Mayor and Council Meeting
Video Transcript
Duration: 232 minutes
Speakers: 41
Five. This is the fifth Monday, which means it's open mic night. I'm mayor Kurt Wilson, and I'd like to introduce my colleagues and council members present, beginning with council member Sarah Beeson,
council member Christine Hall,
council member Anne Pro Tem Lee Hills,
council member David Johnson,
council member William Mortland,
and council member Alan Sells.
I'll now turn the meeting over to our chief chief administrative
officer and city administrator, mister Randy Knighton, to explain how the meeting is run. Mister Knighton. Thank you, Mayor Wilson, and good evening, everyone.
Thank you for joining us tonight.
This is a public forum meeting
and a dedicated space for Roswell residents to speak directly to the mayor and council
on any matter of interest. We certainly welcome your engagement and appreciate your participation this evening. To ensure a fair, respectful, and orderly meeting, we will follow a structured format this evening. If you would like to speak tonight, we ask that you fill out a comment card and hand it to one of the staff members.
At the back, we have Julie, Kara, and
Laurie. Yes. Julie,
Cara, and Laurie in the back. If you all could raise your hands just so everybody could see you in the back there. And if you have not received a comment or have not obtained a comment card and filled that out and you would like to speak tonight, we ask that you do so at this time.
Each speaker will be given up to five minutes to speak, and that time may not be transferred or donated to
another speaker. Everyone wishing to speak must do so during their own allotted time, and those,
comment cards and names will be called by our city clerk, Nancy Long.
Again, please direct all your comments to the mayor and council. And in two and to ensure a respectful and productive environment, we ask that everyone, you know, in, speak directly to the council, refrain from any back and forth dialogue interruptions,
or anything of that nature. And, of course, members of the audience, of course, will direct their attention to the person speaking.
And we ask that anyone who needs to have an independent conversation that you exit the rear doors to the vestibule area
and that you silence any electronic devices
at this time.
The mayor, of course, is the presiding officer and will ensure the orderly exchange of questions, comments,
and,
any other interaction,
this evening. We encourage everyone in attendance and the viewing audience to visit the city website for meetings, events, and departmental information,
and to review and to participate in the various activities and offerings here in the city of Roswell, and visit roswell365.com
for a calendar of events.
We also encourage you to visit roswellresults.com
for updates on key projects and track how the city is turning,
bold goals into real results for
this community. So thank you again for being here tonight. We look forward to hearing your comments. Yes. Mayor Wilson. Thank you, mister Knighton. Appreciate that so much. Christine, that's a lot of candy that you have in front of you tonight. I don't know what you would do with all that.
I have the great privilege at this time,
to ask the Executive Religious Director,
Imam Abdullah Jabbar from the Ras al Majid
to the front for our invocation of moment silence. Welcome,
I ask you to join me in prayer.
In the name of god,
the most compassionate, the most merciful,
our sustainer,
our guide,
the one who has never once turned away from us.
We ask you to send peace and salutations upon
the prophet Mohammed,
Jesus, Moses, Abraham, and all of the noble men and women you have sent to uplift us, enlighten us.
We stand here entrusted with the care of this city,
and we very well know our limits. We don't know
everything, and we don't see everything.
So we ask you to fill the gaps in our vision,
strengthen us where we are weak, and bless us where we are strong and decisive.
Guide the deliberations of this council.
Let not pettiness
distract us,
no pride divide us, and no fear silence what is right.
Make us careful with the vulnerable, courageous with the truth and steady
in our duty to all who call
Roswell home.
And grant us the humility
to question, to question ourselves before we question others,
to weigh our conscience before we cast our
vote, to see our own assumptions,
and to confront our own prejudice and bias.
Let this chamber be a place where truth is not hidden, where conscience is not silenced, and where justice is not delayed.
And dear God, we ask you to bless our elders who have sacrificed and toiled
to build a city
which we call home.
We ask you to bless our children, the future of our community bright and full of promise.
Bless the families who labor each day to make a living,
to make ends meet.
Bless the clergy, the teachers, the mentors
who shape our minds and our hearts.
Bless the first responders who put their lives on the line to keep us safe.
Bless the workers who keep our streets safe and our home standing.
Bless the newcomers who bring fresh hope and perspective,
and bless those rooted here for generations.
And may we show each each of them the respect and the honor they deserve.
Do not let indifference
dull our conscience,
nor division unravel our community.
Give us hands that serve,
hearts that
unite,
and a will to labor for the common good of all.
And we make this council
a beacon
that every neighbor may know dignity,
every street may know peace,
and the future of this city may be filled with hope.
Amen.
Amen.
And now let us take a brief moment of silence together
to hold these word, this prayer,
to search our own hearts and to remember
the charge we carry for one another.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Imam
Abdullah Jabbar from the Rasheed.
It was a beautiful prayer. Thank you.
This time, I have the great privilege of asking United States Army e force specialist,
Richard Hennigan, to please come forward and lead us in the pledge of allegiance.
Allegiance to the flag
of The United States Of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation
under God,
indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you so much, specialist Hennigan. I'm gonna ask you to please stay up there as I ask the council to come down for me on the first item under the mayor's report, which is a reading of the esteemed veteran of Roswell award.
Proclamation,
office of the mayor,
specialist Richard Hennigan, esteemed veteran of Roswell.
Whereas the city of Roswell, Georgia
is proud to honor and recognize the extraordinary
service
and enduring legacy of the brave men and women who have served in the armed forces United States.
And whereas Richard Hennigan
answered the call to serve his country by enlisting in the United States Army in May
1968,
shortly after his nineteenth birthday,
and faithfully serving until 1971,
attaining the rank of e four specialist.
Whereas Richard Hennigan
completed his basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey and went on to serve two combat tours in Vietnam
as part of the seventy third Engineers construction support, nineteenth Engineer Battalion,
United States Army Corps of Engineers.
And whereas during his first tour
from December 1968 to December
1969,
Specialist Hennigan was stationed at Landing Zone Lowboy,
serving in equipment maintenance and logistical operations
while participating in perimeter defense,
listening post,
and minesweep security.
And whereas specialist Hennigan
contributed directly to the vital mission of upgrading Highway QL Dash 1, Vietnam's critical coast highway,
supporting a major infrastructure project that earned several presidential unit citations
and remains in use more than five decades later.
Whereas
his service included participation in numerous campaigns,
including the tent counter offensive,
multiple phases of the Vietnam counter offensive,
and the winter spring nineteen seventy campaign,
earning him distinguished honors,
including
the Army Commendation Medal,
the National Defense Service Medal,
the Vietnam Service Medal with two stars,
and the Vietnam Campaign Medal.
And whereas following his military service, Richard Hennigan pursued higher education,
earning an associate of applied science degree with high honors and a bachelor of science in management science with honors from Rutgers University.
And whereas Richard Hennigan continues to serve others in the Roswell community through meaningful volunteerism,
including as a fishing guide with Veterans Fly Fishing, an instructor and board member with Seniors Enriched Learning,
and as a dedicated elder,
Stephen's minister,
and committee member at Roswell Presbyterian Church.
And whereas Richard Hennigan
exemplifies
the spirit of civic duty,
leadership,
and compassion
through both his military service
and his unwavering commitment to the well-being
and enrichment of others.
Now, therefore, I, Curtin Wilson,
mayor of the city of Roswell, Georgia,
do hereby name e four specialist Richard Hennigan,
an esteemed veteran of Roswell,
and call upon all our citizens to recognize his outstanding service to our country and to our community, and that there is no higher calling than those who serve the United States Armed Forces. Congratulations, sir.
Thank you very much and, just a few words. It's, it's been quite a month, quite a year and and,
quite a life. I've been in Roswell now almost twenty years and it's it's the best place I've ever lived. So I hope you all feel that way.
So thank you Mayor Wilson. I appreciate it. Thank you Roswell City Council.
Thank you Roswellens,
family, friends and, for being here this evening. I appreciate it very much.
I'm thankful for many things.
One is being here, of course, and another is being asked to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
I was really afraid that I was gonna be asked to,
sing the Star Spangled Banner
and and I'm thankful
later. And yeah, after a few beers or something.
And,
and my thanks is also for you. I'm sure you're thankful for that as well and as you well should be.
In April,
I was invited to participate in the Roswell Rotary Honors Air
program. We flew to Washington DC. We had a quick tour of Annapolis and we spent a lot of time,
in the city itself.
While on that flight and I walked out to get on the plane with my brother Doug was my escort
and,
Doctor. Sherrill was there to send us off and there he is back there. And
I walked up onto the bus and there was a friend of mine from five year friend, John Malden, Doctor. John Malden.
And, he said, What are you doing here? I said, Well, same thing you are. We're going to, we're going to D. C.
We spent a lot of time together and we've, we've fished together many times.
Quite a lot more fish than I did, but
you knew that.
We spent a lot of time, and walked along the base of the wall and had a lot of conversations and talked about some of the people we knew up there and
and shared, a lot of a lot of thought.
And I would have to say that, that was a real memorable
day because that was the day for me that the great angst kinda was lifted and I felt,
felt fine. Good. You did too, by the way.
Two weeks ago I was preparing,
for a course I'm teaching at, Roswell Presbyterian Church,
about retirement and getting ready for retirement and planning how you're gonna spend the fourth quarter of your life. The last years,
who of you are in that class, I think?
No?
Or you will be.
And
I was preparing a slide
that would demonstrate
or show
what are the qualities of a good person or what are the good qualities of a person, However that should be,
phrased.
And while I was putting that slide together I got notice that Doctor. John had passed away.
He's,
he was 77.
He was,
Vietnam veteran.
He was,
a patrol leader with a lot of infantry,
training and skills and he was combat veteran,
amputee,
lost a good part of his left leg in Vietnam on that tour,
and,
purple heart.
When he got back from Vietnam,
he did the same thing I did. He got serious about school.
He had a B. A, M. A, and PhD.
He was a therapist.
He worked with troubled boys and I talked to him about that a little bit and he says, well, never gonna run out of work.
For sure.
With that, he had a prosthetic device on his on his leg. He became a martial arts,
performer
with awards.
He became a tennis player. He golfed. He water skied and then he found fly fishing and fly fishing. He said this is a lot easier, I can tie flies sitting down and and, and all that. He was excellent.
He was an organizer. I give him credit for Saving Veterans Fly Fishing Organization,
a life of a
author.
He wrote
fiction. He wrote
manuals for psychologists, etcetera. He was a friend, a teacher.
He died September 3.
That's what he did with his life.
But while I was preparing this slide it's about what is a good person
and he was humble, honest,
generous,
especially with his time, responsible,
empathetic,
kind, moral.
He was he was awesome.
I think he was a model for living and a model for,
finishing strong.
So I'm gonna ask you guys and it's Veterans
the Honors
Air Program
is having some financial difficulties and we're not sure
if it's going to continue.
So I'm asking for the
the leadership of the Rotary to look at at, some strategic opportunities, maybe joining with another city, another town, another group that maybe has has got a diminishing population.
And I'm also asking you guys to make a contribution to this.
Rotary,
Roswell Rotary,
honors air program.
I'm also asking if you would, and his and his honor is to make a a veteran,
discount to veterans fly fishing, veteransflyfishing.org,
and they'll be able to,
or
anything you wanna do.
So that's what I that's what I have to say today.
So thank you.
An honor. Thank you.
So just to repeat, you want you want people to donate to veteransflyfishing.org?
That's right. .Org, veteransflyfishing.org,
and reach out to Roswell Rotary for the honors the honors flight program. Right. Right? And people can donate to both of those. A A lot of great people, a lot of great Rotary members reach out to one of them and explain about how to make how to contribute to the Roswell
Rotary Honors Flight Program and veteranflyfishing.org.
Right. That's an awesome program.
Hope it,
continues going for years to come. There's more veterans in the pipeline. And you guys probably noticed like a lot of people, a lot of veterans, he didn't talk about himself. He talked about somebody else. Alright. Let's get a picture with you.
Thank you, specialist Richard Hannigan, and family and friends for being with us. That was awesome.
I think mister Knighton has one additional comment he wants to make from his original opening monologue.
Yes. Thank you again. And and it's obviously a great honor for,
the veteran this evening. One item I wanted to ensure I mentioned,
before,
speakers come to the podium
is that we do have staff members who will be taking notes, this evening and and questions as well.
And so once each speaker completes their five minute period,
the mayor may ask,
the,
appropriate staff person to then come to the podium to respond or to,
answer that question. So we'll give everybody their full five minutes.
And once,
each individual speaker's five minutes is completed,
then we'll be able to appropriately respond to any questions,
raised. So thank you again.
Thanks, mister Knighton. Welcome everybody to open mic night. We're glad you're here. I'll now open the meeting for Roswell residents to speak. City clerk Nancy Long, how many speakers do we have for public comment this evening? Mayor, we have 19 speakers. Outstanding. Thank you. Would you please call the first speaker, Nancy? Yes. Brandon Newton. Thank you so much. Welcome, Brandon.
Evening. Good evening. I was not prepared to go first here.
My name is Brandon Newton. I live in Waverly Hall.
I would like to talk about the Bowen Road in '92,
project that this week it was released,
that there is a letter of intent to sell that property.
I have two,
two things.
The first one is we went through this,
five, six, seven years ago when the church originally
was trying to sell it to a, development group.
It was also a grocery store based,
business park type deal.
So my first question would be what has changed in that intersection there that they discovered
during the due diligence of that project
that it would not work very well. What has changed in that intersection over the last five to seven years?
And the second thing is
when the city bought that property, we were told that it was gonna be turned into a park
and added to the parks and rec department.
I don't know how to phrase this question, but that doesn't sound like what's happening at this point.
And I'm willing to wait to see what the plans are for that property. I don't know any of the details of this new project.
But I would like to say that the park kind of washed a lot of,
of the opposition to it when the city bought it.
And now it sounds like it's not gonna be in part of the parks and rec department anymore. So I'd like to hear some comments on that.
Brandon, thank you. Thank you so much.
Mister Leatherman, would you like to address that, sir?
Just a a couple of quick comments. Again, Jeff Leatherman.
I
serve over our economic development, community development, and also recreation and parks team, as a senior vice president, deputy city administrator.
As the speaker had mentioned, we are so early in the process, so we have not seen or have not finalized any of the site plan,
work that
we would look at to understand the transportation related
impacts associated
with this project. And so that will come as part of the due diligence and design process.
As it relates to
the remaining uses of the property, we are reserving two and a half acres of that property for a fire station,
that we've talked about on occasion
as we've needed to expand our fire service. And of course, we can talk more about kind of that in the future. As it relates to the remainder of the property uses, we all also have had some things change since we acquired the property.
Two acquisitions
in particular,
one is the Crabapple Middle School property adjacent to Roswell Area Park, and then we also acquired the additional 25 acres along the Spruill property. And so as we start to evaluate park land and park property and our needs into the future, that also plays into
our overall evaluation
of property
and how we can put it to its highest and best use.
And so that is why we brought the recommendation forward to allow the RDA to start negotiations
over this next phase of the property, again, while retaining two and a half acres for the purposes of a fire station.
Jeff, is the RDA announced is there anything been announced at this juncture? At this point, they've accepted the letter of intent,
from a prospective buyer of that property.
We'll be working with the RDA.
The next step for us is to formulate an intergovernmental agreement between the city and the RDA that would formulate that would formalize our negotiation process, and we would expect that to be done in October. Has there been any
pricing announced or is that still
the LOI did indicate that the acquisition would be a $5,000,000 acquisition in the LOI, which is more than one
property for. And again, we are retaining two and a half acres of that property. So we're selling less property for more, than what the city purchased.
Thank you, Jeff.
Thank you, Brandon.
Nancy.
Next, next speaker, please, ma'am.
Kathleen
Reeder.
Kathleen
Reiter?
Well, we'll come back to Kathleen after and just go to the next speaker. We'll come back to her.
Janet
Russell. Welcome, Janet.
Me.
My name is Janet Russell. I live in Roswell, Georgia.
I have a few things. One, first of all, I wanna say thank you to Brenda Orlins who
created the Day of Hope a long, long time ago.
If you didn't stop by the Day of Hope this past weekend, you missed an amazing event.
People from all over Roswell came to get food, haircuts,
eye exams, ear exams, be entertained, and have fun.
It's what a community does. It takes care of everyone.
So Brenda,
I saw you briefly. She's a working dog over there all the time. She's not a little miss Prissy in the corner,
and she doesn't know I'm thanking her, but I remember when she started it, so thanks.
Secondly, the Roswell Farmers Market is exploding with success, finally.
It was here for years, and then it got kicked out by the previous mayor, and it went to the church, which was nice, but it was dead. Thanks to Christine Hall, who pushed for it, who's
loves farmers markets, and Christina de Victor, who owns Fellowes, who's taken it over as a volunteer because it is just the place to be on Saturday mornings. It's so much fun.
If you think there's a birth problem in America, you won't know that at the farmers market because everybody's got a kid.
I'd also like to thank you for honoring Hispanic Heritage Month,
except that you didn't,
so I can't.
You didn't say one word about Hispanic Heritage Month at all in this city.
As a Hispanic myself,
I take exception to that.
We had three programs
on a weekend at the Cultural Arts Center that were ticketed events, but there has been nothing to appeal to families to discover Hispanic heritage, culture
at all.
They make up 18 to 20% of our population in Roswell,
and they need to be recognized.
We have Hispanic Heritage employees in this city.
They need to be recognized.
I recommended that last year. It was not taken. My family name is Hidalgo from the eighth century in Spain. I meant to bring my coat of arms tonight, but I forgot.
It's funny when you don't look Hispanic, but you learn what people really think about them.
And I have heard lots of comments,
and I want you to know that I would really love to be able to thank you next year for honoring Hispanic Heritage Month because you seem to have forgotten two years in a row.
Thirdly, I went to the commission meeting on Tuesday night, and you talked about slow down Roswell.
It's a new idea in town, and I love it.
However, the man who did the transportation put up a list of 12 areas where we want people to slow down, and the print was pretty small and I couldn't see it. But I did notice that they were always
named
subdivisions
or country clubs where people are speeding.
They forgot about the part of town that's here that was invented before country clubs.
We don't have HOAs. We don't have anybody to be our speaker
or cry into a bullhorn that we need attention for slowing down. And if you want a good example, right here is Norcross Street.
From Highway 9 all the way to Holcomb Bridge, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of residences,
and no one pays attention to them. Nobody. There's only one sidewalk on one side, and it's pitiful.
So here's my idea because, you know, I think outside the box.
In Europe, there are now cities where all two lane roads are designated as 30 kilometers.
That's 18 miles an hour.
I think Roswell should designate all two lane roads, all two lane roads,
no more than 20 miles an hour. And we don't give a damn if you like it or not. 20 miles an hour, whether it's a subdivision
or Norcross Street.
Pretty easy to enforce. You're on a two lane road. It's 20 miles an hour.
20 is plenty, and I think that should be the logo.
Slow down and smell the roses.
And there's more to life than picking up speed in Roswell.
Slow down. You don't need an engineer. You don't need a commission. You don't need a consultant,
and you don't need to spend $450,000
implementing things.
As an aside on King Street, the people that live on King Street have been asking for slowdown barriers for years, and they were told if they wanted them, they had to pay for them themselves. But now the city's willing to pay for them everywhere else. So I think you need to start in the middle and go out. If you choose to live in a subdivision that has 700 houses, you're gonna have at least 1,400
cars.
You can't complain. Because remember, you are not sitting in the traffic. You are the traffic.
Thank you.
Thank you, Janet.
Greg, are you here?
You wanna did you wanna address the
the, question on
slowdown in Roswell?
Yeah. Good evening. Welcome, Greg. Yeah. So as we described in the committee meeting last week,
we are taking a phased approach. So phase one is looking at specific neighborhoods.
And then as part of,
so phase two, we'll be looking at roads, like miss Russell mentioned, like Norcross Street,
Thompson Place, those types of roads as well. And so we'll be developing a matrix for that next year.
What was the 10 that were you can you,
share with why the 10 were chosen or the why they were chosen?
Yeah. So the 10,
were basically
chosen out of a matrix that was developed,
looking at,
five different factors,
speeding,
traffic,
proximity to, shopping shopping areas,
sidewalks, and then, the poverty rate.
So all the data and everything that was collected and analyzed,
created, like, a weighted score that resulted in,
these top 10 neighborhoods
or top 11. Thanks, Craig. Can you address the speed limit on roads?
So dropping the speed limit
or changing the speed limit would
make our enforcement
invalid.
Our our,
the speed limits have to go through GDOT for approval,
so there's not much we can do with that. And GDOT is who?
Georgia Department of Transportation. So the state of Georgia
does what in terms of speed in relation to the city of Roswell or other municipalities?
They have ultimate authority on us to,
enforce speeds on our roads. And that is you're not talking about state roads. You're talking about local roads. All roads. Yep. Thank you, Craig. Yep. Thanks so much.
Nancy?
Next speaker, please, ma'am.
David Woodrow.
David Woodrow. Welcome,
David. Welcome, sir.
Thank you.
Microphone work? Yes, sir. Great.
Yes, sir. I think David have to I think though Randy's gonna if you turn that way, David's gonna tell you, Randy's gonna tell you to come back this way. If you if you would, sir, please please address the mayor and council in Yeah. In what you described. Comments. In what you described.
If could you address the mayor and council directly, not the audience?
Yes.
You probably David, honestly, it probably works gonna work better in the middle because the camera I think, Sonia, if you go over there, you'll lose the camera.
Right here, good enough? Perfect. Perfect.
I would,
I'd like to talk about one
one of the greatest achievements
that has happened in my thirty one years here in Roswell.
I have seen four mayors,
and this is the first mayor,
the first council
that had the political will
to bring forth a bond referendum
to invest in our city.
I go around to a lot of other sister cities.
And when I moved here, Roswell was the crown jewel
of North Fulton County.
Our parks were first rate.
And over time, with no investment,
the parks and the city stagnated.
This administration
had the willpower
to bring forth to the voters that bond issue which passed overwhelmingly.
We now have first class pay for our,
our public safety officers.
We have a full time fire department,
and we have money now to invest in our parks and recreation.
I hope that this is not the last investment
that we have
in our public safety, in our fire department,
and in our parks and recreation.
I think that that has all been
a result of stagnation
over twenty seven years.
I've heard people talk about neglect
on the East Side of our city.
That didn't happen in the last four years. That happened over twenty seven years
of neglect,
and it's time that it is addressed.
I was in attendance at the candidate forum the other evening,
and,
one candidate
one candidate spoke
about the greatest need that Roswell had, and that is to impact in a positive way the East Side of our city.
And I applaud our mayor for doing that.
There have been missteps.
I would be the first to
admit that.
We all don't agree on everything,
but,
I think that, hopefully, there are lessons learned
in that respect.
The other thing
that really upsets me and concerns me
is political theater.
I saw a political theater within the city of Roswell,
people
haranguing
from a street corner.
I I heard innuendo.
I heard inference,
frankly,
of financial
misbehavior,
perhaps,
on the part of the city of Roswell.
Any of those
formally elected or, in some cases, unelected
officials
would know that that is not possible.
We are audited by the state of Georgia, and we are audited by the federal government.
Here's what I wanna know. I am on the Roswell
Employee Benefits
Pension Committee.
When I went to my first meeting,
I was shocked
to find out
that fifteen years ago,
the city
capped the pension fund. A good idea.
New employees went into a defined
benefit plan. Good idea.
The next thing that I found
is that there was either
total neglect,
a lack of financial sophistication,
or kick the can down the road.
The city of Roswell today,
which I suspect most citizens do not know this,
and I encourage you to find out about it. Today, the city of Roswell has a $25,000,000
underfunded
pension plan.
That didn't happen
in the last four years, the last three and a half years.
That happened under two previous administrations.
I personally would like to know what in the world they were thinking.
And if I am a employee
of the city of Roswell,
I feel a lot better with this mayor and council
looking into that. A fix is in place.
And what I'd like to know people ask, well, gee, where's the money going here in Roswell,
with the bond money and so on? What I wanna know is where did the $25,000,000
go in the two previous administrations?
Mayor and council, thank you very much. And again,
I encourage all the citizens to learn a little bit more about that and put a little less trust in former officials.
Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Thank you so much.
Bill Gottschell, CFO, would you like to address the,
the,
$27,000,000
current
pension
issue and how that was discovered and what the plan is and how it's currently being addressed?
Yes, mister mayor. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to address this question.
In 2011,
the pension plan was frozen to new participants
and the existing participants were allowed to continue to accrue service and benefits in the pension plan. So their formula allowed them to continue to work towards a fully funded retirement
if they stayed long enough to earn the credits necessary.
At that time, when the year on the pension plan was frozen,
the, unfunded liability was 10,100,000
As way of background, I probably audited over 200 pension plans before my career here at D'Citi as an audit partner with a prestigious local firm.
Of those, probably 50 are defined benefit plan. So it's not unusual to have an unfunded liability of some form. Dollars 10,100,000.0
relative to value this plan seem reasonable.
However,
by 2024,
as our commenter mentioned,
net debt liability had grown to $25,700,000
At the same time,
the payment in 2011
was $3,600,000
and by 2024 had risen to $5,700,000
So even though we were paying more money into the plan,
the liability was still increasing.
This is not usually something you see unless you have something really strange going on in your population.
I don't have an answer to why that has happened,
but generally,
what I've seen is a lack of
understanding how pension plans work, how assumptions increase the liability,
how required payments are maybe not being met to the full extent they should be met.
But to grow to the level that it's grown is unusual.
Some steps that we have taken, if you're interested,
as you know, this council identified this problem,
sometime in '23.
And in '24,
moved the management of the plan from GMEBS, which is part of the Georgia Municipal Association,
to self directed. In other words, as mister Woodrow referred to, we have a benefits committee
comprised of staff elected officials,
or elected officials designation.
And that group works to manage a plan, oversee the actuaries, and work hand in hand with me and the auditors
to review all of the assumptions that
result in the accretion of the liability
as well as the determination of the payment that needs to be made.
From this work, we've come up with a plan
that eventually will get to in about two years, we'll start working toward a fifteen year plan at three point one to $3,400,000
a year to work that liability down to zero.
Just this year, we paid 25 points, 5,600,000.0
into the plan to try to reduce the liability.
In 2026, we've already reduced that number by 600,000
to 5,000,000.
And we expect to continue to see that progress so that in somewhere in about sixteen years, we've unwound that liability.
Bill's mister mister Gautja, let me ask you a couple questions. Was the city of Roswell subsidizing other pension plans?
Again, hard to answer definitively without doing a a detailed review of of their plan, which we never really had access to.
But there were 300 cities participating
in the GMEPS plan, many of those cities much smaller than Roswell at a much different profile.
So the assumptions that might have worked for them
were harmful to us and that it created a higher liability.
What we had seen prior to our withdrawals that I believe we were the largest city left in the GMA plan and the GMEBS plan.
So we were,
in essence, subsidizing
through the use of their assumptions
and their projected payouts and so forth. And,
by the way, just FYI, so just that any employee or past employee knows who has a pension,
the fund is protected
and the pensions will be paid out. Correct? Yes, sir. The fund is protected by a federal program,
and we are still paying we're paying all benefits timely and in their full amount, and we expect to do so through the end of the plan. So the good news is everybody's safe that has a pension. Yes, sir. Let me ask you, as somebody who's as a professional auditor who has audited over 200 types of these kind of funds before, why was it this discovered between 2011
and 02/2023?
I can only speculate to the answer, but my experience is a combination of two things.
Being your financial management
was not reviewing the plan assumptions,
so we have an actuary.
Let me make sure I can foster and foster.
And they prepare these reports. They do all the actual analysis,
but it's still management's responsibility
to make sure the assumptions that they picked and by management, I mean myself and my predecessors,
that they've picked the proper assumptions, they've applied them properly, and there are no obvious arithmetic
or other types of of mistakes in the calculation.
And then the audit firm is supposed to come back behind
and challenge both the actuary
and financial management of the organization.
I believe these challenges at each of these steps did not happen,
not sufficiently to catch this problem. And I will say,
our auditor this year
basically held our feet to the fire to explain all the assumptions,
and we were able to get through that review process,
and they agreed that we should be lowering our payment based on the actuarial study.
And as a line item on a budget on an annual budget being paid this is being paid to the general fund. Correct? Yes, sir. So it's approved by the elected officials. Correct? Yes, sir. So the general the elected elected officials should be familiar with what the line item is? Yes, sir. And so that is that that number stayed correspondingly
the same over the years?
It has actually increased over the years until it hit to 5,600,000
in 2024.
It stayed 5.6 in '25, and we're bringing it down to 5,000,000 in '26. Thank you, mister Gottschall. Appreciate your time. Counseling here, thoughts, comments, or questions on this matter of customer sales?
Thank you, mister Gottschall. I don't wanna put you on the spot. So if you wanna say I'll get back to you on this question, that's fine.
But,
it has been my experience that when a plan like that is switched from defined benefit to defined contribution, there are strategies
that can be
implemented
specifically to capitalize as it were
that that particular
value at that time and avoid the growth.
Have you are you familiar with those kinds of strategies? And do you have any idea why those wouldn't have been used at that time? I am familiar with those strategies.
You can use annuities. You can use secured borrowings.
You can use structured payouts. There's a lot of financial engineering you can do around that
that preserves the participants'
benefits that they were promised when the plan was put in shape in place.
I cannot answer why they didn't do that. Thank
you. Thank you, mister Sells. Any other thoughts, comments, or questions from counsel? Thank you, mister Sells. I appreciate your time. Thank you, mister Woodrow, for your comments, sir. Nancy, next speaker, please, ma'am.
Claire Barnes.
Welcome, Claire.
Good evening.
I'm a read this.
Mayor and council has held numerous meetings throughout Roswell to gain consensus at the polls to pass bond referendums worth millions of dollars.
Mayor and council have announced plans for an entertainment district that is described as larger than the Battery
Complex that is currently home to Atlanta Braves. One of the targeted locations would be the current location of Kimberly Clark headquarters, the Georgia 400 off Holcomb Bridge Road in Roswell.
To to date, there has been zero public meetings anywhere in Roswell to discuss the targeted intent and scope of this project.
In fact, all the meetings to date have been behind closed doors.
Is it appropriate for mayor and council to take any further actions at this point without public input be in meetings similar to the public's,
solicitations of the for the board the bond scope?
What actions should be taken now and after the election by the any candidate seeking election or reelection to mayor and council?
And then this council, unlike,
councilman
Zapata, does not have our backs.
You have forgotten that you represent us, not the mayor or vice mayor. There are several recent blatant examples. All of you have played word games when asked direct questions.
This is a new election cycle. The incumbents are asking for the vote. The candidates are asking for our vote. All of you need to give us a reason why.
Mister mayor, please stop using the word trust. It pegs the cringe of megar. Trust is earned, not given.
Thank you.
Thank you, Claire.
Jeff, do you wanna address any of the comments around,
yes, sir, customer sales? Yes, sir.
So I would like to say a couple of things about this.
The first is that
for as long as I've lived in Roswell,
we have, as a city, waited to see what showed up at Com Dev. By the time it gets there,
the buyer of the property that is commercial is already got his plan, and they are asking us for some kind of change to the zoning,
some kind of new use of the property, or they're not talking to us at all because they've already made this choice.
What we have done is gone to landowners and
and found out what their status is, what their plans are. We're talking with that group all the time as a city,
city, and we're also talking to developers. There are many of those that will never
reach fruition for any number of reasons.
So we are talking to potential
investors in Roswell, and we're talking to those who have property in Roswell.
And there are lots of conversations that never
come to fruition.
But this is quite a different way to do economic development than what we did in the past. Quite a different way. And what that means is we can be much more deliberate and specific about trying to find things that
maximize
speaking to the bow in a '92,
we have a very, very small and limited amount of commercial property in Rossell that's even eligible for commercial use.
And so when those opportunities present themselves,
I personally
ran on
not having more vape shops, not having more stand alone apartments, not standing
not having more tattoo parlors. Those are all
those are all great businesses in existing facilities, perhaps,
but they don't create new jobs. And so what we have done is taken that process.
So there is nothing to tell. It would just as it did in the past when it came to a decision about a particular land use and a particular plan,
which has now made its way through conversations and it looks like it may come to fruition,
then we in the due course of the process that always happened in Roswell, it comes before the public.
K? So what
what what you are what what people are believing is some behind the door
discussion to create these opportunities is trying to match these up. And when they reach a certain level, then there's something to talk about. But in many of these cases, we're under NDAs while that particular,
developer discusses and plays with their plans and figures out what will work. And so that's the difference in my view. Back to you, mayor.
Thank you, mister Sales. Council member Sales, mister Leatherman.
I think just a couple of additional points,
in some of the challenge. And we've talked about this in our quarterly,
report backs as it relates to economic development, which, the next quarterly report back will be at the October,
as we've gone through those cycles.
The other challenge that council member Sells, I think, was referencing
is the challenge of landowners who may not,
be in a position to want to sell at this point in time or not necessarily see the vision around their property.
We've got a number of challenges where,
properties have been owned, outright for twenty, thirty, and forty years. And in some cases, when you look to redevelop those parcels, whether it's
two acres, three acres, ten, forty acres, got a tremendous amount of infrastructure challenges,
for the private marketplace. And that includes transportation loads, that includes
stormwater infrastructure that have to be brought up to code. And when you start to look at the cash flow that that property is bringing in now today versus through a redevelopment process when it would potentially go offline from a revenue perspective for two to three years through the development process, it makes it very, very challenging for existing land owners who may own the property debt free to engage in that redevelopment
process. And so that is part of the negotiation that we are in when various,
land becomes available or
negotiations become initiative
initiated by the city is is trying to find the right blend of opportunity for the landowner, opportunity for the commercial,
reinvestment,
as well as ways that the city can help support projects. Hill Street right next door is a great example of that where we're creating opportunity with a land exchange agreement,
also through parking and parking arrangements and other ways that we are facilitating and helping to support that project that started out as a very small one acre project and has blossomed into a six acre mixed use development. And that has truly taken a number of years, taken us the last two and a half years really to facilitate that conversation to the point where we are now getting ready to finalize the paperwork,
finalize the development agreement, and launch into the construction of that project.
And so while they are complicated, we do have other opportunities, the Bowen and ninety two,
property. I will say this is the second time that we've taken a a run at a redevelopment project. About a year ago, we authorized the RDA to negotiate on this property, and those negotiations fell through. To council member sales point, sometimes we find the right matrix,
in the commercial corridors, in the commercial areas where we can find reinvestment.
And sometime we don't, and we had to go back through the drawing board. And so the Bowen And 92 property is yet another good example of that ongoing effort
in our redevelopment.
I would just add one other, point is we are working for the first time right now, and there are members, behind me here that I recognize that came to our first comprehensive plan, our growth plan update, focused a lot of time and energy in the last two cycles on our residential
neighborhoods.
We've got really, really good policies in place protecting our residential neighborhoods now, and now we're working on that 18% of our community. The commercial corridors are on Highway 9, Holcomb Bridge Road, the East side of town,
to push together both our economic development strategy and our growth strategy for the first time in one planning document that will help inform our transportation investments,
stormwater investments,
and other policies in our UDC around economic development. So a tremendous amount of work happening as it relates to economic development in our community right now.
Thank you. Thank you, mister Locust. Yes. Council member Sales. Just one more. I'm gonna I'm gonna take what you just said, Jeff, and turn it into an example, if I could. I'm gonna try not to say too much because this is private business, but we have a particular piece of property that everybody in this room would be very excited to see redeveloped
that we have been talking to that land owner. The land owner has no debt on the property. They own it freehold.
It produces multiple millions of dollars a year
to if that land is disturbed, if when when they do anything to redevelop it, and we've been talking to that that landowner,
there is, as I believe that the estimate we have here in the city is it's $8,000,000
in stormwater
remediation
for that one piece of property.
So this particular this particular landowner would give up cash flow, free cash flow, no debt of multiple millions of dollars,
have to spend $8,000,000
to start from scratch.
And so
our challenge
is to find
an opportunity
that can make that
sufficiently large enough new opportunity where you can cover what that particular landowner needs for his property as well as this the stormwater remediation. And that's the trick. That's the challenge, and that's what we're doing.
Thank you, council member Sells. Nancy, next speaker, please.
Emily
Smith.
Welcome, Emily.
Welcome.
I'm Emily Smith.
I am also a resident of the neighborhood with Waverly Hall and in the back, Habersham Downs.
So, again, we're,
I arrived here today because I'm also curious to learn more about this development at 92 And Bowen.
I think,
my concern as somebody who lives there
is just envisioning
what that traffic
flow is going to look like on 92 And Bowen.
My understanding of this property
is that
there would
be minimal road access from Bowen Road,
into this property,
and then
92 would be the main brunt in and out.
From there,
if anyone were to need to travel westward, it would be impossible
until unless one
went east and then cut back.
So it would sound like another turnaround
would need to be cut in
to alleviate that sort of issue.
So
just curiosity on how that is supposed how that would work,
and how the letter of intent
what what kind of
details all get
brought into that?
Understanding also, so retaining 2.5 acres for the fire station. Great.
Originally, I know we're we're all here because we were excited about a park. I understand the conversation about
best use for the for the city's property, and possibly that's not the most
efficient
use. $500,000
is what was being touted that the city was making a profit now or had
gained from their initial investment.
So just curiosity,
what happens to that $500,000?
Does it now become the cut out the cut through or the turnaround for on '92?
Just curious about what would happen to the $500,000.
And,
I think that might be it. So thank you. Thanks, Emily. Thank you. Would you like an answer to any of those questions?
If you have them, that'd be fabulous. Absolutely.
You wanna address the financial question first,
Bill?
Bill, on the face of it, it yeah. Yes. We are making a nominal $500,000
so called profit,
but we are also carving out two plus acres for our fire station.
So if you were to start to do the math, you would allocate some cost basis to the fire station. I think the more important point is we
acquired this property through general fund, cash from the general fund
of $5,000,000.
We're retaining two and a half acres, and we're getting five if everything closes and like
council member sales said, you know, there's not a 100% possibility that this matures. But if it does, then we will receive $5,500,000
of cash in.
So we don't have a basis to repay.
We have a basis to replenish. That's right. So, actually, the purchase was 4 and a half and the sale is 5, but the $5,000,000 will go back in the general fund. 4 and a half came out of the general fund. $5,000,000 goes back in the general fund. And then as you point, you also cost allocate
that you're taking two and a half acres two to two and a half acres of the six and a half, seven acres of property and allocating that cost towards the towards the deal. Right. As a as a business owner, you would have to do that to report for tax gains and all that kind of stuff. As a city,
we're looking at what was our original investment
and what's the cash return on that investment, and we're getting all of our cash back plus 500,000.
And it goes back into general fund, which offsets obviously
tax liability.
Yes, sir.
And then there was another question, I think, that was related around traffic.
Hope that's Greg
or Jeff?
Aaron?
Yeah. And I can have my, traffic and transportation associates follow me up on this. The the site plan, as I mentioned earlier, is not complete. So that will be the next step,
and all of our departments, including the transportation department, our stormwater department, water, others, will review the site plan as it relates to our code.
They will provide comment feedback on that. And, depending on the existing zoning and what's required,
that may become they may, depending,
come back before this body for review as well as an, developments would, in our normal process. Emily mentioned several things. I just heard where can you respond to any of those things that she was mentioning? Yeah. In some cases, it's too early to tell right now on exactly where ingress, egress would happen, how it would take place, what the traffic impacts are. That those are elements that our traffic department and our transportation department would look at as part of their normal plan review.
The developer will be responsible for providing information like trips traveled. Do you know any of those things? We don't. So you don't know any of that at this juncture. Not at this juncture. Does anybody in the city know that at this juncture? No. We don't. Okay. So just we can't comment on it because we truly don't know. That's true. Fair enough. Thanks. Thanks, Jeff.
Thank you, sir.
Nancy, next next speaker, please, ma'am. Roy Rauber Shaw.
Welcome, Roy.
Hello, sir.
Tonight,
I was talking with some neighbors, and they have begged me to put aside the city stuff for tonight. So I'm gonna bring up a rather parochial issue, for our neighborhood. First off, thank you for putting together a grant for the US Department of Transportation
to bring three major projects to our city. And,
since one of them is in my neighborhood on my street, it is a very welcome thing.
I and they have read all of the internal forums and everything about it, and we understand it's too early to have done any scientific,
engineering studies and that sort of thing. But they're reaching for trying to understand
what was actually in the grant that went to the federal government. What sort of options were laid out in terms of,
right away and that sort of thing. And they're trying to even speculate at where their right of ways,
are gonna fall and those sorts of things. So if we can just understand
from the grant,
what was included in the grant and the options for laying the sidewalk out in the in our neighborhood in the grant.
Thank thank you, Roy. Yes, sir.
Yeah. David, you wanna address it first? Yes, sir. Councilman Johnson. Since I live eight houses from mister Riversall,
and we this sidewalk is
affecting my street as well where I live. We will stay in the right away. So sidewalk will be in the right away. David,
were you involved in this grant?
Slightly. Can you address it at all?
No. I mean, this is,
this is why I ran. You know, that's why I'm sitting here in this seat is because I wanna protect the citizens of this, city.
Roxburgh Drive is one of the most dangerous neighborhood roads in Roswell,
out outside of maybe Oak Haven.
And,
you know, we
actually, I've gotta give a lot of credit to you, mister,
Mayor Wilson, because
originally, I think we were looking at $400,000
for
$2,000,000
in grant and we bumped it up to a million to get to or 2,000,000 to get, $8,000,000
in grant money, which will provide sidewalks for one of the most dangerous roads in Roswell to protect its citizens.
And it's through this safe streets for all grant. If you look on the city's website, you can find the Safe Streets for All program
and Roxborough Drive was number seven on the list.
A lot of the roads that were on the list like Pine Grove Road, we're already attacking with t splash three funds,
or sorry, t splashed two funds and t splashed one funds.
And, I mean, we are
actively trying to build the infrastructure for the city that was neglected
for years to protect the pedestrians
and the cyclists and the motorists of our city. Because I don't believe someone should ever die in a car wreck or be hit by a car in our city ever again. And that is my ultimate goal and
that's why we applied for this grant.
Thank you, David.
Little can we a little more technical. I think Rory asked a couple of technical questions on the grant.
No. No. Yeah. Craig, can you answer those please, sir?
Yeah. So as far as the Safe Streets for All grant,
right now we are still planning to hear back hopefully by December,
whether we are selected. And those were for,
like, basically traffic calming on Mimosa, Wave Tree, and then Roxburgh.
As far as the design, we have not started in design yet at this point. Once once we get notification if we do win the grant, then we'd start the design process and and really get into the technical aspects of of the overall design. Great great point. I think Rory asked a couple of technical questions. So would the design process have public input? Would there be a public input process? There would be public input because especially if we do get the federal funds, that'll be a required component
of that. So then the public will be able to weigh in on the design? Yep. Outstanding. Thank you, Greg. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Roy. Yes, sir. Councilman Johnson. And I will go door to door on everyone who lives on Roxborough Drive where this sidewalk could go to make sure I get their input. What about Milosin and Wave Tree? Maybe those are a lot more houses, but probably, I can do that from
definitely, Wavetree. But Mimosa might get a little tough. So
Yeah. Nancy, next speaker, please, ma'am.
Roman Percak.
Roman, welcome, sir. I know you're leaving tomorrow.
I owe you some time.
Or Wednesday. Sorry.
Yes, sir. You're leaving Wednesday.
I'm on Friday. Friday. Okay.
Sorry.
No. It's okay.
I'm here to talk about
safety,
safety action.
You're canceled.
You did excellent job
to improve the fire department
and improve
the police department.
And now
in five minutes,
somewhere there's an accident
of fire,
they are there.
They're working for emergency,
not
for improvement of public
safety.
And they need to respond for emergency
only. And my police is doing police have some
no other parts for investigation
and so on.
To improve
the safety,
you have a project.
Would you all help Roman put that up for me, please, sir?
Definitely not Bill.
Okay. You have a project
who cost million of dollars
and safety action plan.
Save streets.
I can open you can everyone can get it from the
All the accidents
that happened on the street.
Use a microphone, please. Thank you, sir. Sorry. So
Roswell,
and it's we have plenty
of black stuff. Everything what's happened here around the city.
Investment money, but it doesn't help to say,
maintain what we have today.
Not what we'll have in the future because
you're not maintaining
the streets,
design streets, the traffic streets.
I have some
show and tell
To give you some examples,
I took pictures.
Can we, can you show me those pictures, please? Are those city streets that you're showing?
I will show also cities.
Okay. Alright.
Just just on the street when it was paved because I put the tape to show there is a turn.
Here
we
have other picture.
Tape still exists.
That is
Sorry. So we can see here the street is still the same sign, but it's not the same place. Here is just here,
this side of the street so everyone can go and see.
The same place
oh, it's here.
We have
a junction here
coming from
Atlanta Street
going back to Alfredo Street.
There's no sign here
that is a junction.
Not to left, not to right to the street.
Nobody's coming here. It's very difficult to see
there's something going on here.
Some signs need to be there. There are plenty in the city. Here's another
picture.
Also here,
there
there's a junction here,
but there's no any signs here on the street that there's a junction.
Basic. And of junk of this junction accident happened.
You cannot see it from here. There's any junction where even because there's no sign even.
Here's another picture.
You're probably familiar with that.
When you're coming
from the South on Atlanta Street
and turning here, there's no any sign
which indicated where the traffic is. Now I know because I'm living here, but the tourists homecoming or people who buying the car and not familiar with the city, there's no signs.
Now we're going further.
Here we show we see and you know everyone know what it is.
We see sunshine
after we pass everything, the signs.
Give you instruction, whatever you need to do.
Coming closer again, we have now
traffic signs that no traffic signs that pedestrian will go inside, but basically
in the city don't exist.
Roman, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. And I just want to show you one picture. Okay?
Those are the signs
that
there's traffic light Yes, sir. That is on the tree. Nobody can see it. Yes, sir. They do not block, but it's the bus
stop here.
This is all over the city.
And I'm sorry, but
you don't maintain Thank you, Roman. This stuff in to invest so much money Thank thank you, Roman. Thank you.
Greg or Sharon, do you wish to address
the sign and,
some of the issues that Roman's brought up? Thank you, Roman. Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, sir.
Sharon, anything from your end as well or you guys will see no.
Welcome, Greg.
Yeah. So as far as the signs, I think he was alluding to some of the intersection ahead signs. We do not have a lot of those signs.
They are not required signs, and we we try to reduce the sign clutter as much as we can and only have the required
signs in the right way.
From a maintenance perspective, I mean, I'll be happy to talk to Roman. If there's anywhere
or any signs that,
need attention, we'll be happy to take care of those.
Clean it up. Right? Yeah. If there's tough things to be cleaned up, clean it up? Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you, Roman. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Thank you, sir.
Nancy, next speaker, please, ma'am. Martha Powell.
Welcome, Martha.
Before the next speaker comes up, I wanna make make mention of one item. I think we require or at least we are asking people to provide us with any any item for display
to our city clerk prior to the meeting.
Now I did recognize that that was a city document, and I asked about city streets. And so, obviously, those are within the public domain.
So we we allowed,
the latitude for those to be displayed.
But we have put in place a requirement that any items for display
be provided to our city clerk in advance of the meeting. So thank you very much.
Welcome.
My name is Martha Powell.
I live in Roswell for 40,
and I live in Waverly Hall. So there's several of us that are here speaking about the surprise that
we
saw, that I felt when I saw the post on social media about
the change of property
in,
92 In Bowen Road. So like others have said, that the last
we heard about it,
sort of had our expectations,
that it was in the park system.
And so to see the change was a surprise,
and also to see the way it was headlined was,
I just would call it a PR fail
that,
the city's gonna do this and to boot
getting all this money.
And then just last week, we found out, you know, the changes with our millage and
the
tax structure,
that we will pay more taxes even though the rate's not changing, but property rates. So it feels like wham, wham, wham.
But
listening to the other comments, and I know you've heard them,
the last project, the concerns were the road, In N Out on Bowen Road. Y'all know these roads? They're not very long.
From
the Corner of 92,
there's an,
entrance and exit for CVS
right across the road.
Down the road, there's a Japanese church. There are homes, homes, homes, and that abuts to another residential property. So the space is not long
and there is,
a yield
section.
So just thinking how any traffic will get in and out,
one thing. And then the second part of that is
not knowing
the ideas for design of
retail space and a fire department, which part of the property will each will each be on. And just imagining, if I live in Waverly Hall and the closest fire department to me is on Bowen or right there in Bowen Road in 92, but they've gotta go that way to come around to go this way back to our neighborhood
or to a large section that is served by the Jones Road Firehouse.
That just seems
impossible.
So the same things that were concerns,
and this came up before about retail space
or,
office space,
is just the space to get in and out. There's not a left turn
coming from that property onto 92.
Can't really turn left coming onto Bowen Road from that space.
So it's a big circle and then the u turns right there at 92,
which we see regularly.
So
those are concerns.
Those things have not changed since the last,
project was presented.
Another question so you're aware of that. And I think it is a surprise
to those of us that live near there
that we're looking at the same situation,
but things haven't changed and it was not approved last time. So what has changed
in this time?
Something that I've thought about.
What about zoning?
Now I can see that a fire department
and a park system,
they're civic connected.
What is that zoning piece?
Before, if it was for parks, that really doesn't seem to match retail.
So I'm curious about that.
I think
those those are the general things. I do appreciate
hearing the comments from staff and from council
about some of the ways conversations are held regarding
acquiring
commercial space.
I appreciate hearing that. I've learned learned things from it, but it
raised a little flag for me that
as a resident in that area, what was gonna be park space is now being pursued as commercial space.
It's just
processing and things at how it is received
as a resident right there.
Again, I appreciate the comments from others. I've learned a lot from people that have spoken to answer questions
and the comments that have come from council on how some things are done. But I'm gonna leave with the same thing that here's a project. The space has not changed. It was voted down before,
what are the changes now that seem to
be the possibility that it could float?
Thanks.
Martha, thank you.
Before you answer the question, Ellen,
I'm gonna should I put this in your hands as a city attorney or should I put it in Com Dev's hands? Jeff, we keep calling on you. You
wanna talk about what this current zoning is for this property? Jackie or Jeff? Jackie, you wanna answer the current zoning question?
Jackie, let everybody know who you are.
You're the unsung hero, so
I'm Sam.
Oh, this. We don't want her to be empty. Jackie Deibel, deputy director of community development.
The park the property at Bowinn in 92 is zoned Parkway Village.
It was rezoned to that a couple years ago.
It when it was rezoned,
there were conditions placed on it,
related to the right and, the
property or the portion on Bowen Road, which ended up indicating where the the project that was in play for rezoning
left based on the fact that, I think it was right in, right out only allowed on Bowen, which ended up, where the applicant
could not do the project. And, but the the zoning is currently Parkway Village? Correct.
Thank you, Jackie. Which is commercial? Yes. It's commercial zoning. Commercial zoning. Thank you, Jackie, so much. Alec, customer of sales.
Miss Powell, I may have misspoken or I left the wrong impression.
We're not really acquiring property per se. We're more matchmaking property with opportunity.
In this particular case, we did buy the property.
But in general, it's not so much it's not that we're acquiring property to flip it. And
I was actually on your side of the dais when that
was brought the last time.
It was approved and the developer left the project.
The developer turned down the developer left the project. It was approved, I think, with conditions.
Well, okay. So but in any event, it was the developer's choice to leave. It wasn't that it was turned down per se.
Thank you very much.
That does matter.
I was on your side of the table and I was in that whole conversation
and it was approved by the council with conditions.
The developer
abandoned the project because of the conditions perhaps.
Thank you very much.
Yes.
Nancy, next speaker, please, ma'am.
Sally McKenzie.
And, Sally, before you come up here,
friends from Waverly will be happy to meet with you additionally. So I know you have a lot of questions
and I think there's a lot to be on still unfolded.
David, is it in the hands of the RDA right now? Yes.
Currently, it's being negotiated
by the Roswell Development Authority, not by the city. Sorry, Sally.
So as we as we learn information,
what transpires?
If something does come forward that's acceptable to the RDA from an economic development and job creation perspective,
then they can present it back to the city
to see if the city is willing to accept it.
If there are some changes to the current zoning that would be required, that will obviously come. There'll be public hearings, and you'll be able to speak at that time. But at Waverly Hall Friends, we're happy to come see you and meet with you separately as well as a group.
Yes, ma'am. So sorry, Sally. Forgive me.
I have things that,
documents that are in the public domain, I. E.
Am I allowed to use the overhead?
Mike.
So we had we had put in a,
stipulation
that anything that would be displayed or presented
in this forum or or a public forum
would be provided to a city park in advance. And that's that's done for several reasons.
That that's done for several reasons.
Obviously,
that is to and and, ultimately, the city is the one responsible for this meeting tonight. And so we wanna make sure that anything that is seen,
has has undergone some level of review.
I understand that.
Mhmm.
Have the right to kick me out. If I play audio that is
a
have the right to kick me out. It's all it's just priceless.
Okay. So well, that wasn't why I'm here to talk. But anyway,
Sure.
Just
Welcome, Sally. Hi. My name is Sally McKenzie, and,
I wanted to
speak tonight regarding
a couple, or four things,
that are hanging out there,
regarding
Mimosa and the conversation
and information surrounding it.
Four four points of misinformation.
The first one is regarding the State Historic Preservation Organization and their
involvement in this process.
Mayor and council
and several city officials have
continually,
stated that the State Historic Preservation
Organization
was involved in this process.
They were
not.
They were not
involved in this process.
You will see I can't show everybody else, but you all will see,
an email communication from Stacy Reiche
of the,
Department of Community Affairs.
So that is number one. That is not true. That is misinformation
being perpetuated by several members of the city council and,
staff. Number two, the tree permitting.
It was stated that it was handled appropriately and that way the,
it was handled correctly. The tree permit
was not signed.
The tree permit that is on file, that is not signed, is dated
06/20
06/04/2024,
and it expired in six months. So number one, it was not signed, and number two, it had expired. By by the time they started to do do demolition on
Mimosa Hall. So that's
misinformation
number two,
and it's being perpetuated.
So when it's perpetuated, when people double down, it goes from being misinformation
to
lies.
Number three, HPC was not a part of the process,
as legally required.
Several members of council
staff are saying that HPC was
a part of the process.
Again, I can't put this, even though this is in the public domain, on
in June
when,
at actually, the last open mic night,
I believe it was mister Malone who presented
at our open mic night and stated that,
the city presented
the Founders Hall plan Founders Park plan to the HBC on September 12.
The law and they said that they it was, according to
that they followed the,
process.
The law
that we are that we are what's in our charter,
states that we are the city is supposed to submit,
any proposed
changes. There's a difference between presenting and submitting. Submitting,
means that something is gonna be considered or reviewed.
This did not happen. The HPC was never told they had forty five days to respond and that their
word was final.
This is the one law, the only law
in our charter, in our code
that protects city owned historic assets. So that is the third,
bit of misinformation that is being perpetuated.
It is not true. The HPC did not participate
in the process
per the requirements. And to back that up, when I met, and along with other several concerned residents with the mayor,
Steve Malone, Jeff Leatherman,
Lee Hills, David Davidson,
and I'm not sure who else was in the room, it was very made very clear
that
at that point,
city staff was not aware that this requirement even
existed.
But once they became aware, they still doubled down on it. So that's number three. Number four is that stakeholders
stakeholders
were involved in this process.
That is not true.
There was one charrette held in March
2024,
I believe,
in which the president of Friends of Mimosa and Friends of Bullock and one or two other
folks were invited.
Legally,
stakeholders in a public asset
are are the public, everybody.
If you wanna
get a little more refined,
stakeholders would be would be,
people who live in this historic district.
But truly, it's a public asset. It belongs to everybody.
So to say that stakeholders were involved
is not true,
and it's very it's frustrating to
hear the city and our elected officials continuing to double down. And, again, when you double down on something you know is not true,
it's a lie. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Sally.
Customer Johnson?
Yeah. I have a, some correspondence
from Stacy I wanna mispronounce her name. Reich,
if I remember Hold on. Hold on. She'll sadly sit down. Oh, okay.
So this corresponds between Stacy Reich, environmental review and preservation planning program manager, Georgia Department of Community Affairs.
Terry Gillette, who is
director of museum services, senior architectural historian of New South Associates, a woman owned business
a woman owned small business in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
And Dina Bush, who is a city employee, who is
and director Malone, please correct me if I say anything,
wrong. But I'd just like to read these correspondents,
to the public.
09/27/2024
from Stacy Reek to Terry Gillet.
Good morning, Terry. I hope this email finds you safe and well after last night's storm. Have a question about the ARPA project submitted to the ER new projects queue is and this is sorry. This is about section one zero six review for Founders Park phase one project. Is there any other federal agency, other than treasury, involved in this project? EPA maybe through CW or DWSRF,
USACE
through permitting, LWCF
funding through NPS or something different,
or is it an ARPA grant that's being administered by the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget? Thanks, Stacy.
And then
sorry. It's printed over two page. Miss Gillette responded, hey, Stacy. We didn't have any damage from the storm. I hope you didn't either. City of Roswell had the following response to your question. This is a state and local fiscal recovery funds based on the revenue replacement on the American Rescue Plan Act of of 2021.
Other than Treasury, there is no other federal or state agency funding involved in this funding.
Then it goes on,
to Terry from Stacy. Thanks for the update, Terry. I'm glad to hear everything is well with you. Since that's the case, there's no other federal agency involved in this project through funding, permitting, licensing,
etcetera.
There is no federal trigger for a section one zero six review by our office under the National Historic Preservation Act. For more information on which ARPA projects trigger
an s one zero six review and which do not, please visit the advisory council on historic preservation's
ACHP website at it says a link that's 500 words long that I'm not gonna read. I'm copying Roger Orgis here because he coordinates the ARPA projects for the OPB so that he'll be aware as well as this one. Thank you, Stacy.
Then it comes back,
and it says,
from Terry to Stacy. Thanks, Stacy. So just to clarify, Roswell is free to move forward without its project, without Shippo con consultation.
Hey, Terry. There is no trigger for review by our office in 106.
I've deleted the project materials
from our project tracking system.
Thanks, Stacy.
This is Say that again, please. Yeah.
There's no trigger for review by our office under section one zero six. I've deleted the project materials from our project tracking system. So if I'm correct, director Malone,
we submitted
materials for this project
to the to the state of Georgia, Shippo,
and they've deleted it out of their system because they do not need to review this project. It does not hit any trigger.
So
from
Dina to Terry,
Thanks, Terry. Good news. Is there anything else we need to be aware of from a culture size by following our own local regulation?
And there's other stuff that's not important to this. Hey, Dina. Yes. It is good news. From what Stacy said, it seems this project requires no interaction with Shippo,
and I cannot think of anything else you would need from a cultural resource perspective
besides adhere to local regulations that you said.
That's it. And if miss McKenzie would like these correspondents, they'll be more than willing for her to have them. Okay. Thanks, Thanks, council member Johnson. Council member sales, did you were you saying so? No. Thanks. I just wanna make sure that,
I just wanna make sure that people listen to the responses. That's all. To which responses? To his to his response. Oh, thanks, council member sales.
Steve? Or yeah. Director Malone of the Parks and Rec.
Yes. Good evening. Thank you, mayor and council.
Yes. Council member Johnson, you were exactly right. So as we began the design process with barge contractors,
we actually had in our scope of work in our signed contract with barge design,
a piece of historic cultural representation
that was actually our representative, Terry, who was actually acting as the third party representative
as part of the scope of work in the design process
that was there to help guide and take that design delivery
to SHPO
for review to determine if section one zero six was triggered. So all of what you read was those correspondence
that went back and forth between
our third party consultant
within the design framework that we were working. That was their sole function as they went through this design and the scope of work and what we were working through. Steven, can I ask you some direct questions? Yes, sir. Kind of you and I haven't talked about this publicly, and I'm having to ask you these questions pointedly.
So, obviously, this is about some significant trees being cut down on the property.
Did you know trees are gonna be cut down? Yes, sir. Did the team know trees were gonna be cut down? Yes, sir. Was that communicated?
Yes. That was communicated. The total number of trees should have been communicated better to this mayor and council. No. That's right. But was it communicated in your mind perhaps was it fantastically communicated?
Probably could have done better always, but I believe that was part of the design scope. Can I ask you personally? So did you have a historic preservationist
look at this project? Yes. And who was that? That was our consultant, Terry, through, New South. And also because somebody else that looked at this as a historic preservationist on staff. Correct? You, our historic assets manager, who's on staff with us, was part of the process. And what was her perspective on this project?
As we stated earlier, when we went through the presentation specifically as it related to the parking lot design, we did go through a revision and a rework of that design specifically based on some of those
comments and questions that were brought up by our third party and our staff. Were you happy that the trees were cut down?
No, sir. And do you have
do you have
do you have,
do you have
a rendering of what this project is gonna look like? Yes, sir. Has that been presented to the city? It has not gone out to the public yet, but, for those that wanna see it, it'll be uploaded on the roswellconnections.com
site as well as it'll be displayed on-site. Have you guys done anything in terms of informing the public in terms of what's been done at past at Mimosa or Bullock in terms of kinds of projects or scope over the last hundred years?
Any project that we would have done would have come before the public and specifically this
mayor
and council before we move forward. Have you informed the public of projects that might have been in the nineteen forties done at Bullock or Mimosa?
Not that I'm aware of,
sir.
Thank you, Steven. I appreciate your time very much, sir. I appreciate you.
Council member Johnson?
Can you,
tell us Terry's qualifications again? Just so the public knows. In fact, if it's okay, I think I'd then bike Dina Bush up. She probably has a better knowledge and can actually Can you tell her about who Dina Bush is? Sure. Dina Bush is our historic assets manager. Been with the city for just over four years now, Dina. What are Dina's credentials? Yes. I know she's a historic assets manager, but can you what is what are Dina's credentials? So let me let Dina kinda tell for you. But Dina is the lead of our historic assets group, so she has an extensive knowledge background in that area. Can we, let me make a side comment. Dina, I'm a put a little pressure on you.
Dina catches a lot of flack from elected officials
and others because she takes a strong position on preservation in the city of Roswell.
Go ahead, Dina. Sorry. It is always a very delicate balance, sir.
Good evening, mayor and council. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Dina Bush, historic assets manager. I have a little over twenty years experience
in the museum field with museum operations, interpretation,
historic preservation.
Been here for six years,
master's in, public history,
which is a broad
overall,
training
in the practice of history outside of academia.
In terms of to your first question, and Terry Gillet, with New South, this was a sub, worked with,
our contractor, Barge, to do the design process. It was important for us to bring in that third party consultant
that could focus on this and specifically address the issue
of compliance, federal compliance regarding one zero six, but also just making sure that we are doing the right thing in terms of the design process. Her background is in museum studies. It's in historic preservation.
That is purely what she has done throughout her career.
Sorry, Dina. May I come back to you? So David, as the chief as the chief legal officer for the city and the city attorney,
did we violate process or laws related to the charter or any ordinances related to anything in relation to this process? Or did we even come close? Were we kind of were we were we,
were we nilly willy with the process?
No, sir.
Miss McKenzie
brings up the, HPC.
There's nothing in the charter that says we have to send anything to the HPC. It's in the code. It's not in the charter. There's nothing in the charter.
There's nothing in the charter about us sending stuff to the HPC
for for comment
is what it says. You submit for comment. They are not the final say. In this city, the mayor and council are always the final say.
I don't know what the time frame was, but
there was forty five days between the hearing and the time hearing council approved according to mister Malone. Thank you. Thank you, David. Alright. Gina, thank you. Steven, any other things?
Anything else? Appreciate it very much. Counsel, thank you, Sally. And I know
thank you, Sally. I appreciate you bringing this up. I imagine there'll be some other speakers. And my question would be,
to the other speakers, and I know this is a hot topic. Steven, I don't need you. Oh, I do. Oh, you do? I do. I do. Oh, Alan, go ahead, sir. Sorry. Council yes, sir. Yes, sir. Councilman Sales. I don't get enough time to talk to you anyway. So,
a couple of things. The word that was used that that we began the demolition of Mimosa,
that was the words that were used. I wanna I wanna dispel some some,
bad, bad information, some misinformation
right now.
Would you speak briefly to the amount of,
spending that this mayor and council has done on Mimosa
in particular,
and talk about what we had to do in the attic, what we had to do in the Second Floor, what we had to do in the restoration. Would you talk briefly about that? Yes. Definitely. So we have done an analysis over the last four years.
And throughout that period of time, there's been more investment and spending that's gone into this specific site than any of our other historic assets
with my time here at the city, which is twenty five years almost.
With that being said, there were several projects that we've kicked off on this site specifically.
The first ensuring that the roof does not collapse. We went in and did a lot of,
engineering aspects so that we can convert that facility into a facility that can host several hundreds of people in it, which required floor joists being redone,
attic joists being refitted,
and and going throughout and just touching up the whole space. Additionally, we've done the driveway project that now allows for,
safety personnel
access to the rear of the facility, which it didn't before. We've gone into the Second Floor, gotten the certificate of occupancy for the Second Floor, which required a lot of work,
based on the historic nature of that,
home. We wanted to make sure to be mindful of that as well. And then recently, this post, recent project, a significant,
infrastructure
impact with regards to the stormwater that's actually on-site. That's a huge component,
within that area as well as now the special event lawn space.
So
other than buying the property in 2017,
was any money spent by the city on that property that you're aware of
other than buying the property between
the time it was bought and the time this mayor and council got involved in actually rescuing the property? Significant
dollars were spent and resources spent to Since when? Since that facility well, we bought in 2017.
We began these initiatives in twenty twenty two
ish. I'd have to go back and look at my notes, but Do you have a dollar amount?
I I can get it for you before the night's end. That's okay.
And second question sorry. Did you
yeah, please.
I I would also note that as soon as this Castro Hills. I mean I'm sorry. You know about the floor? Yes. I'm sorry. Castro Hills. I I got that from California for sale. I know. So sorry.
We which this administration also paid off the the balance of the loan,
the debt that was owed on the most of the first year we were in office. I just wanted to bring that up in the financial report. Thank you, Lee. The second thing, the other piece of misinformation that, I would like you to dispel is,
is it is it fair to say is it true to say that not a single spade of dirt was turned in the
extant
Reed Gardens?
That we did nothing to disturb any of the Reed Gardens except the the water
facility or the water trough. I suppose that may be part of the Reed Gardens. I'm not sure. But talk about that. It's a great question. There were,
several good Neil Reed Gardens that were identified on property.
A significant amount of those gardens were already disrupted prior
to taking ownership.
Prime example is on the event lawn space. That's actually a Neil Reed garden, probably one of the most prominent that you'll see throughout the historic
history of Neil Reed being on property. That was actually an in ground pool when the city took ownership of it. So that garden no longer existed in the capacity in which the Neil Reed era would have been there. We have not significantly
changed any of the gardens that were in place when we purchased that property as they sit now.
Right. And,
we also did work,
at a number of junctures about the, historic, like, ground disturbance and things like that. Would you speak to that other piece of misinformation, please? Correct. So we've went we've gone through several aspects of what we call
archeological
surveys.
There's phase one and phase two, and you can go through those. And it has everything to do with the probability of there being artifacts on-site.
As it's part of the,
comp plan that city has in community development,
this site is actually labeled as a low probability
site for artifacts.
Because of that, we weren't required to go through all the layers of survey work
that we did, but we did because of our due diligence wanted to do that. And that would have been the phase two archeological surveys that were conducted
in 2019,
I believe. Don't quote me off topic.
And and I believe you answered many of these questions
at the open mic that the group
stood up and walked out in mass. You answered most of these questions at that time as well. Tried to answer all the questions that came from the public that night. Thanks, sir.
Steven, let me ask a separate question just as an aside. Have you met,
or have you attempted to meet with some of the folks that are upset? I mean, I know there's a there are a lot of people upset about this.
And and how have you tried to meet with them? The times that we've had communications have been generally been in a more formal setting such as your officer where we sat down and met with a group of individuals.
But, no, since the project has kicked off, we have not had a formal meeting with any members of the public. Don't mean to run the bus over you. Would you be willing to meet with people at this juncture? Absolutely. I think one of our biggest challenges that we always wanna make sure that we provide all the information we can. We recognize that that's not going to necessarily
align with everyone's goals and expectations, but we wanna make sure everyone has the accurate information.
Thank you, Steven.
Any thoughts? Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Nancy thank you, Sally. Next speaker, Nancy.
Thank you, mayor. Before calling the next speaker, I would like to ask if there are any other residents who want to share visuals or documents to please hand them to staff in the back of the room before it is their time to speak.
Staff in the back of the room before it is their time to speak.
Thank you, Nancy.
Next speaker is Kelly Cowan.
Welcome, Kelly.
Good evening, mayor and council. Kelly Cowan. 350 Wynn Park Court. You guys probably know my address better than I do now.
This is not how I wanted to start,
but since,
Sally left a few things that were discussed
afterward,
I do wanna point out David Davidson. I'm happy to read,
section nine point one point two, and I think it is definitely worth reading out loud.
I know we have at least one person from HPC in the room this evening, and I'm sure that he can confirm.
And I'm happy to give you all this copy as well.
So section nine point one point two
says
submission
to historic preservation commission,
not presentation,
but submission to historic preservation commission
required
for structural change or major modification.
Prior to undertaking any changes to any historical property that would otherwise require certificate appropriateness, the city shall notify
the Historic Preservation Committee of the proposed changes and allow the commission forty five days to comment.
I can go on. It's just another sentence. But once again, it is submission.
This is actually,
from one of Stephen Malone's slides from our June meeting, and it says 09/12/2024.
The project was presented
to the friends of Mimosa and Bullock at a high level.
I'm assuming he would say the same thing for HPC because they were shown exactly the same thing. It does not say submit.
So, if there's something else we need to do to change that or make a internal modification to section nine point one point two, but that's how it reads as of today.
I just wanna go back quickly because this is not at all what I intended to speak about tonight. But, councilman Johnson,
thank you so much for reading,
those emails back and forth from Terry to Stacy Reiche.
You'll notice that,
Sally put in the packets that she shared with you also from Stacy Reiche,
which was June 10 to our own volunteers that were trying to figure out what the heck had happened.
And we've highlighted it for you. Stacy says, as I mentioned previously,
if there's no federal or state agency involvement in the project,
my team, the environmental review, will not review the project under either section one zero six or GEPA. It is further highlighted in your packet,
protections for historic properties
really only exist at the local level. The city of Roswell does have a historic preservation ordinance, and she's she calls it out in a historic preservation committee
commission. That was the only
place that we had a fall safe in all the things that we have in Roswell. And what we're saying is
that fell apart. So, David, if you're saying
that there's a reason, a legal reason why that fell apart, then we definitely all need to work together so that doesn't happen again in the future. And
and I'm happy to give those. So, going back to councilman John Johnson and others who are bringing it
forth in, their conversations,
leading up to November 4.
Again,
Shippen never had the opportunity
to approve or look at any of the plans because of the as they have said multiple times and out of your own mouth out of the, emails,
they couldn't. It was not under their jurisdiction.
So they never approved anything. They couldn't even look at it. So, that's it for me tonight for that portion, but I wanted to quickly,
go through,
if you'll indulge me, the tragedy of Mimosa in numbers.
Two US presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter had personal connections with Mimosa, visiting and walking the historic grounds, admiring the beauty of Mimosa.
Four
acres clear cut and most covered in concrete for
for a parking lot and commercial facility.
For those that may not be aware,
Mimosa Hall is only nine acres,
which almost all of the clear cutting was on.
Seven sets of historic Neil Reed steps removed to be replaced with concrete. So,
councilman Sells, while you can say that the gardens weren't disturbed,
both the
the the water reflection garden and the steps were actual physical pieces that we had a choice whether or not we were gonna remove those.
15 articles, seven television news highlights, one podcast, and countless social media
discussions regarding the tragedy at Mimosa,
and it's not going away.
21 formally elected Roswell officials speaking in unison, many decades decades of governing experience among them voicing the need for change and transparency
regarding Mimosa and many other city projects.
35 spit specimen trees, many over a 150
years old, and trunks over three feet wide destroyed.
49 feet of synthetic turf to be installed where lawn once was Thank you, Kelly. Thank you for your time. Thirty six days until November 4. Roswell citizens can make a positive
Thank you, Kelly.
You addressed the Yeah.
Again, exactly what I said before, there is nothing in the city charter that requires anything to the HPC.
What you read is the city code. That's not the charter.
It was given to HPC. And if you read the last part of what you read,
if you read the last part of what you said, they are allowed to comment. They were given forty five days according to mister Malone
for comment.
They don't get the final say. It's not for approval. It's for comment.
Nets, thank you very much. Kelly, thank you so much for your time. Nancy, next speaker, please.
Michelle King.
Welcome, Michelle.
Thank you for having me. Michelle King. I live in East Roswell in Horseshoe Bend.
At the last open mic, I don't recall who it was, but someone in the city administration made a statement
that the possible gross revenue for,
the destruction
of many acres of
old growth forest trees
on Mimosa Hall to create a wedding venue would create somewhere around 800,000
plus.
And I would like to know specifically where that figure comes from, who it came from, how they came to derive that that would be the estimated cost.
I've tried to research what The Mill And Azalea Park make for the city in terms of wedding venues,
if that was taken into account at all as part of
the fee.
And then, mister Johnson, I have just a quick question for you. I know that you you often give out your phone number, which does come across as being very open and willing
to engage with the citizens further and beyond.
And so I've taken you up on that many times. And in your defense, you don't say that you will text people back.
But I do wonder why you give your number out to engage with people when you I can personally attest to the fact that you you do not text back. So
I think it should be fair to say to people,
you can have my phone number, and you can vent and text and give me information, but I'm not gonna engage with you. Is that the case, or
do you just pick and choose who you want to text back? So those are my two questions. Where did they come up with this $800,000
revenue number? And, mister Johnson,
what is the reason for giving out your phone number if you're not going to engage with the citizens?
David, I'll let you answer the first question.
Sorry. I was trying to find the text message. I tell you, take your time while I answer the first question. You answer the second question. Oh. Yes, ma'am. We'll answer yes, ma'am. We'll answer your first question.
This so the first thing I can tell you is on Wednesday, there'll be a budget workshop,
which you'll see a number of matters,
unveiled,
presented
to the city,
in terms of the proposed budget from the, city
to the elected officials.
And in that I don't know, Jeff, you wanna come up here?
On that is so Jeff is kind of, kind of Jeff, the visionary behind the historic plan for the historic assets in the city. I'll repeat it just for, edification.
So in 2022,
when I was a new mayor with a new council,
I looked at the historic assets
and looked at how many we had
and looked how they were performing.
And I looked at how much money we'd spent, about $17,000,000
basically at the time, and we had what I call an OPEX.
So the city, the taxpayers were spending about a million dollars a year to support the historic properties in the city.
And so I said to my colleagues,
you're in the historic asset business without a plan,
and it's costing taxpayers about a million dollars. You've invested a significant amount of money. There's never been a plan for these historic assets. You have a diminishing audience that's visiting them. One home had as little as 346
people in one year visiting. I said, that's not actually that's not the public enjoying a historic asset.
So I said, I'm gonna ask you counsel to make a decision.
Do you wanna be in the historic asset business, or do you wanna be out of the historic asset business? It's time to make that decision because you have a million dollar opex liability every
year. And the council said overwhelmingly,
well, we wanna be in the historic asset business. And I said, well, great. Then if you wanna be in the historic asset business, then there has to be a long term plan on how to make these historic profit
historic assets
relevant
to all the people in the city of Roswell, not just today, but five years, ten years, fifteen, and twenty years from now. And so that's gonna require a plan. And out of that plan came several things. One was immediately the need to go ahead and acquire Holly Hill to complete kinda like the top five historic homes in the city. So that that decision was made by the council, I think, wisely,
and it was well done in terms of the negotiations from the city's perspective.
The second part of that was to say, hey, Jeff.
We gotta come up with a plan inside or out. Outside, you gotta come up with a plan or inside. Jeff came up with a great plan.
And Jeff's only problem with Jeff's plan was it's gonna cost Sydney another $17,000,000
of which we've already uncovered $10,000,000
You say, why would we do this?
Because our interest is because we deeply care about Roswell's history and because we deeply want deeply care about saying, like, if Mimosa, Bullock, Barrington,
Smith,
Holly are gonna be known to people,
to your children and your grandchildren,
then they have to become relevant
because the course of of attendance to those homes was on a descending scale.
Whether you like it or not, that's the facts. The facts were less people were attending to them, and we didn't have a plan, and we were spending a million dollars a year on your money. And today, guess what? We're still spending a million dollars a year of your money to keep those plant to keep those homes open.
Not with any great return, just some very interest like like, hey. I care about those homes too. But the reality is is they belong to all 94,000
people, and we have a responsibility
to make sure that they find a way to pay for themselves.
That's the plan.
And so Jeff came up with a plan and said, look, if we invest the right kind of the right kind of vehicles, like we start using for wedding events, we start using for corporate events, catering events, and we start using them for community events like Christkindl, which was the first launch.
And Christkindl
improved attendance at Bullock Hall by 300%,
not including the attendance during Christkindl.
First activation of actually trying this plan.
So Jeff's plan is a vision, and Jeff's plan is like because Jeff cares about Mimosa as much as anybody in this room, whether you like that or not.
And and
Steve Malone and Dina Bush care about Mimosa as much as anybody in this room. Is you like that or not? That's the truth.
And they care desperately about these homes, and they want them to be valuable and relevant
to the the generation ten year to twenty years from now and forty years from now. But just leaving them on their current course was not gonna get it done. And so we said we gotta invest money. And so the mimosa plan,
look, was fully vetted. I am sorry people are mad about it, and people are gonna be mad about it. And I may lose my job as a consequence of it, but it was the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do for this city today, tomorrow, and the future
because it's investing and it's caring about Roswell's history and making Roswell's history relevant to kids and grandchildren that are grandchildren that are not even born yet. And Roswell's history matters because Roswell has a great history to tell. And it's a big history to tell. Same reason we did Doc's Cafe,
because we believe in the great history of this great city.
But left to its own devices,
they were dying, guys.
They were dying.
And so I said, Jeff, Jeff came together with a plan.
And so that's what Mimosa's about. Mimosa's about the fulfillment of finding a way to get people to come start come to see her.
That's really what it's about. And for a way to start deriving revenue so that you, the taxpayer, don't pay a million dollars a year to subsidize the existence of these homes. That's it. Bottom line. I forgot where I was.
Jeff, thanks. I don't need you. Sure. Oh, no. First
Yeah. What? What?
What?
What, Jeff? Mayor mayor Wilson. Are you gonna hear from you? Okay.
Yes, sir. Are you gonna say something? No. I I think you pretty much covered it. What was the question?
Oh, the income specific projections. Oh, I'm so sorry. So in the budget, you're gonna see a plan. Sorry, Michelle. You're gonna see a clear plan. I think, Jeff, are you presenting this on Thursday Wednesday?
Yep. You're gonna see the four year plan, fiscal year '26, '27, '28, and '29. By '29, we are projecting that we get to net revenue zero
through the revenue that we generate from the historic assets
to offset
how much they cost. Won't Won't happen in '26, won't happen in '27, won't happen in '28, you'll see '29. But Jeff will show you the scale of where the revenue's gonna come from at the workshop, how the revenue's derived, and then when we think we get the net zero on the revenue to offset so the taxpayers don't have to pay million dollars in a year. Council member Johnson. Miss King, I deeply apologize. I went through,
the last six months of tax very quickly,
and I did not get a tax from you.
And maybe,
you know, I don't know where that come from, but my number is (678)
571-5112.
Please call me, and we'll have this discussion. It's that simple. I will say, David's defense.
He calls me way too much. I think he'll if you get if you start getting aligned with him, you won't get rid of him. Do you wanna talk about how Wait. Wait. Wait. You like him or not, you're not gonna get rid of him. Alright.
Yeah. You're exactly. Alright, Sarah? You're not gonna get rid of this guy.
Alright. Nancy, next speaker, please, ma'am. Yeah. Councilorcel. Sorry. I wanna respond to a couple of things. One is,
Jeff and I and,
Malone, we we've walked the property
just not too terribly long ago. I personally looked at the reflecting pool that is still there and undisturbed
personally.
I
don't know if you've been back there, but it's still there.
Now the steps have been taken out for ADA reasons. We've talked about that a number of times and they're,
preserved and will be used again. Is that correct?
And the reflecting pool,
the work that's gonna be done on that is because there is no drain in it. It is simply
a hole with cement.
And so it's constantly stagnant.
There will be work done on it. They will make it an actual functional pool, so it will be preserved.
And the last thing I'd say is, I too have reached out to
people,
at least three times came to one demonstration, stayed three and a half hours,
talked to everybody who would talk to me and stayed the entire time, my lovely bride and I.
And
so I'm pretty available.
If you pick up phone call me, I always take your call. You know that. And the last thing I'd like to say is of the 350
visitors, was it three forty six? Three hundred forty six. At least 40 of those are the lovely and talented missus Sells and her social studies class.
So these are not
high
traffic areas, and we need to do something about them. And I'm 100 still a 100% behind this plan.
Thank you. Nancy, next speaker, please, ma'am.
Jason Yao.
Welcome, mister Yao. As always, Jason.
Hi.
Alright. Alright.
I'm I'm not happy, and I've got a whole litany of of complaints, and five minutes is just not enough time
to get into it.
First,
one of the things that I believe you campaigned on was to bring back the, the extended speaking times that existed prior to,
Laurie Henry, and that didn't happen. In fact, it's
continued to be
more and more restrictive.
The
one of the things that really upset me,
with,
among your campaign promises was the creation of the Transportation Commission.
You did create it, but then you
undermined it by telling everybody, I don't look at what you do. I don't care. I'm not interested. It all goes in the trash to the point that
everybody resigned
except for me. But with one person, we couldn't hold a meeting.
What struck me,
in, in the course of that was
the absolute
refusal to understand
how to design
a road effectively, and the road that that I'm talking about is,
Riverside Road.
Bad design by the consultants,
made worse by,
staff,
and
way more expensive than what we had recommended.
I've got experience actually doing this.
Nobody in this city has used their own money or their own personal guarantees
to do the kind of design work or road projects that I've done.
And when
you ask Dave Cox
whose plan costs more, theirs or or or yours, and he said, oh, theirs costs more.
Oh my god. Dave Cox. Yeah.
The guy who was part of the team that took
Oxbow from $6,000,000
project to an 18,000,000
At that point, I felt, well,
I couldn't support the bond issue because
the T Sploss money clearly
was not being spent well. You still have T Sploss One funds that haven't been spent.
And my feeling was you gotta learn to walk before you run. And until you could spend the T Sploss One
all the T Sploss money effectively,
you were ready for a bond issue.
And so the things that you've been buying, like
Crabapple Middle,
you didn't have to buy it for 6 and a half million dollars.
That's what they asked. That's what you paid. But guess what? When all the other new cities were created in North Fulton,
Fulton County wanted to sell them the parks, wanted to sell them the the,
the fire stations. And all those local governing authorities said, no.
We've already paid for these,
and they ended up selling them for a dollar a piece.
Now I don't see why we bought
a building and property that we have paid for many times over with our property taxes.
Should have been bought for a dollar.
We're the only possible buyers of record because nobody else could get it rezoned
for a third party use, and nobody would have standing
to litigate the zoning
because it was owned by a public entity for a public use.
You could have just said, when you're ready to get rid of it, we'll take it off your hands, but you didn't do that. You
you paid them.
You could've just said,
we'll wait you out. When you're tired of maintaining it and carrying it, fine. Your your consultant, Jacobs,
said that it's gonna cost $58,000,000
to renovate that building.
Why do you want the building? Why do you wanna pay 6 and a half million dollars for it? Well, you should have been getting it for free. You should have been having these conversations.
And then, oh my god, the parking deck.
As far as you could possibly put it from the core demand
in on Canton Street, across the street from a parking deck most recently built, you're going into into business to compete with
a company that put a big parking deck across the street. That's like saying, come to Roswell. We'll compete with you.
Not a very friendly way to attract money. And the same thing, doing a a special event facility at Mimosa.
What about the people who already have these facilities? Besides the fact, the city's got permanent facilities
behind Smith's Plantation,
which is much better than the tent. They've there's a timber peg framed,
gazebo. Same thing, next to Bullock Hall. And you're spending $5,000,000
to build a tent over astroturf.
Nothing
says great design like astroturf for a floor in a Thank you. Area. Thanks so much.
Appreciate it, Jason. Thank you.
I'll just address crab apple because it's old news.
I don't think anybody
I probably get dressed crab apple as well as anybody.
I can remember,
when we first when we first thought about Crabapple Middle School, it was almost impossible to buy, just the opposite.
And the starting number was $15,000,000,
not 6 and a half.
And it was a long and arduous negotiation, and I can remember we never thought we were gonna be able to buy it. One of the reasons other properties came into play because we're dealing with Fulton County school system,
who's historically slow. Slow. With respect to zoning, you couldn't be more wrong, Jason. Actually, a private developer could buy that property. Matter of fact, that's probably what was going to happen. It would have been redeveloped,
and we saw it as a great opportunity for civic use for this city because we were busting at the seams at the Roswell Area Park. We couldn't believe we had the good fortune actually to come down from 15,000,000
to 6 and a half million to buy that property. It, again, was an excellent job by the city in terms of purchasing and holding out in negotiations.
You couldn't be more wrong about the dollar piece. Has no applicability in this case. They could have the property could have been brought by a private source, and,
we were fortunate to get it. The city is super fortunate to get that piece of property. It was an amazing just just another thing that really fell in our God's hands. I mean, God's providence. It was amazing.
With respect to the Roswell Transportation Committee,
well, let me address the first thing.
I will say this thing. I'm always surprised when people tell me things that I said in my campaign that I'm always like, where'd that come from? Because I can tell you, I never said anything in my campaign about extending
public times at to public sessions because it's fairly
it wouldn't be logical. That's not a not even a comment that would come out of my mouth. So that's that's just not true.
With respect to the Roswell Transportation Committee, yes. It was one of our promises. Yes. We did it. You were behind that. As a matter of fact, you acted as a guide
and as an information source for myself and other candidates.
When we got into office, we discovered that there were other perspectives.
And I believe that one of the jobs of elected officials as well as most adults in our society, we need more of it, is to be rational actors. That is to take in information
and consider more information to be informed
and make decisions upon your based how you get more informed. And quite frankly, with the Roswell Transportation Commission, we asked one thing very simply. It wasn't just the mayor, it was the entire council.
Please help us on the master transportation plan. Please help us guide us on the master transportation, please. We need your help. As informed residents, please help us on the master transportation plan. It's a big deal to the city. We know you guys some insight have some perspectives. We'd really like you to weigh in on it. The Roswell Transportation Committee, as a group, with the exception of a couple of people, and ask the guy who ran the thing how difficult that was, he'll tell you,
is that agendas
about what the Roswell Yard TAC wanted to do were much different than what the mayor and council wanted. And what the mayor and council wanted was help on the master transportation plan. It was the most critical thing. And what we kept getting was, let us weigh in on Gateway. So we said, guys, Gateway is a project that's been in in it's been in
incubated since 1992, and the city of Roswell does not have the power to stop Gateway.
So as much as we wanna raise Cain about it and throw stones at it and get mad, the city of Roswell is not stopping Gateway. It's not happening. No matter what you say, it's not happening. Gateway's not being stopped.
And so and the RTAC kept weighing in, like, about Gateway. And you know what we did? You know what this elected body did with along with mister Knight and the team? We went down to the state of Georgia and said, look.
This whole thing with design, we really wanna have real impact on design. And for example, one of the things that this council and this team has gotten done, we got the sound wall removed off of Highway 9 at the apartment complex on the Gateway Project.
We've added several pedestrian crossings. We have gotten the median in the middle of the road widened, I. E. To to to,
narrow the road from more than what it was. And we're continuing to work on it so that we can have influence on the Gateway project.
But one of the things the RTEC would say, You gotta stop the project. We don't have the power to stop the project.
And so when we're talking to people who won't listen to us, it's like, Well, you surely you can do something about it. Well, we're trying to influence the project. It's a perfect example. So the RTAC folks got frustrated and said, well, you're not gonna stop we can't stop the project. It's a state project.
So Jason's we could go on and on. This may be my last open mic. God bless you. You're a good man, but you're just wrong way too much of the time.
Nancy, next speaker, please.
Ashley Glass.
Welcome, Ashley.
Ashley Glass, Wavertree Drive,
twenty seven year resident.
First of all, I want to be clear, chief Pavel Trosh was not leading the department when these failures occurred.
As I am confident
in chief Trosh and his knowledge
of the importance
of certain
vehicles for the fire department.
A heavy rescue is not just another fire truck. It is a specialized life saving apparatus designed for confined space rescues,
trench collapses,
hazardous material incidents,
high angle rope rescues,
building entrapments,
and major vehicle
extractions.
In the most complex
and dangerous emergencies,
this is the truck that makes the difference between life and death
for both firemen
and citizens.
In 2019,
our city purchased a heavy rescue
for $1,180,000.
In 2021,
most of you joined council.
In 2022,
the city paid more than $100,000
to CPSM,
the Center for Public Safety Management to conduct a professional gap analysis.
Their findings were crystal
clear and the city of a 100,000 residents,
a heavy rescue must be operational.
Instead,
it continues
to sit idle every single day
while money is being funneled into consultants and even a city owned wedding venue.
This is an election year, and I hear the mayor and several members of council say
over and over
and over again, including tonight,
that public safety is their top priority.
But your actions
and inaction
tell a very different story.
We were told
that there are 75 people on the fire department. CPSM's
analysis stated that when we have 34
firefighters on duty, this apparatus would need to be in service.
So why isn't it?
Why did the city pay outside experts with decades
of experience
only to be completely
ignored
and completely ignore their recommendations?
Do any of you have that level of expertise in public safety?
I highly doubt it. This is not just about numbers and equipment. My husband is a fireman.
He was burned on fifteen percent
of his body and nearly died.
If a fireman in our city
or a citizen is trapped in Roswell for sixteen minutes like he was, they would not survive.
The nearest heavy rescue would come from Dekalb,
Cobb,
Gwinnett.
That delay cost lives.
My husband is alive today because of a heavy rescue.
It was available and there was a large crew on the scene. So let's not forget, the citizens of Roswell already told you
what we value.
In a bond referendum,
we said
we wanted public safety.
That is what we asked for, and you are still failing to deliver,
even after a consultant told you what to do.
So my question is, why do you believe your personal opinions
outweigh the recommendations
of an expert
consultant? You hired
consultant with decades of experience
when the safety of our citizens and firemen
are at risk,
and I'm not done.
In reference to Mimosa,
museum preservation
is very different than archeological
digs. I know many museum preservationists
and curators that have never been to an archaeological
dig ever. I'm actually the one that did the original
appraisal at Mimosa. I've been on that property many times. So I would like to ask you, where is all the property that was in that house, all the historic artifacts?
I would also like to know, did Terry Gillet come to the property?
And regarding Kimberly Clark, it's interesting how you don't wanna discuss large projects with a citizen.
However, you put out a newspaper article and publicly mentioned the soccer deal and pitch
on 03/25/2024.
On that date, the city council unanimously
approved a letter of intent to begin an exclusive
nine month negotiation period with
United Soccer League. It seems to be what is good for you is not good for the citizens.
I also want to ask why you used ARPA funds for Momosa College. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Appreciate those comments. Appreciate you. Thank you.
Nancy, next speaker, please. So I would like answers to all this Nancy, thank you. Thank you, Nancy. Next speaker. Multiple questions.
Blair Snedeker. Hold on a second. Multiple questions. Excuse me. Thank you. You've had your time. You've had your time. Thank you.
Pavel, Joe, would you guys like to address the the,
allegations there from miss Glass?
They are allegations.
Air counsel,
appreciate it.
So the mention of the heavy rescue and the staffing of the heavy rescue, I'm gonna I'm gonna start back a little bit because it's a little bit more comprehensive. Just mentioning the heavy rescue
of which I'm very
fond of.
So when we approved the five year strategic plan, it addressed
all the staffing woes that we know are present in the city.
The staffing
plan that is currently in place as we speak continues to enhance every year as we go along with the strategic plan that you approved.
Let's talk about what that looks like.
Currently, we're at 64
full time operations members.
Before,
we had two. We're at 64.
October 27, and I asked the community please join us on October 27, we'll be squaring in
an additional
15.
We're gonna be raising our total staffing number to 79 at that time.
This is the only city in North,
Fulton with two battalion chiefs. There's two commanders on the scene
to be able to ensure that our firefighters and that incident is being handled safely.
We have seven of our members in paramedic school. We just took two possessions of two new engines, one new ladder truck.
We've spoken about Fire Station twenty seven.
We have traffic preemption being put in place.
We are deploying the Quake technology,
which will revolutionize
the way that we
keep this community safe and each other safe.
Last year, at this time, we were thirty four
seconds lower to respond than we are today.
We increased our
we reduced our response times by thirty four seconds to last year.
It's a long way to saying
the strategic plan is absolutely going into place. The heavy rescue is a priority.
The current use of the heavy rescue, I will agree, it is not the most efficient. We're being effective because we have to prioritize
where we put our staffing
as this plan comes into
fruition, the five year plan.
So
Pavel, let me ask you a question. Sure. What was it like when you had a full fully part time fire department?
A lot of peaks and valleys. It was
we could not staff,
not just not the heavy rescue. There was times where we're not even staffing the rescue units and the ladder trucks. So we know that staffing has been
a tremendous,
tremendous,
hurdle for us now, today. So the problem was worse? No. With the part time fire with the part time versus a full time, we're worse worse than The problem has alleviated
significantly. So what we're doing now is we're seeing
more consistent staffing.
The heavy rescue does get staffed. It's not optimally staffed. But again, the strategic plan supports the staffing. We didn't get all the staffing in one year. It's a five year plan. So we're working towards that and we have to establish priorities
as to where the staffing goes.
Thank you.
Joe?
Yeah.
Couple of things. The CPSM study is something that was in the budget when I arrived as fire chief.
And that is something that the previous mayor and council had talked about,
that during COVID,
we experienced some significant staffing issues because all the full time departments where we got our staffing from were recalling their members
and talking about whether or not they would allow them to work part time at another fire department for fear of bringing back COVID or whatever.
We didn't know what was going on. These are conversations that are happening all across the nation.
But at the time, it caused a lot of concern for the then city, administrator and mayor and council rightfully so. So it really spawned that, like, we we really should study this and see if this is the right
model moving forward. So we went forward with that CPSM study. It wasn't over a 100,000. It was I believe it was $62,000,
for the study.
They went around and talked to the firefighters at the fire stations and then helped us put together that five year strategic plan.
And to give credit where credit's due, when this mayor and council came into office, I think chief Trosh and I sat down and met, I believe it was council member Hills and, you mayor at
headquarters and said, here's the issues that we see with this model. We we really think you need to be aware of it.
There's there's some significant concern here when we can't staff
firehouses.
And in short order, there was a five year plan of how we go from part time to a full fully staffed full time,
organization.
I will pair it with chief Troche said. We are the only city in North Fulton that has two on duty battalion chiefs. And what that means is that you have a dedicated safety officer on scene at every structure fire to make sure that the safety of our fire our firefighters
are being tended to.
That's commitment to safety of our firefighters.
And while the heavy rescue might not be in service every day,
we have several truck companies within,
the city of Roswell that have some of the same tools and the same training,
and the same talent on them, full time talent dedicated to the city of Roswell. So if our firefighters get into trouble, there's someone there to get them out.
I'll also say when it comes to firefighter safety, not only are we, as chief Trosh said, partnering with Quake Technologies,
on a device that significantly,
improves the safety of our firefighters within low visibility and IDH,
immediately dangerous to life and health environments.
But we also, as you know, last year won a national award,
the senator Paul Sarbanes award for firefighter health and safety,
where we, flew up to Washington and accepted that award on behalf of the Roswell Fire Department for the innovative work that chief Trosh and his staff is doing supported by this mayor and council on the forty eight ninety six work schedule and the scientific study that is being done to not only improve the health and safety of our firefighters,
but also improve the health and safety of the firefighters
across the nation, including like that of, miss Glass' husband as well. Hopefully, we can make that that impact all around the nation. So doctor Panino and chief Troche,
as fire service experts,
is there a higher public safety because I've I've just heard an allegation that this we don't care about public safety. So is there a higher public safety priority with reference to fire service than going from part time
to full time? Is there a higher priority than that?
I think
I think that is enough
for where we are as a department.
But on top of that, the continued investment of this mayor and council
for new fire stations, I think we just took delivery of two brand new fire engines and a brand new ladder truck.
The the 4896,
the the funding that keeps getting put into the fire department to make it not only up to par with our surrounding
jurisdictions,
but leaders in the nation. And you're building two and redoing three.
Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate your great service to our city. Appreciate
Yes, sir. How you represent the city of Roswell.
Nancy, next speaker, please. What's your that's my
Claire Snedeker. Claire. Welcome, Claire.
Thank you, mayor and council.
Good evening.
I see the for a forum like this as a key time to voice,
what,
we would like to see continue being done in the city,
and,
wanna speak specifically to your collective commitment to continue the following
areas that require focus
and political will and skill sets by the city,
staff.
The park investing is delivering a living legacy.
It's not unlike those who those elders of ours who came decades before us,
who dedicated themselves to bringing us
the Roswell area park swimming pool complex
and other things that they did to vision our city
into its current
benefits and crown jewels.
You've been renovating
the Big Creek Greenway,
which is a significant
item that you've added to the park investing. It includes even
a personal investment that former, council member, Marcela Zapata,
did with another group to install a free little library there, but you've been working on the Big Creek Greenway renovation.
You've been launching the River Parks master plan,
which,
sounds like something that might be nebulous, but we need to not forget that it stabilizes
the riverbank.
We are
in this,
geography lottery that we won. We have the river, but we had to stabilize the riverbank,
restore the wetlands,
and also to,
protect acres and acres of forest.
So I applaud the those items and,
well, I just wanna make a make a high voice for that.
We also have been,
you know, in the in the strategic the the outreach to residents for the strategic planning for the city,
there was long
discussion and input
about building a vibrant, walkable community,
that was also,
economically
viable, not just,
well, that ripple through the local economy.
And it took something it took this focus,
that you all have been adding
to, just commit connect and commit to, mixed family, family friendly
destinations
that give our residents
and all of us the,
the restaurants,
the businesses, the services that we need.
So,
it it's the corporate headquarters seems to be a new component
that's so key to bring these high paying jobs,
and and then the support services that they need,
to then ripple through the economy. So recruiting the,
the corporate headquarters
is is key.
And lastly, I just wanna say,
keeping up the hard work on offloading the traffic on Holcomb Bridge Road. You've got the Big Creek Parkway, which you got a commitment from us, the voters, to T Splosh
to do a flyover bridge between Holcomb Bridge Road and Mansell.
And then you also have the East West Expressway
connection that's gonna come
south of Holcomb Bridge Road. So with those two infrastructure
projects,
you're you're harnessing another river that flows through us, and it's called Georgia 400.
And that's what I see as catalytic
for what's needed to then deliver on the vision that the residents put forth when they strategically
planned and helped vision the city. So I appreciate,
all the work that you're doing on those things. And I just wanted to say,
that we appreciate you continuing the hard work on those items. Thank you. Thank you, Claire. Thank you so much.
Nancy, next speaker, please, ma'am.
Jacqueline Bass.
Welcome, Jacqueline.
Hi. Thanks. Thank you. I live in Willow Springs. I'm David's neighbor.
So I am here to talk about Mimosa,
and I will start by saying that I do have also I am a historic preservation planner with thirty years of professional experience.
And
while
well,
I'll just yeah. So
I have concerns
about the absence of historic preservation standards exercised in the Mimosa Hall project.
At the June 30 open mic meeting and in subsequent speeches,
members of city staff and council have mentioned and I'm sorry this has been touched on, but there's a point why I'm repeating it. Have meant maintained that they obtained approval for this project from the State Historic Preservation Office, the SHPO.
And that an independent consultant
ensured that the project was in compliance.
However, what happened was the consultant was told by the SHPO that due to the project being funded with ARPA funds, a special provision of in the federal law rendered these projects not subject to SHPO review under section one zero six of the National Historic Preservation Act.
Therefore, there was no state,
quote, approval of this design as the city who would have many believed through carefully crafted statements
would have you otherwise believe.
The state simply did not have the jurisdiction to review the project
due to the restrictions placed on ARPA funding.
I bring this up because as a historic preservation design professional, I find the historic preservation protections and considerations in this project to be gravely lacking.
It's my opinion that had the SHPO had the authority to review this project, they would have noted the lack of historic preservation standards in the project specifications,
including protection and reuse of the Neil Reed stairs.
The ADA comment does not hold.
There was as far as I understand, there was no independent structural analysis or architectural analysis of these stairs. And as a preservation consultant who does projects like this for the federal government across the country,
there are many ways to reuse stairs like that. They needed handrails,
but I digress,
including the stairs and also any provisions for avoiding
and protecting known archeological
resources that had been previously identified in the 02/2017,
02/2018, and 2021 archaeological reports prepared for the city.
Further, the city's own UDC under section twelve point eight point three indicates that when a project will affect a documented archaeological site,
a report shall be prepared that, quote,
contains sufficient information about the location and character of the archaeological site.
It shall also provide recommendations for preserving the archaeological site or describing and or describe methods for mitigating damage to the archaeological site in light of the proposed development.
The report shall be required to be submitted
with an application for the certificate of appropriateness as required by this section, end quote.
In this case, the known archaeological site has been recorded as 9 F U 819 in the Georgia site file, and it does not appear that any additional reports were prepared to meet this requirement nor was any applicable language included in prepared to meet this requirement nor was any applicable language included in the construction documents, which I have
read over.
These CDs were never reviewed by the St. Friends Group or the HPC as it was explained that they were only reviewed in the as, quote, in the high level rendering of the project in both,
let's see, September
for the first time, September 2024, then the HPC looked at them in October 2024, and then the friends group again got to see it again in May 2024
2025.
Excuse me. And each time, they only saw the high level rendering, not the not the final construction documents.
These documents,
which presented
a vastly different project than what was detailed and realized through the construction documents
are not the same.
These documents went through community the final construction documents went through community development review in June 2025, and it does not appear that any provisions were made to ensure that the project complied with twelve point eight point three of the unified code.
I spoke today with the SHPO about this project, and they explained that in the absent of state jurisdiction to review and approve construction projects,
it is the local UDC that must be followed.
As stewards of this highly significant historic resource and as a city that prides itself on its history and cultural assets, as I've heard say spoken tonight, I am dismayed at the lack of concern to adequately protect property through the re this reuse project.
Further, the efforts to defend the missteps taken throughout the project, even when presented with facts and about pro protecting the cultural landscape, illustrates an alarming lack of concern for public and experienced
professional opinion.
I am hardly against reusing historic assets. It is what I do for a profession.
Thank you, Jack. Am I done? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Is there would you like are there questions that you would like us to respond to based upon your your commentary?
Yeah. Why was the UDC not followed? Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jacqueline too. Thank you.
Good evening.
Jason, I'm
gonna ask you to let Jacqueline hear the answer to the question, sir.
Thank you.
Oh. Sorry. So I'm Michelle Alexander. I'm the director of community development.
The UDC is when we reviewed the whole case,
was followed. The
language about,
the requirement
to
review by HPC
for comment was followed.
HPC does not look at construction
documents
typically.
We bring to the HPC
a presentation
or information and submit it at the meetings to show them concepts
and,
aspects of the different arch archaeological and architectural features that they're reviewing.
The, and then the question about the survey. So the HBC requires,
the specific survey, and I'm gonna defer because I didn't review it my I didn't review it for the project. I reviewed it after the fact, but we did accept it as meeting and being in compliance with the UDC intent.
I'll also add as we went through the permitting process,
while this property was labeled as a low probability,
site for artifacts, we went above and beyond the due diligence with that to go through
our phased approach of archeological
surveys that were done on-site.
That was actually
a piece that we did in act in addition that wasn't necessarily required
as part of the low probability
code associated with this site specifically.
Thank you. Yes, sir. Hold on, David. I got a I got a question for counsel.
Lee,
Helen, David,
Sarah,
Will, and Christine. I have a question for you six. So I keep hearing loggerheads.
Right? So I hear a group that says, Hey, you guys didn't follow the process. You keep doubling down on the information.
And then I keep hearing us presenting information,
and it doesn't seem to be it's like, this is just dismissed. Like, well, obviously, you're lying. You're not telling the truth. I'm curious. Like, what is transpiring in your minds on this subject?
Because
you all are affected by this. You're the the elected officials
you're the elected representatives of the city representing 94,000
people.
And I'm curious why this continues to be, like, at loggerheads
because it's always seems to be some technical distinction.
Feels like, well, its staff keeps doubling down. The word lie has been used. Lie been I I don't know if any I don't I don't think anybody's lying,
but it feels like there's a loggerhead. I'm just curious what you guys' perspective on this is. Because I think we're gonna keep going down this cycle,
right, for months and months and months and until the Mimosa project is done. And I I believe a year from now, people will be delighted. I know they don't believe it, but they're gonna be delighted with Mimosa.
But I know that's not how anybody feels right now.
But I'm just curious at this cycle. Like, I don't know what the city can do. I don't know what the staff can do. Like, what is it that we do that solves this equation?
Because or people are gonna keep keep saying, well, you didn't do this, you didn't do that, you didn't do this.
And then we said, well, we did do this, and we did do that. It doesn't seem to matter. I'm just curious what you guys' thoughts on that are.
Yes, ma'am. Christine.
Well, this is a project that's been in the works for a couple of years. I mean, the plan for Founders Park, and that's not the name,
that's that's what we're calling it because there's gonna be suggestions for other names for a 24 acre park to connect the properties
to make them viable and
make the entire area. We've already seen the resurgence of the Roswell Square when that was,
basically upgraded and the coming of the new restaurants and its expansion
of the restaurants.
It's gonna make this a viable opportunity.
So the original plan was presented
for Mimosa Hall, the conversion and transformation of Mimosa
Hall
a couple of years ago.
I think,
and the city did did not break any laws.
We wouldn't. I mean, we have attorneys. We have, consultants that we hire that comply with laws.
I think it's just very shocking when people saw the trees go down and that and the
city did a poor,
communication plan to let folks know that this was coming. And this is what I think is happening with a a lot of projects. We'll announce a project,
and two years go by and people don't see what's going on. But, really, what's going on is there's
all this engineering and all this planning and all this design, and then we're at 40% design and 60% design and 80% design, and and then it has to go to a construction plan. So it takes a long time, and the city has to get better of filling that that gap,
from when all the excitement and the the plans are announced and pretty pictures and concept pictures
and when it finally gets done because that's hard for
the general public in in my opinion.
And I,
I mean, I I was out there. I mean, I got a call from
from some folks, you know, when the trees were going down, and and
I was actually a little bit surprised myself.
I knew it was coming,
but we should have done a better job communicating. But it's not something the city didn't break any laws. The consultants didn't break laws. The experts didn't make break any laws. I mean, this is
this these are the facts. That's the truth.
Thanks, Christine.
Willie,
you you always got things to say behind the scenes.
The,
the big takeaway here, and and this is as I was putting my thoughts together in my head when when asked this question, I can't agree more. The communication needed to be better because these are projects that come forth,
take a lot of time, take a lot of design, on and on and on. And then when it actually does become an executable project,
things change at that moment. And, you know, when when the MOSA project did take place,
it was it was months, if not almost a year after we had
heard about this project here in at at city hall. So when it actually did take place, you know, I was I was surprised as well. Communication absolutely has to improve on that. The,
the the topics that we've talked about here, there are a lot of good takeaways that that we need to vet
going forward
in in the way that we we look at all future projects.
There is, at this point right now, some of the things that we've learned from this is any future capital project that we're doing to any of our assets, whether it be historic or nonhistoric,
we all need to understand the
the green space impacts of that, including trees, and that is a report that is being delivered to us through,
through the department manager of of wherever that project is is scheduled. But,
you know, this is this is difficult.
I understand
I understand the vision around why this was done. I understand
the the,
feelings on the the opposite side of this. I get it. I I understand all of that. So
the one thing that I can commit to is absolutely the communication will improve because there is no option. We have to improve the communication on on something like this. Lesson learned. Thanks, Willie. Sarah?
I'm gonna phrase this in a way that when I'm inevitably hit by somebody's car in the parking lot after this meeting, you won't know who did it because everyone in this room will be probably slightly annoyed with me.
So I will go ahead and, we'll go through the timeline of this. So to council member Morathland's point and council member Hall's point, this was approved at the end of last year as we were head about this time last year as we're heading into,
the final phase of the budget process. It was presented to us by, Rec and Parks with the understanding that it was the last and possible final use of ARPA funds. At the time, I said that I did not like the project. It is not the best and highest use of
of our ARPA funds. Is there anywhere else that we could possibly use these funds? And I will freeze this in a way that everyone will highly disagree with, but ARPA, American Resource or American Recovery Act plans,
it's free money. And by what I mean by that is it's money that's already been stipulated by the federal government to be used to the municipal level. It was use it or lose it. And staff very
adamantly
stuck to the fact that that was the only way that we could use it at the time, because we had already bid it out, and it was the only way that we could actually use the funds at that point in time. It was the only project that it would be applicable to. That said, I was fully capable of voting against that project, and I chose not to because I realized that this was a way that we could try to improve on one of our historical sites. We could try to get people to actually go there. While I thought that there were other ways that we could possibly use it, if we could not allocate those funds at that time, I'm definitely not going to turn down federal dollars coming into our city for improvements.
That being said, I will also own as well, when it was presented to us in terms of the plans, it's the exact same plans that HPC
reviewed
reviewed, looked at, admired, stared at. Whatever words you would like to use at this point in time for them to comment, not vote on, eyeball.
Again, at this point, tomato tomato. We had HPC look at it. HPC provided comments. There are recordings of said comments,
as well as friends of Mimosa who on a Zoom provided comments.
In terms of whether or not that was reviewed by those groups for a binding
comment,
that is up for debate. But according to the interpretation of this code, as I hear from the city attorney, it's nonbinding anyways. At the end of the day, it comes to us, a mayor and council, and we have to own that vote.
I will take responsibility
for not asking how many trees were going to be impacted. You are right. As a historic property with a lot of large,
very historic trees on that property. I am somebody who works in the environmental space. I am
five minutes away from my PhD in city planning, which is in our School of Historic Preservation, University of Georgia. I should have asked about the trees.
To the rest of the council members points thus far as well in terms of how it's communicated,
it was not communicated well to the public. I don't know that it was necessarily communicated as well to the elected officials. It came from a directive of we are trying to improve this park space. Staff took those marching orders and went with it. Those were the directives that they were given. I don't know that anyone ever actually met in the middle of
because you asked for this, these will be the impacts.
And unfortunately, this was the outcome.
I hear you. You are frustrated. You are mad about those trees. You are sad about those trees. I feel you on those trees. But at this point in time, I do not know how we as elected officials can better,
translate to mea culpa for the rest of you or how we can own that other than doing better moving forward, how we can better communicate with y'all moving forward.
And I will say as well as of
three months ago, I was made,
the liaison where we changed our liaison roles and no longer, public safety liaison, but I'm communications liaison. So if there's a way that you have feedback on how we can better improve our communications or the way that we communicate our projects or how we communicate our bond projects,
holler at your girl,sbason@roswellgov.com.
I appreciate that David gives out his cell phone. I will not do that. However, you can email me on public record. It will be entered on public record, and I'd be more than happy to reply
to you. Thank you. Well, you three are gonna be hard to beat. I don't I don't think they're gonna do as good a job on this side.
But Wednesday, when
Wednesday Wednesday, eight to four,
public workshop on the budget.
Details.
Great details.
The budget will be presented to the electeds,
the mayor and council on Wednesday, and there'll be tremendous granularity on the budget, including,
I believe,
Sharon, still here, will be doing I don't know. Will you be doing something on the in the workshop about the bonds and all that? Will you be presenting that and showing the like, hey. Here's a percentage of completion of the budget. Here's dollars spent. Here's what completion means. Will you be going through that on Wednesday? Thank you.
Council member of Hills, Pro Tem Hills. Any thoughts?
You got saved.
Yes. I do have a couple of thoughts. And I
whether folks believe it or not, I I am conscious of what goes on with removal of trees and I understand and and
feel some, not all of the pain over the removal of the trees at Mimosa.
I will say that in the twenty three years I've lived here, I have felt like some of our properties look like jungles. They are not kept well. They haven't they're not easy to navigate. Now the front yard of Mimosa is a little more open, but a lot of it is not. I mean, they're open for park space if they're not being used for a private event. So it's difficult to navigate some of our properties, not all.
I was in favor of this project from from the beginning,
as far as some of the comments that have been made tonight, not as specifically tonight, but on social media and other meetings
about why the city would take away business from other special event,
venues in the area. I have over twenty year experience in historic assets in North Carolina
event planning. And I will tell you, when you look up one and find one, you look to see if there are other ones. And it typically inspires more business in the other venues. So I can only
believe and have lived that this will promote more business at the other historic assets. I've also found that it becomes sort of like when we instill best in class pay for our police department, all of our surrounding cities upped their game. And I have seen that happen in North Carolina and in Georgia and in Alabama, the three states where I've worked in special events, where there becomes a competition level of improving your event space. If this one has a stage, that one wants one. If this one's redone the drywall, that one does.
And it's just part of keeping up the old sisters, as I call them, the old, special event venues that are historic homes. So I think that will actually have a positive,
benefit.
The parking on
Bullock Avenue is
abysmal. I mean, it's tough. I've seen people pull up on the grass. I've seen people pull up in private properties and try to park. And people want to be there. Us removing the fees to visit our historic assets was the best thing we ever did. I will say I was a little trepidatious about that. And, I mean, I forget the how many,
you know, times over people started visiting, but,
there were some friends of mine here earlier this evening that told me they were so excited about that when we did it two and a half years ago. It might have been our third our first year in. But, that they were able to take people
to different, historic homes here because then they didn't have to pay. So they would bring different people every time they'd have visitors in town that hadn't been here before. So I think there's a huge benefit to that, and people do wanna see these properties.
I want to also point out about the ARPA funds.
I've had a couple of people challenge me on that. Why did we start with the renovation of the Second Floor if you can't even go in there? And again, back to my background,
there is some savoir faire to how you sell events in the future, especially if they're not finished off and ready to go. So, doing this while it's sitting still right now,
it allowed us to do visual videography
and virtual tours through those spaces so that brides,
folks hosting
smaller
bar mitzvahs or bat mitzvahs, nei mitzvahs,
and then, of course, corporate events could take a peek at what facilities we have there without,
you know, without
being able to get in there. They would they can look online and go, oh my gosh. I really like that. So they're able to look at that and we also have discounted rates right now before the venue is actually open. So there there are a lot of benefits to that.
Back to my original comment
comparing
some of our properties to jungles, I think we'll be very surprised how quickly
a landscaped
intentional plan will fill in. It won't be overnight. It's not going to be, but it will fill back in. And I think it will be much more approachable,
much more pleasing.
And the stairs, I believe, we're repurposing those stones that, that were dismantled from the historic stairs, which was three stairs. It wasn't a whole flight. Four? Seven? Okay. I don't wanna misquote. Forgive me. Seven. I've walked down them, but it's been a little while. So, anyway, we will keep those those stones and those pieces on the property. But,
anyway, I'm I'm looking forward to the project. I think it'll be enjoyed by people for many, many decades following,
its completion.
Thanks, Lee. Alan, any thoughts?
I kinda like the question that I posed. No. I appreciate it. Yeah. It that's a tough one. You know, obviously,
governments do many things poorly. Communication is almost always one of those. So that is something we could we could always do better at. No question about that.
Even among ourselves and the and the stuff that we know and the and the things that we hear.
You know,
my experience
is on boards,
and I have always used that analogy for my role here. I'm a board member.
And when I hear,
we aren't breaking laws, we are following oil,
we have you know, we need to, to manage this as a collection of assets and
I've been surprised. I've been really surprised how people refuse to consider this as a part of a larger park.
For whatever reason, they only want to talk about it as a mimosa by itself and not how these
assets work together as Lee points out to create vibrancy, which is what we're trying to do here. And so,
you know,
as a board member and by the way, as a resident, you know, I mean, I live here. I pay the taxes as well.
It's not like we came from Mars and we're just doing this to people. This is this is part of our legacy as well, and we think very hard about this. We have lots of conversations, lots of conversations about this stuff.
But we
the the top priority for us is to be good stewards, and that's not simply of the historic assets, which I truly believe
we are being good steward of this of this historic asset.
Truly believe that. It's going to have more value long term
because of what we're doing and the way we are going to see it work together with these others. I have no doubt about that. And I think the pond is going to be, quite frankly, a feature. The people are gonna walk around and enjoy like they do at Roswell Area Park.
So so, you know,
I think of it as a as a collection and we are stewards of that collection and we're trying to make them all valuable and useful to all the citizens, not just well, I'll come to that last part in a moment. But we're also stewards of the city's money, and I'm talking specifically of taxpayers money.
And and this was an opportunity
to to actually make a difference in historic asset when we've already spent $17,000,000 on this thing on these things, and we could use the ARPA money. That was good stewardship.
And we owe that to the other residents who pay the taxes. And quite frankly, if they don't happen to live right next door to it, they probably don't get as much money as they
stewardship for
the city as a whole.
And I guess the the most breathtaking conversation I've had about this,
and and you guys know that I stay my wife and I stood there for three and a half hours. I came to,
alive looking for the tent, and you weren't there.
So I'm I'm more than happy to engage on this one on one anytime, and I think people know that. They've been because I've been I've had conversations with me about it. But the most stunning conversation I had
was someone who is not on any of the,
property boards that I'm aware of. Perhaps they'd given money to it, whatever the may the case may be, but that they're not on any of the board, so they're not active in these things.
And,
when
making basically, this person was making some specific accusations and I said, well, the fact is we did not disturb the Reed Gardens. Stairs, a different matter, but that we did not disturb the Reed Gardens.
Okay. We'll just sort of move that aside. And then then you start on the the next thing. And, you know, well, you didn't follow well, actually, we were told we did. We have experts in the city that said we did.
But I said and by the way, we talked to the boards, we presented to the HPC, we did the things that have been discussed tonight.
And the comment that this person made was, well,
you didn't talk to the right people.
That was just breathtaking.
Okay? What this person meant was you didn't talk to those of us who matter in this town. Well, guess what? Those of us who pay the taxes in the entire town, we matter too. And as a matter matter of stewardship,
that was our responsibility as well. So I I just was I mean, I really gashed when when you didn't talk to the right people.
Well, you know, be on these boards, be a part of the conversation. No. No. No. I just wanna be the right person at the appropriate time. I I sort of reject that, mayor. And I I think I appreciate you guys being here and making your comments known.
I think we have I think we have, as a body, acted in the best of stewardship and with the best of intentions.
The communications issues,
no doubt, no question we can do that better. But I this has been a this has been a great board to work with, and I I personally have have enjoyed the fact that we can talk about these things among ourselves,
and we can argue about them, but it's not the food fight that past councils have been.
We get along with each other, we get stuff done, and that is what we did here.
Thank you, Alan. David?
I will tell you this much. I am far from a perfect councilman. I am very far from a perfect husband. I'm very far from a perfect father and a perfect human being.
There's no doubt we could have done a better job to y'all.
Alright. Communicating this,
letting the public know about the plan better,
you know, take responsibility for that.
What I do know though is that we are trying to build a 22 acre park
that's walkable from Canton Street, that people will enjoy for years.
Because if people do not go to these historic homes,
my generation is not gonna care about them.
Which means that my kids
are not gonna care about them, which means they're gonna fall in disrepair.
If people don't visit these homes and don't fall in love with them, they are going to fall into disrepair. And we've already saw that with most of between 2017
and 2022 with almost no money being spent on it. It was falling disrepair,
which is why we this mayor and council,
before really, before I was on this elected body,
you know, the, previous council had spent lots of money fixing this home.
I cannot wait for the day that maybe one day my daughter gets married in Roswell, and gets married at this beautiful home.
And I hope,
you know, it's fifty, sixty, seventy years from now, and
I'm in a wheelchair, and I can access the home, and can go into it.
And so,
I say all this to say,
my
what Alan was saying is, we have invested a lot of tax sparing money into the into these homes.
And if we do not activate the spaces,
we they will fall apart and they will go away.
We've seen it with Bullock. I mean, the Christkindl market was a I'll be honest with you, I was like,
first time I went, my wife wanted to go. I didn't wanna go. Three kids, hot chocolate all over my now,
eight year old. It's kind of a terrible
experience. Lots of crying from me and the kids.
And, you know,
300%
increase
of visitors in two years. 300%
increase at Bullock Hall. Then Magnolia Bald, the charity for Bullock
Hall, 200 plus thousand dollars raised.
And you can talk to Bob Hagen and,
I forgot Karen's last name Off the top in the head. But Swaddlers. Thank you.
You could talk to them. They would say there was people at the Magnolia ball that they've never seen before. And these people came because they came to the Christkindl market and they fell in love with the home.
So activating this space, creating a 22 acre downtown park that's walkable from Canton Street, City Hall, Hill Street,
redoing the town it helps you know, we've already seen what redoing the town square is. By the way, if you have not been to Tipsy Tiger, it's one of the best restaurants in Roswell, I highly recommend it.
You already see restaurants coming back into our town square. And when we finally get a hotel
in Downtown Roswell,
the this wedding event this wedding industry is going to take off, and it's going to be
incredible for the taxpayers of Roswell. And I think ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years from now, everyone's gonna be amazed what a beautiful park we have that no other city has. Alpharetta won't have it. Johns Creek won't have it. You know, no other city in Norfolk will have what we have, and it will just be an incredible asset. And I'll once again say, we can always do a better job. My number one goal in life every single day is become a better human being than what it was the the day before. And, you know, I fail at that 364
days a year. So
the
we can always be better as your elected officials. This is also why everyone here has my phone number. Feel free to call me. Let's have a conversation about it. You know? I would prefer people have a conversation with me before going on social media, but that's the world we live in. And I think I'm I'm really excited for the future of this, this park.
Thank you, David. Nancy, next speaker, please.
Courtney Rozier.
Welcome, Courtney.
So tonight, I'd like to talk about two different things. I'd like to talk about a book club,
and I'd like to also ask a couple of questions in regards to Bowen Road, if I have enough time. We'll see.
But first, really, because it's on my heart, is the book club.
You may not know, but the Drake House has started a book club. It's, on a book. I brought it this evening.
There's No Place for Us.
It focuses on
the issue of homelessness
here in the Metro Atlanta area. It follows different folks who are experiencing the metro area.
I've been able to start the book,
and I will be honest with you, it is kind of a hard
read. But I think it's an important read.
I encourage everyone to go out to the Drake House. They've
released a statement in regards to the
Economy Hotel and some of the lessons that were learned.
With this book club, they're going to be having an event at the men's museum.
That is going to be on,
it's at the men's museum, and I think it's on October 21. I forgot to mark that down. Oh, no. It is. It's October 21 at 04:30PM
at men's museum.
And
one of the reasons I also wanted to share why this is important to me,
because recently I was told that I supported affordable housing,
and I do.
Some of the reasons is, while I'm reading this book, I've been keeping a picture of my father with me.
My father,
spent time at the Decatur's Children Town.
Though he experienced
instability in his housing.
It impacted him.
It impacted
marriage with my mother.
It impacted me.
But
overall,
in the end,
he was very proud. He was a homeowner in the end, and he was very proud of being able to support me
in part through college.
I've also brought with me and I've been keeping with me a brick.
This brick is something that my mother brought to me
when I first purchased my home.
She made a point to put a plate on it. It has my great grandfather's name on it.
It's on Briarcliff Road, so we're
three generations of Metro Atlantans.
But my great grandfather,
during the Depression,
supported,
multiple family members.
And so there was multi generational
housing in regards, you know, throughout the depression there, there was housing instability.
My grandfather was a World War II veteran.
Unfortunately, he did not come back and live with them.
That was post traumatic stress syndrome is what I learned later.
But her great grand my great grandfather, her grandfather made sure that the family stayed together and there was a home.
So I feel like I've been that kind of six degrees from separation,
perhaps, from homelessness.
Whether it's from my mother's experience or my father's experience.
Because with some of that instability,
there was divorce
between my mother and my father.
And my mother had to scramble. I was one years old.
Fortunately,
my grandmother
was able to take her in.
We actually lived together for a while. They bought a home together.
So we were fortunate in that regard.
But
the Economy Hotel has kind of put on my heart
wanting to serve that community, make sure that there's workforce housing here in the Roswell.
So I hope that if you have the time on the twentieth or before the twenty first sorry, I think it was the twenty first, to read this book or to take part in this conversation. I hope you will.
I'm planning on it. I want to learn more and learn more about how I can contribute
to, make sure that there is workforce
housing in Roswell.
I want to thank the council,
for
Pelfry Pines, for the rebuilding of that apartment.
Another experience that I've had too is that my grandmother, my mama d, she ended up living at, Phillips Tower in Decatur, and that's a senior housing facility that has affordable housing available in it. Thank you. So thank you and I hope you're able to join.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for your
very heartfelt
story and sharing it with us. Thank you. Also, miss Rozier, I did receive your email. Nine or ten in the morning is fine. I think it's an extension of your comments tonight. So I look forward to speaking with you tomorrow morning. Thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you for reaching out to me. Absolutely.
Yes, sir. Lee.
Thank you, mayor. Thank you, miss Rosier.
I appreciate you mentioning Pelfrey Pines and the redevelopment of the Roswell Housing Authority. That has been,
a behemoth
of a lift, for this mayor and council.
And I think every well, I know everybody sitting up here has been in in favor of this, this redevelopment.
And while it's not favorable for some people, I believe it is the right thing to do that we're giving first right of refusal to all of the folks that,
had to move out so that we can demo 199 Grove Way, and they'll have their the first right of refusal to come back.
We you'll be getting some notice surely through social media and otherwise about a groundbreaking that will most likely be in October.
We're going from '40 units on that site to 102.
Those will be 99 single bedroom units and three two bedroom units. And with
the quad, which is the property right across the street on Grove Way, has just been approved through DCA,
to be redeveloped. So phase two is about to be launched. That should be signed off on oh my gosh.
It'll probably close next, I think, next March or May. Anyway, it's rolling.
And that will include single fam single bedroom, double,
two bedroom units, three bedrooms. They're talking about possibility of one or
affordable housing in the city of Roswell,
and,
we are the affordable housing
solution for North Fulton.
No other city, no other sister city has what we have here. You mentioned the Drake House, of course. We have Homestretch,
Family Promise. We have,
supporting a lot of these individuals in peril. They're not all the same people. It's different people, different weeks. We have the North Fulton Charities,
and, of course, the Housing Authority.
And, you know, that it gets a bad name. I've said it up here before. We are a municipality
bailing out a failing federal
program
across the nation, and we're doing our part.
So we do take it seriously. We are concerned about our residents.
I won't speak for the rest of the council and mayor. I have no intention of building millions of apartments here and welcoming everybody in from everybody else. Zero intention of that. I never have had that intention.
My intention is to take care of our Roswell residents, and I know people move in and move out. And those applications will be open for anybody to apply for,
for these spaces at 199 Grove Way and then the quad that'll,
be redeveloped after this first phase. But we have taken a very aggressive approach,
and we've committed $2,000,000
to make that capital stack work so that this project can get off the ground. And that will all be re
repaid to us through the CDBG
funding for the next, probably eight years.
We should have that paid off. So it it came at,
you know, a commitment from us to make that loan from the city. It's your taxpayer money that's been put forward and it through a section one zero eight loan, which is funded through HUD, through the section one zero eight fund, loan process. And that'll be paid back through CDBG funds. So a little technical to go along with the we're doing something, and I believe that we should be really proud of what we've got going on in the city of Roswell long before we got involved in the housing authority. But,
I
I've said some things that I'll back up. We haven't had any interest from previous mayors
with the housing authority. It hadn't been. It has been looking the other way, turned a blind eye. Don't wanna see it. Don't wanna talk about it. So
I I'm very proud of what we've got doing, and I look forward to seeing, hopefully, all of you at the groundbreaking
in October.
Well, I'll just say just gonna
Courtney, thank you. Speaking as someone who had a maternal grandmother who was chronically
homeless,
familiar with your story,
understand the all the dynamics of that, the generational impacts, they're severe,
and thank you for sharing that.
I will share with you one of the many dynamics that when we came into the city, not looking for
any credit, just wanna illuminate.
When we walked in in 2022 in January,
we knew of Karen Parrish was the
volunteer head of the RHA.
And we downloaded some information from her.
And Randy can tell you,
when I walked in, we kind of all looked at each other and said, you got anybody in this inside of city halls
Looked all around, even with our historical legacy expert.
And, like, it was amazing.
Like, the Kansas City and Roswell Housing Authority
had no formal really relationship other than the appointment
from the mayor
appointing volunteers
to this amazingly powerful organization
that if you wanna talk about it, I've heard a candidate say he would do a forensic audit. There's a great forensic audit for you back in 02/2011, 2012 you should go check out. But,
I mean, like, a
an a housing authority that was in financial disrepair,
did not have a plan,
and had no relationship with the city that created it. And so the first thing we went about was creating relationship. Then we started looking at the properties, and we realized, as Randy could tell you, oh my god. We have a building. And by the way, the people that get most affected by poor housing
are the most vulnerable who can't do anything about it and usually are not protected.
And we came across a building in the housing authority
that we said, oh my god. This building could literally collapse any day. It's all elderly people in it, and they will not survive. That literally will have 31 people die in our city because the the housing authority has no overwatch, no oversight. And so we stepped in as a city,
condemned the building. We also did something again that cities don't do. We filled in the gaps,
and we found homes for those 31 people. Got killed in the press for it, like, I mean, destroyed. But the honest job was this staff and this team and Lee was a big part of it, Christine as well,
went out of their way
along with Beth from Grainsville
to find housing
for all 31 people.
And then we went about the business and said, alright. This thing's a financial mess.
So the city, the taxpayers of Roswell don't know about this, but we gotta solve for it. Even though the taxpayers are completely unaware and it's a federal program,
it's in our city limits, and there are vulnerable people here and they need help. And we gotta solve for it. And Lee came to the forefront of really stepping in the middle of this and really getting highly involved.
And, again,
call it don't call it business.
Call it common sense and practical. We had the acumen
and the financial ability to figure out solutions to help put a cap stat together for a developer to come in who needed this very complicated point system. So bam. And then we said, guess what? We said, look. Here's our conditions.
You must provide the most pristine housing of a housing authority.
If you're gonna put housing in a housing authority in the city of Roswell, any resident that lives in that must be pristine housing. That's the requirement.
And once they said we'll do that, we said, alright. We'll figure out a way to financially do it. And the CDBG fund, $2,000,000 loan for the cap stack was a brilliant way to do it because it didn't put any pressure on the taxpayer, but it still solved a very difficult solution.
Lee, major kudos to you for being the tip of the spear on that. Mister Knighton, major kudos to you for being the tip of the spear on that. You guys, the city's done an amazing job. The city's don't get any credit for it, but it did the right thing when nobody's looking
continually and found a financial solution without burdening the taxpayer. It's a pretty incredible feat. So, yes, Courtney, there are people for those,
like, literally, we're increasing the housing from 40 to one twenty,
one of two, and then there's a second one that'll be coming right around the corner inside the housing authority itself. So thank you for bringing that up. And thank Courtney, thank you very
thank you for bringing that up. And thank Courtney, thank you very heartfelt story. Appreciate that. Yes, ma'am. Sarah.
Sucker. You gave me a microphone. We're gonna talk about housing.
No. Just joking. I just wanted to say that I can completely relate. I know that, predating my time on council housing has been my hot topic and something that I more likely than not would come out to council meetings to discuss.
And very similar to your story, it's because it was something very, near and dear to my family.
My great grandmother was a, one of the first residents of Techwood Homes, which has a really complicated history and one of the first of four,
federally subsidized affordable housing units in City Of Atlanta when she passed away.
My grandmother was,
living in Winder and,
public housing then as well when she also passed away in 1998.
My mother was a resident of public housing when she was a teenager when she was growing up. And I know that that's something that's come up before. It's like, oh, Sarah, you you come from, an affluent family and you come from a life of privilege. I come from a life of privilege because of three
generations of my family were supported by public housing. They would not have been housed. My mother's family going through a divorce, she would not have had a place to live. My grandmother later in life would not have had a place to live, same with my great grandmother.
And I I think that's one of the reasons that I ran for office originally is because I do feel very passionately about housing.
I reflect
not only in my,
public role but also in my academic role often
on how I find it egregious that in life
there's poppers graves that can guarantee somebody dignity and death, but they were never guaranteed a place to live during life. And one of the most basic tenants of life is shelter is one of them.
But I will say too on the the city end, it's not that I'm sitting up here being like, yeah. Let's talk housing. But when it comes down to having to, put rubber to the road, it's just punt the ball. It's a very complicated subject that the municipal level is very difficult to fund. Most of the social services in the local area are taken care of theoretically at the county level. That's what your tax dollars go towards. The continuum of care for homelessness has gone through Fulton County.
But oftentimes, we're overlooked by Fulton County because Roswell is, quote, unquote, affluent. We'd we don't have homeless people here. You and I both know that's not necessarily the case.
We we do have have, unhoused population and we do not have county tax dollars or assistance often coming into Roswell because we're overlooked.
Roswell as a city does not have the funds nor the abilities to have social services at that level. That's not to say that they don't try. I know for a fact that we have police officers who have patrolled the road and have tried to give resources,
given recommendations for continuum of care, even literally taken people off the streets into warming shelters or, housing facilities in inclement weather.
I know that the fire department as well was active not only in literally bringing cots in from asthma when we had,
cold spells, but also,
making sure that literally help people move out of Economy Hotel. So it's not that we turn a blind eye to unhoused populations here in Roswell. We pretend they don't exist. It's not that we are ambivalent towards housing.
It's that the cost of living has doubled more than doubled in the last five years for our area specifically, and that's gotten away from us much faster than we want it to. It's a complicated topic, and I think it's something that we as a city has tried to invest more in and something I would like to continue to try to, put more investments in.
But thank you for your comments.
Thanks, Sarah.
Yeah. Just I'm surprised you didn't mention chief Conroy.
We actually have other municipalities
and counties actually dump they bring homeless people into our city,
believe it or not. Whole another story.
And we manage that, FYI. We manage that actively. Chief and his team did an amazing job of managing that. Like, this is not a city that turns a blind eye.
But I will tell you just an inside ballpark story. I've had this conversation with mister Knighton and mister Stevens and haven't really shared it with the council much. But we talk about sometimes some of the grander issues that need to be solved.
And I've said to them, like, there's issues that, like I've said, and I don't mean this cash aspersions on the federal government, state government, or county government. But I've said, like, on the issue of homelessness,
I said, do you really believe the federal government's gonna solve it for us? Do you believe the state government's gonna solve it for us? With all due respect, do you think the county government's gonna solve it for us? Because there's tremendous resources and dollars being spent there, but the problem's not being solved. And we've kinda talked about this internally,
like, hey.
I don't know. Sounds like it's gonna be an art. We better figure this out. And so thank you for raising the issue.
Nancy,
next speaker, please. But three speakers left, so forgive me if we're not going to a bathroom break and there's three speakers left. So y'all just bear with me. Sorry. Next speaker, please, Nancy. Jerry Wood.
Welcome, Jerry.
Wondering if Dave Woodrow has left because I wanted to address
what he brought up. But I wanna bring up three things tonight. The first is, talk about the the bond.
I was surprised when,
I learned that we didn't have enough money to buy the
Hardscrabble And Chaffin property, the $7,500,000,
given that we had just passed a $107,600,000
bond issue for recreation and parks.
So my question is,
where did the
what has happened to the $107,600,000
for recreation and parks?
I've looked at the dashboard and, does not appear to be accurately representing what's happened on the ground.
So my
specific question is,
how much of that $107,600,000
has been spent on recreation and parks and trails?
What was it spent for?
And how much of have we contractually committed to spend
even though we haven't spent it yet if we've entered a contract? And I asked the same question about the $52,000,000
for
fire safety and the $20,000,000
for the
parking deck.
And
we've admitted that we can do a better that that I think you've admitted that you need to do a better job of communicating. And I think that dashboard and telling the people,
how that money's been spent is a is a good start on,
communication.
I couldn't find out looking at anything on the records how the money's been spent. So I think you can do a better job there.
Warner I'm sorry. David Woodrow has left. He's a good friend of mine.
I think his
he has forgotten
the $32,000,000
bond issue that we passed
the city passed the first year
after I was elected.
And he said that in the past two administrations,
there had been no bond.
Though he's forgotten a $32,000,000
bond and I think that put us on the right path.
Some people have said nothing was accomplished in the last twenty seven years and I'm most proud of the acquisition of Parkland.
We went from around 300 acres to over a thousand acres of Parkland
in the twenty years I served.
And the parks that were built included the Big Creek Park, the Leida Thompson Park, the Riverwalk seven miles, Girard Landing,
expansion of East Roswell Park,
purchase of Barrington Hall and Mimosa Hall,
the 7 Branches Park, the first 25 acres on the Spruill Park. And that which I'm most proud of, mayor, is the Tillywood Preserve
located in your neighborhood,
which was acquired with zero tax dollars and is currently owned by
a a trust.
Now as far as the
pension, I will confess, I know nothing about pensions. I relied upon people like David Davidson to steer us on
making good decisions about pensions, and I relied upon staff. I can't explain
anything of what he brought up.
I may be a lawyer, but I'm no pension expert. I'm not sure anybody understood what the pension expert said.
So I'm not in position to respond to that. And the last thing I'd like to respond to
and touch on briefly is Mimosa.
The question was,
you know, when is this gonna go away?
What would can make it go away? Well, the first thing I wanna make is there's been a statement that no laws were broken, that our that your attorneys have looked into it. I also looked into it.
I came to the conclusion that there were city ordinances broken. There's a difference of opinion I recognize.
What we don't have is an independent decision.
I'm sure that every inmate in the prison is innocent, if you ask him.
And if you ask staff, did they make any mistakes? And I'm sure they're going to say they didn't.
But until you get an independent decision, you're going to have two different opinions,
the city's opinion and people's opinion like Jerry would,
And the the only way to resolve that is to get an independent decision.
Now you've said you could have done a better job. I think that's clear.
I think the first but you know what I have not never heard yet
on Mimosa?
Is an apology for doing a bad job.
I think that would be a good beginning.
So
I will give you the opportunity to respond to my questions about the bond, and I appreciate your service.
Thank you, Jerry. I appreciate you, mayor. Appreciate your service, and thank you for your comments very much. I,
Bill,
when are we doing this? Because I think, the Sharon,
who's gonna do the bond question? Because it's a great question. The illumination of all three bonds,
the $107,800,000
for the parks and rec.
Yeah. Yeah. Would you upload the website, please, Nance, Sharon?
$20,000,000 for the parking garage and $52,000,000
for public safety.
Just illuminate that a little bit. And then
yeah.
That's that's the first question that,
I'm sure you have. Well, I I first wanted to address,
some questions about the the bonds and how we're tracking them. We do have a bond dashboard, which you'll see here up above.
What we have,
pulled up right now is Riverside Park.
I think some of the the confusion is the,
part the projects that are shown right now are the projects that are funded through the first tranche.
We had two tranches,
issued. In the first tranche, it was $86,200,000
and the second tranche was 93.4.
So sometimes when people are looking for the projects, it's it's because the projects are in the second tranche. A good example of that would be Henbury Park. So right now, Henbury Park is not showing on the bond dashboard because we're not actively working on it.
We have just begun working on it. We actually just released surveyors to go ahead and start the top design
process now that we
have those second tranche trends.
Example here of Riverside Park.
Here above, looking here, you can see that the project is showing 50% complete.
I think one of the questions that are being asked is
why we're showing that only 840,000.00
of the 14,800,000.0
has been spent.
What that's really showing is is we're tracking time,
not just dollars. So there's Sharon. Yes, sir. Let's slow that down because I think there's a lot of information there. Okay. So let's look at this current site
and refer everybody to the bottom right hand corner
where it shows 840,000.00.
You got a blue little thing there going on, right? So it starts up 0
to half to half curve,
and it goes all the way to 14,800,000.0.
So this could
look, if you're familiar with looking at it, it probably makes sense. If you're not looking at this all the time, it's right. Okay. What's $840,000
So $840,000
is what you've actually spent
on the Riverside Park project, correct? Correct. So that is And you budgeted
out of the $107,800,000
you budgeted $14,800,000
correct? That is correct. And then the bar graph above in the green, right,
shows 50% completion. So people are probably going, My Lord, how have you spent $840,000
out of 14.8,
and yet you're telling me you're 50% completed? How does that work? I don't understand that. Correct. So there's a great deal of time that went into the planning process. And earlier, some of the council members were talking about that, how it is frustrating probably to people in the community when we start talking about
community when we start talking about projects. There's a period of time where there's not a lot of information
shared because the engineering
process, the field work that goes into that, the subsurface investigations that are necessary,
the permitting, the reviews
takes a great deal of time. So we account for that in the process because
in managing the process, we're basically managing the time, the schedule,
we're managing the dollars, and we're also managing what's actually being built. In the case of Riverside Sharon, let me ask you a question. So is that a Sharon operational decision, or does that does that framework come from somewhere else? Bill, this is your chance.
Where does that framework come
based upon like you can you just say, look, I'm spending $8,400,000
but 50% of design
at the time of this project's already built in. So I'm 50% complete on this project, even though I've got
basically
$14,000,000
left to spend and construction hasn't started. So how in the world am I 50%?
So for us, it is best management, best practices of how we manage projects. But Bill's gonna explain a little bit of the fiduciary side of that,
from his side of the table, and I'll just step aside.
Thank you, Sharon. Thank you, mister mayor.
In accounting for construction projects, it's a it's a fairly complicated area under generally accepted accounting principles,
which we have to follow as a as a as a city.
Your your percentage of completion is measured basically by the input method, whether input is time
or dollars.
So in this case, probably the most meaningful measure is the amount of time it takes to complete the project and the high value time of design
and review and and designing and printing plans, all that. That takes place upfront as a big piece of the load.
But relative to the huge amount of materials that you buy for the park, it's not a lot of dollars.
So generally accepted accounting principles do not allow you to front load your spend with materials
and then consider that in the completion process.
That just becomes inventory that could wind up stale, obsolete,
or spoiled.
So you're you're
not incented from an accounting perspective to buy those materials and let them sit in the yard
and count towards your percentage of completion.
So there's a It's
best practices. Is it is it also a legal issue from an accounting perspective? It's a compliance issue under accounting. And if you if you you have to pick a method that's
most appropriate for your project. And if you don't do that, you violate accounting principles, and we would literally get an adverse audit opinion if it were material
Thank you. Which is pretty much the worst thing you can get in our capital markets. Thanks so much. Alright. Sorry. Let me let me let me keep sharing going though. One second, Alan. I'm gonna just keep sharing because this is are we gonna get can I ask a question to you guys?
So I've seen nice clean spreadsheets, $107,800,000
with all the projects, like, very simple.
Do we have something like that that is that on there? Because this is project by project by project, which is cool. Right? I'm dialed down to it. But I I think Jerry's question was, hey, man. You got a $107,800,000.
You got general obligation bonds from the you know, the residents voted on 74.5%
and gave you a $107,800,000
for parks and rec. There's a $107,000,000
projects. Where's that money?
Can we show a $107,800,000
where all the projects are? We are certainly tracking that, and we can,
prepare it in such a way that we can make it available. Yeah. Let's make that let's work on that so that I think that's a very reasonable
request
because I like that you're gonna show it project by project. I like that you're showing the status of the project. But the aggregate was the question. That's a fair question. Hey. I gave you a $107,800,000.
Tell me where that's going. That's fair.
I might be on the previous page, but we just need to bring it clear
to go back. Is that where it is? That's That could be wrong. Yeah. You usually are. So, you know, I'm not wrong. The
front Yes. We you're you're looking at that, which is the sum of funds spent, sum of funds remaining,
which is We want something a little more specific. But this is pretty good, but a little more specific. But this is pretty good. This is your total bond front bonds with a 179.6.
So it could be a little confusing because you've got
public safety in here along with,
parks and rec along with the parking deck. And it's tranche one. In tranche one. Correct. Yep. Correct. And to your point on the left hand side, it shows eight park and rec projects, four public safety projects, and, of course, the one parking deck project.
So yeah.
And this tranche one budget.
Sorry, Sharon. Forgive me. Oh, not at all. I also wanted to show you an example of a different project. If you go to Roswellerie Park, Jeff
so here you see that we have a subprojects that are that are shown here. We've got the athletic fields, two different athletic fields. We've got the pond embankment project,
and the total allocated for Roswell Area Park
is that 14,800,000.0.
The projects that are listed in those subcomponents
do not total up to the $148,800,000.0.
There are additional projects that are gonna be done at Roswell Area Park,
and that is why sometimes we get the question, hey. I'm confused.
You have 14,800,000.0.
I don't understand how that ties back to these sub projects. So I just wanted to make that clear as well. The, the two athletic fields are complete already,
the two sub projects there that that Jeff is clicking on, and there's some information about those in the text below.
And then in the Pond Embankment,
we're just, we just authorized that. That's about 2 and a half million dollars right there.
And you can see that the, information about where we are in the process updates as well as as far as that it's gonna be starting in the '25
and complete in the 2026.
And this is, roswellgov.com//bond.
Correct? Bond. Yes. And if I go to the roswellgov.com
website, can I just type in bond in the in the search bar? That's what I typically do. K. And it quickly takes you to the So if I wanna find this, that the place I go is just roswaldgov.com
and just put bond in the search bar. Exactly. Okay. Exactly.
And like you said, mayor, we're gonna provide you with our monthly update at your, Wednesday workshop, which is something we're doing in internally for all of our projects.
We we do a a project management steering committee, and we'll provide those updates to you on Wednesday. So Bill, Adam, and Don, do we have the ability to kind of give I know you're doing a budget workshop on f y twenty six.
I would love for you if you could do a presentation on the bonds. You can take a little snippet of time, put it out there, give some clarity, I think, to Jerry's questions. I think those are reasonable questions. And I think
us being providing clear answers
very very clearly
because this is great, but could be a little confusing.
Right? So
the simple question is where where's my $107,800,000
going? Right?
Thank you. I think we can do that. Thank you.
Mayor Wood asked another question. What was
yes. Council member sales.
Bill, before you step away, I believe that the blue part is the actual disbursed funds. Is that a fair statement?
Yes. Okay. So
so to your point, the the, the green bar at the top is on a calendar basis
and
the money spent is on a cash basis and that front loading of time is is in the design phase. It's on it's it's on a
hours budget,
time budget. Not count well,
not a traditional calendar day by day, but It's Kronos. We expect it to take eight thousand hours. We're hours. We're four thousand eight hundred hours and something like that. Right. Fair enough. Thank you. Those are just a couple of example numbers. I don't know what those actual on this one represent. And then, I'm almost I don't
feel like
The only thing I'd say is what we what we did apologize for, what we are part apologizing for is the communication. And I think I think everybody on this dias apologize for the lack of communication.
We aren't apologizing,
at least speaking for myself, for the project.
I think, you know, I think that that and that probably upset some people. But I Jared, if I knew what to apologize for, I'd apologize for it. Like, what do you want me to apologize for? The fact that the project happened.
To Ellen's point, like, it's the right project for the city. It's the right project for these properties. It's the right project.
I'm not nobody's happy trees went down.
Nobody jumps up for joy. Oh my gosh. Beautiful
specimen trees and
Jeff's not happy about it. Dina's not happy about it. Steve's not happy about it.
But it's gonna work out in the long run. It's gonna be good for the city. It's gonna be good for that property. It's gonna be good for the other story properties. Nobody jumps up for joy that the trees are down.
And but
if that's what you want me to say, Hey, I'm sorry trees got cut down. Is that what you want me to say, I'm sorry for trees got cut down? Well, I think when y'all came into the office, so May, we talked about this. It was like, The project
to Sarah May, that project was gonna happen because it was the right thing for the city. And so the experts on our side of the equation made the determination,
this is how it needs to happen.
And I don't think they were reckless.
And so I don't know how to charge
go against the charge. Jerry makes an interesting point. We'll bring in a third party. At some point, when do you like,
look, this government's pretty introspective.
And interestingly enough, they do admit when they're wrong internally a lot.
Like, everybody in this I'm telling you, there's a lot of internal
honesty that goes on inside of this conversation. And we talked about this with Mo Milosa a lot. Tell me if we made some errors.
Right? Like, let's be honest with ourselves hard and fast. And I would say, look, continue to keep the doors of communication open. But I don't think Alan, I'm afraid. Like, Jerry, if I knew what to say I was sorry for, I promise you I'd say I'm sorry.
I'm you know, and I I don't know what to say sorry for.
And that's I think that's a that's a loggerhead. Yes, sir. Councilor Gibson. Just a couple of other it is
somewhat ironic
that,
the the people inside this building have been very, very clear that we followed oil, that we,
follow the law. And yet when the question is put back on regarding the,
pension,
he defers to the experts and blames them for the debt problem. And so I found that quite ironic.
Well, it's funny. I will take accountability. As you know, as the leader of the city elected leader of the city,
I take responsibility for damn near everything. And I will. It's my job.
Good, bad, or indifferent. And that's why,
honestly, mister Knight knows this.
I'm a serious operator,
and,
it's my job to know what's going on. It's my job to make sure that we're heading in the right direction. It's my job job to make sure the council's informed. And council knows how many times I've screwed up. Sarah.
Right? Not informing you on something
not informing you on something and it blows up, and I have to say, man, I screwed up. I didn't inform you. Because it is my job.
It is my job. Anyway, thank you, and I appreciate your comments, mayor Wood. Next speak Nancy, next speaker.
Gus Haydorn.
Mister Haydorn. Gus, welcome.
I think I know what you're gonna talk about.
Mayor and council. Welcome, sir.
I appreciate very much the service of
the leadership, and I appreciate very much the service of
all the people that work for the city. I know the job is
challenging.
I think
well, and I would also like to say thanks to Christine
and Will and Sarah
for your response to what happened at Mimosa.
I believe that civic engagement
is the heartbeat of democracy, but unfortunately,
there are people on
in the leadership
that do not see it that way.
And that kinda gets at the heart of what went wrong here.
I served on the board of Mimosa for eight years.
I love that place.
At this point, it's really hard for me to go back there.
The assault
on the natural environment, the assault on the beauty,
the assault on the history
was
staggering,
and still is, and will resonate with those of us that were close to that
project
for a long time.
I think the core of the issue
is
that you folks operated
in a silo,
and there was a lack of respect
for the public.
You chose an idea
that seemed to make sense financially,
but it didn't take into
the equation
the beauty and the natural world and and and the history.
One of you know, we worked the board,
we worked very closely with the city
on developing the improvements on the house,
and that was quite cordial.
Everybody on that board, as you know,
is an unpaid
member.
And there were some
wonderful people on that board, and still are.
I'm no longer affiliated with it.
But we ask many times
to be at the table when the decisions
were to be made
on the site development.
We've been working on that for years.
We had a lot of ideas that we had discussed
endlessly.
We had plans.
It's not like Mr. Leatherman's plan was the only plan that was out there. You just didn't want to hear it.
So I respect your work,
but I expect you
to respect
the citizens
to seek our input
because there's enough work out there for all of us to do.
Thank thank you, Gus. Thank you for your comments. Thank you, sir.
Gus, do you wanna any questions or just you you want any response from us?
Thank you, sir.
Nancy,
next speaker, please. Yes. The final speaker is Lucia Frazier.
Thank you, ma'am.
Welcome, Lucia.
Evening, everybody.
I didn't know open mic night goes so late.
I was just remembering the days when it was just Palermo and Zapata speaking, the voice of the residents.
Those were hard times for us.
I talked to a lot of people in Roswell, and we all basically want the same thing.
Pretty much the number one thing is low density.
So
we appreciate you guys for that. That's why we put you in,
and now we have a wonderful council
that's doing projects that support resident wallets,
when previous councils only supported developer wallets.
We finally have a council creating projects meaningful to residents.
So of course, we're gonna have differences of opinion now
among the residents as this is navigated.
I am so thankful that we finally have this meaningful interaction with the council.
The alternative to this council is so much worse.
Without this council, I don't think there would be a mimosa left.
It would be condemned and unused.
Any other council would just let developers have their way with it. This council is actually showing that historical preservation is a priority.
I'm the biggest supporter of maintaining green space, and even if I don't agree with every detail of a project, I would still support this council
over anyone else.
It's on me to look at what the city is doing. This council doesn't need to babysit me.
My fellow Roswell friends that are here worried about Mimosa or anything else,
remember that we stood together to get this council elected and to get this wonderful interaction.
Stand with me again,
and let's continue this wonderful participation.
Thank you. Thank you, Lucia.
Nancy, are there any other speakers for this evening?
There are no other speakers.
Thank you very much. Well, council, everyone who came, thank you so much. Thank you for being part of the conversation and for your continued improvement in making the city of Roswell
the number one family community in America. Thank you so much. The open forum of 09/29/2025
is adjourned. Thank you.
And I gotta go to the restroom. Bad