in this database that
we’ve given to the city’s GIS Department and the Engineering Department and they can use that
to see which features are deficient and then when they get fixed they can update those features and
have a log of you know what has been done over the years. So the scores and I mentioned these
briefly earlier the scoring system is based on a barrier ranking and it’s kind of an industry standard
in the ADA realm but it’s comprised of two different elements an activity score and an impedance
score. And I don’t want to go too deep into these because there are a lot of numbers and you’ll
see a few in a minute but basically the activity score is where is that feature located. So is it a
sidewalk is it a sidewalk sitting right outside of the Municipal Building here that’s going to have
a higher score than maybe a sidewalk in front of my office on Ellis Street because there’s a lot
more traffic up here. And the second score is an impedance score and that one is how deficient is
that item so does that sidewalk have a really steep slope or it is not so steep you know does it have
some vertical tree roots bumping it up and it’s hard for a wheelchair to traverse that. So that’s an
impedance score so those two together combine to create the barrier ranking and that’s how all of
these items are prioritized. So again I don’t expect you to see all of those numbers but that’s how
it’s compiled in the GIS System. It’s a database, it’s every feature has number allocated to it that
we talked about in those workshops and they all add up to an impedance an overall impedance
score, an overall activity score and then those two scores together create that barrier rank. All
together there are about 12,800 individual scores so a bunch of features that’s all the elements that
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we talked about earlier a bunch of data but it’s good data and it helps us determine which areas we
need to start with. So we took that data and compiled it and I’ll flash up a few of these project
examples, compiled it into I believe 70-90 different projects and those would be you know I think
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the one on top is 6 Street you know from Taylor to Reynolds you know so that could be a project.
You know we know how many deficient elements we have within that corridor and we have a cost
estimate a rough a high-level cost estimate at this point but how much do we think it would cost
to complete, to completely bring those elements up to ADA standards. And this is a starting point
for the Engineering Department to take these and say okay we’ve got ‘x’ amount of money. Let’s
try to do these projects and start knocking them off the list. Now again I want to preface these
numbers are high-level and rough at this point but you know we estimate that for the high priority
areas which there’s some high you have kind of different demarcations of the barrier ranking you
know high barrier ranking a medium and a low. So the highest to the high we’re estimating about
$31 million dollars if you could fix all those at one time. Now the Transportation Investment Act
we estimate that’ll probably take care of close to $8 million dollars of those because a lot of the
TIA projects are within these corridors that we have deficient sidewalks and curb ramps. So that
would take the high priority numbers down to around $23 million. So it’s still pretty steep but you
know you can see at the very bottom you know we estimate that it if we were to fix every single
issue in the city it would be around $90 million dollars excluding TIA projects so if somebody
wants to write a check for that we could finish this project tomorrow. But you know that’s all
being said it’s not going to happen tomorrow or the next week or even the next year. It’s a long
term goal and it’s something that just needs to stay on you know the funding because it’s something
that has to be fixed. The living document I mentioned earlier we wanted to reiterate you know
updating and monitoring of this. You know at the time and point where we delivered the draft
report it goes up out for public review, it comes out and then we deliver a final report. At that
point in time it’s a static document you know it’s a GIS database that has all this information. But
you know when projects start happening TIA projects city projects when they start taking care of
these deficiencies it really needs to be updated. It may be on a monthly or you know a three month
bi-annual basis. It’s somewhere along those lines to be able to look back in a year and say okay
we had this many deficiencies and we fixed this many so it’s an accomplishment but we really
wanted to iterate that it needs to be a living document. And then finally our next step so as
mentioned we have a draft report in the final review stages right now. We’ll go to a public review
period next month for 45 days and then hopefully in July unless we get a lot of comments back
we’ll be able to update the report, finalize it and get it back to Abie and he can bring it to you all
for implementation later this year. Is there any questions?
Mr. Mayor: Thank you, Mr. Murchinson, I’m going to go this way first. Commissioner
thththth
from the 9 I’ll go to the 4, 8 and then 5 in that order.
Mr. M. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, this may be a question for Mr. Ladson. I’m just
wondering have any consideration been given or any numbers been given as far as a dollar value
to when we do these sidewalks and enhance all of the trees and tree roots and upgrade the sidewalks
what’s going to happen to the trees that we’ve got to in order to fix that I think it’s going to have
to be what. I mean has that been considered at all in this evaluation I mean has there been
consideration.
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Mr. Ladson: Mr. Mayor members of the Commission I think your question is if a tree a
causing an impair ---
Mr. M. Williams: Right.
Mr. Ladson: --- to the sidewalk would that tree have to be removed or would it stay.
Mr. M. Williams: I don’t think you can repair the roots by taking them out but in order to
repair the sidewalk you’ve got to do something with that I understand that much. What I’m saying
have any consideration been given because there’s a lot of those in the older communities around
Augusta sit on the curb where they’ve done grown over. I mean a lot of them lived their life span
and I understand that. We didn’t come in to stay, even the trees have to leave at one point. So I’m
asking have any consideration been given to that.
Mr. Ladson: I think you’d have to take it on a case by case basis. So if it has to be ---
Mr. M. Williams: I mean there’s no dollar figure been added to it I guess what I’m saying
because in that study I’m sure if you look at the nuts and bolts you’re going to find there’s a lot of
tree roots done grown and made the sidewalk unlevel. And we won’t get it next week, we won’t
get it next year but eventually we’ve got to get to it. And I think that’s going to be something that
needs to be talked about so we can be looking at what to expect.
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Mr. Mayor: Thank you, sir. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 4.
Mr. Sias: Thank you, sir. I’ve got a couple of points I want to get across a couple of
questions to get asked. In doing this survey and this evaluation so far as to an incentive that we
need to do these things did ya’ll take any opportunities to look back and see what court ordered
requirements that the city has had to pay over the last 10 – 15 years has cost us as you look as we
look forward. There’s a huge cost to this but there’s also been some costs in the past because
we’ve been sued and we lost those suits so and we had some mandatory stuff that we had to do.
So was there any exploration of the past court ordered costs?
Mr. Ladson: No, sir.
Mr. Sias: Okay, I think we should unless it costs a lot more money again I think we need
to look at that and just kind of see what it would cost us for non-compliance in the past. And the
second thing in doing this evaluation I know we concentrate on right-of-ways and these kinds of
things did we also look at the playgrounds and parks?
Mr. Murchinson: It was not included in this study. I know it has been discussed within
the administration to look into doing those because they are parts of the public right-of-way public
access to public buildings.
Mr. Sias: Okay.
Mr. Murchinson: It is not part of this study.
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Mr. Sias: Thank you, thank you, sir.
Mr. Mayor: Thank you so much Commissioner. The Chair recognizes the Commissioner
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from the 8.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Thank you, Mr. Administrator, I mean Mr. Mayor, ooh sorry. I’d like to
talk to the Administrator, Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Mayor: Okay.
Mr. Guilfoyle: Madam Administrator, as far as the information we just received as far as
the $23 million dollars just to get basically get by versus the $90 million to do everything what
plans what goals what kind of future have you gave any thought to it because most likely you’ve
seen this package before we have?
Ms. Jackson: Yes, we have in fact in anticipation of this we placed some money in
SPLOST VII. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed but in SPLOST VII that was
approved. Engineering has $2 million dollars approved in a category called ADA Sidewalks
Rehab and Replacement. There’s also $1 million dollars approved for Parks and a category called
ADA Reforestation and Cemetery Improvements so we’ve got some money in SPLOST but it’s
obviously not nearly enough ---
Mr. Guilfoyle: Right so ---
Ms. Jackson: --- compared to what’s needed.
Mr. Guilfoyle: --- so you said we had $2 million?
Ms. Jackson: $2 million in Engineering for sidewalks and then another million in Parks
for improvements ADA related improvements in our parks.
Mr. Guilfoyle: All right so that’ll bring it down to $20 million dollars. If we set a 10-year
goal and we put $200,000 dollars aside and that would go hand-in-hand with TIA. Hopefully those
projects together will supplement the other but if we don’t do nothing I know the ADA is one
organization we don’t want to contend with or have them on us.
Ms. Jackson: Yeah, we can’t afford to do nothing ---
Mr. Guilfoyle: Right.
Ms. Jackson: --- that’s not really an option.
Mr. Guilfoyle: I think we could sustain $200,000 a year and then do a 10-year goal. It
might carry out to 15 because it’ll be a continuous problem. Thank you, Madam Administrator.
33
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Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 5.
Mr. Lockett: Thank you. I was fortunate enough to attend several of your sessions and I
was very impressed. You all have an extremely diverse group, you had the abled and disabled that
were there participating in it. And the information I derived from being there and one of my
colleagues that works with Age-Friendly we were able to use a good bit of information and as a
result of it we were able to get a three-year extension on our Age-Friendliness. And so it’s a good
possibility without the information we got from you all we could not have done it. And not to be
redundant but it is extremely important that we put more money into this because there are several
people that are extremely disappointed with the small amount of SPLOST VII funding that’s
directed to this. I mean it’s just a drop in the bucket and we surely don’t want to get in the position
to where we’re going to be fined because that’d be money down the drain. Thank you and thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mayor: Thank you, sir. The Chair recognizes the Engineering Services Chair
Commissioner Fennoy.
Mr. Fennoy: Mr. Ladson, I think someone from your staff had an opportunity to go over
to Harrisburg on the corner of Jenkins and Tuttle where they’re getting ready to open up a garden
for veterans of handicapped. And they did redid the sidewalks and redid the curb cuts so that those
veterans that are on wheelchairs would have access to the garden. Last week I had an opportunity
to visit some of the residents over at Peabody and they’re not, they’re not considered disabled but
they’re elderly people and one of their concerns is that when they get to a crossing signal and they
mash the button then before they can get across the street because they’re old and can’t move as
fast as they used to cars would be coming before they get across the street. So in your assessment
have you looked at making some changes especially where they have cross signals where there are
senior citizen locations or something like that? Have you done a, included those traffic crossing
in your assessment?
Mr. Ladson: The timing wasn’t included in the assessment but in that particular case if
there are some cases like that then we can definitely take a look at those and change the timing on
those. So if you’re aware of like you just said if you’re aware of any others we can definitely take
a look at those (inaudible).
Mr. Fennoy:
I’m sure you will. Some of them feel safer crossing Washington Road than
Mr. Mayor, I’d like to make a motion we receive this as information.
they do (inaudible).
Mr. Smith: Second.
Mr. Mayor: Okay so we’ve got a motion to receive as information with a proper second.
Thank you, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Ladson. Voting.
Ms. Davis and Mr. Hasan out.
Motion Passes 8-0.
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Mr. Mayor: All right, okay, I’m going to ask we’ve got one more item on the agenda. I’m
st
going to ask the Commissioner from the 1 if he’ll at the appropriate time make a motion to refer
that to the next full Commission meeting. I’m going to recognize the Clerk first but then the
st
Commissioner from the 1 all right, Madam Clerk.
The Clerk:
ENGINEERING SERVICES
25. Discuss establishing a Rail Crossing Quiet Zone in downtown Augusta. (Requested by
Mayor Hardie Davis, Jr.)
st
Mr. Mayor: The Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 1.
Mr. Fennoy: Mr. Mayor, I’d like to make a motion that we refer this to the next full
Commission meeting.
Mr. Lockett: Second.
Mr. Mayor: Okay, I’ve got a motion and a second it looks like there’s a little bit of
th
discussion. All right the Chair recognizes the Commissioner from the 9.
Mr. M. Williams: My question would be why are we going to the full commission with
this one. We probably need to have a conversation in committee versus coming back. I’ve got no
problem either way you want to go with it but I just thought that would be the proper place to
discuss because there are some discussion need to be had on that issue so if you want it to come to
the floor we can do that at the next committee meeting.
Mr. Mayor: Well, you know what I’m willing to work with you. If you’d like for it to go
to the Engineering Services Committee, I don’t have a problem with that either I’m okay with that
too. I do know that it’s something we need to talk about. All right, do you want to make a
substitute motion?
Mr. M. Williams: I just think that ---
Mr. Mayor: I’m okay with that ---
Mr. M. Williams: --- but I mean and it’s fine then ---
Mr. Mayor: I’m okay with that if you want to do that.
Mr. M. Williams: A commissioner made a motion we’ll go with that. I mean I just thought
I would save you a little ---
Mr. Mayor: Commissioner Williams would like for us to refer it to the Engineering
Services Committee which I have no problem with.
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Mr. Fennoy: Do I need to rescind my motion?
Mr. Mayor: Yes, would you please.
Mr. Fennoy: I’d like to make a motion that we refer item number 25 to the next
committee meeting for Engineering.
Mr. Smith: Second.
Mr. Mayor: All right, I’ve got a motion and a second. Voting.
Ms. Davis and Mr. Hasan out.
Motion Passes 8-0.
Mr. Mayor: There be no further business before us, this meeting is adjourned.
[MEETING ADJOURNED]
Lena Bonner
Clerk of Commission
CERTIFICATION:
I, Lena J. Bonner, Clerk of Commission, hereby certify that the above is a true and correct copy
of the minutes of the Regular Meeting of the Augusta Richmond County Commission held on
April 19, 2016.
______________________________
Clerk of Commission
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