Committees of Council Meeting

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Are you ready?

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Alright.

Well, good evening, and everyone, and welcome to the committee meetings for 10/28/2025.

Our elected body, American Council President, Mayor Curt Wilson,

council member Christine Hall,

council member Alan Sells,

council member David Johnson,

council member Sarah Beeson, council member Glee Hills,

council member William Morthland. I am Randy Knighton, the chief administrative officer along with chief legal counsel,

David Davidson,

and also Michelle Miller who is the,

deputy city clerk and,

executive assistant to the council.

The purpose of committee meetings are for city departments to convey information to the mayor and city council and discuss initiatives listed on the published agenda,

as well as this as well as provide updates of vital information

essential to the operation of city government. And by ordinance, the committee consists of the elected body as well as the city administrator who serves as chair of the meetings.

This is a public meeting, but not a public hearing. And therefore, while we certainly welcome

members of the public,

here this evening, we do not normally take public comments or questions during these meetings unless specifically authorized by mayor and council.

Public comments and questions are received on the second and fourth

Monday of each month in the regular city council meetings as well as the fifth Monday in open forum. And we do encourage residents to reach out to

our city departments

and engage our online platforms. If you have any questions, if you would like to report a concern,

We also,

direct you to the web service portal of the city of Roswell.

And also view roswell365.com

for a calendar

of events,

and, we'll

we will alter our normal protocol for just a moment.

Want to,

turn this over for just a moment to council member William Morflin. We have a very special group here with us tonight,

and we want to ensure that they are not acknowledged

and recognized.

Council member Morphy.

Thank you. We are joined tonight

by troop four thirty one and four thirty two out of the

RUMC

here in in the city of Roswell.

They are sitting on the back row back here and working on their citizenship in the community merit badge.

Alright. So I encourage our, council members and mayor to be on our best behavior as we are setting the highest standard of professionalism.

Alright. Thank you very much and certainly, we, extend a very hearty welcome to you all, here this evening,

and participating in our committee meeting and, certainly would, also,

advise and or encourage you to watch our

three and a half hour meeting last how about four hour meeting last night?

Four four hour meeting last night.

Our mayor and council meeting last night, that lasted till about 11:15

ish or so.

But there were a number of items on last night's agenda that are really transformative

for the city of Roswell. And in all seriousness,

if you do get an opportunity, you can certainly, gain a great deal of understanding of city government operations

and

the numerous initiatives

moved forward,

last night by this mayor and council and the grand vision that the city has for advancing

Roswell forward. So we certainly encourage you to take a look at, last night's meeting.

The first item on the agenda for this evening

are are the minutes for the 10/14/2025

committee meetings.

Excuse me.

Do we have a motion?

Motion by council member Hill, second by council member Johnson. Any further discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor?

Right. Passes unanimously. Thank you very much.

Item number two is listed on our regular agenda. Consideration for the mayor and or city administrator to approve the contract authorization

with Garland DBS

in the amount of $2,412,263

for the replacement of the existing roof at the Crabapple Center

With a total budget allocation of $2,653,489.3

That will be presented by Stephen Malone, the director of recreation parks, historic and cultural affairs.

Mr Malone. Good evening. Thank you, Mayor and council. This project

remains an integral part of the phased plan.

That we have implemented for the Crabapple Center. This enables

our teams to address several specific program

expansion needs across gymnastics,

performing arts and athletics.

Within the last four years,

we've experienced

almost 21%

growth in our gymnastics

participation

and about 80%

increase in participation in our performing arts enrollment.

That's over the last four years coming out of Covid.

So that just underscores the demand and importance of these planned facility improvements

as we look at it as a holistic

approach.

You'll notice I showed this slide last night as we talked about the pickleball court improvements at the Crabapple Center. You'll notice that we've completed phase one. We're moving into phase two in the top two items. There are the pickleball courts and this roof replacement request

that we'll be presenting to you tonight.

The Crabapple Center

is home currently to recreation parks programming. It's approximately 127,000

square feet.

The roof replacement safeguards the city's investment long term as well as aligns with our approach with the 2020

Bond Parks improvement

to modernize and protect all city assets and infrastructure.

We've had

several different assessments

performed by third party,

contractors.

What we've determined is that currently,

there are over a 100 active leaks in the roof system at the Crabapple Center.

You'll notice that's actually not chickenpox on there. That's actually areas where they're

identifying active leaks currently.

The assessment of the findings is that there is significant moisture penetration within the facility itself.

You'll notice

identified deficiencies

and a lot of the specific areas age and minimal loss

indicate widespread system failure,

leaking, flashing, saturated insulation, falling gutters, and

there's for sure potential mold and structural concerns if we don't address some of these now.

Our recommended solution is that we replace the current sections of the roof, which are sections B, C and D and l identified those for you in a moment with a modified

Puterman system, which is an asphalt based roofing material for a low slope or flat roof.

That is reinforced

with polymers and fiberglass,

which creates a durable and flexible waterproof membrane.

These systems are installed in two or more layers to provide excellent what weather resistant and strength.

The modified

butamen roofs are known for their long lifespan.

Twenty to twenty five years or more can handle heavy foot traffic, making them a popular choice for a lot of commercial industrial buildings.

This also includes

insulation upgrades

and improved drainage around the structure.

I mentioned to you that this specifically

identifies

areas b, c, and d on the roof structure.

You'll notice I left out a. A is identified

on this as the roof,

this long roof, which is relatively

new with not very many active leaks. We believe we can manage this internally.

It's the sections b, c, and d that are significantly

aged and need the most amount of focus.

The intended outcomes are are pretty obvious. You'll see that this eliminates all the leaks and prevents future water intrusion.

This allows us to also get into other spaces within the facility that we can ensure

safe and weatherproofing so that we don't go in and do any more upgrades within the structure and then end up with a roof leak within one of those renovated areas.

This improves the energy efficiency and drainage performance. It extends the facility life and reduces maintenance costs long term.

It supports

the uninterrupted city programming that we would look for and specifically as it relates to the performing arts expansion.

The financial overview. The total budget allocation is 2,600,000.0.

That includes a 10% contingency. The contract authorization with Garland

would be for 2,400,000.0.

This is done through the bond funded programs.

Here's the projected timeline.

You'll notice that these dates specifically align with and would run parallel to the installation of the pickleball courts on-site.

So we would potentially go under contract December 1 with the project completion

estimated for April

2026.

Happy to entertain any questions. Thank you, Mr Malone.

Any questions? Comments from Mayor and council? Yes. Council member Beeson.

Given the water intrusion, was there any significant mold damage that we need to remediate?

There's no mold that we are actively looking at. That would need significant remediation. However, the longer that persists,

there's an unknown factor to that if it's not addressed. So if we get rid of the water source, then it'll remediate itself. And then,

remind me what year was the school built?

Does anybody remember?

Pre nineteen eighty?

Oh, that's right at the line. I would assume the school probably provided a HERO reports to us, which are asbestos reports, since it's, like, usually 1980 is the questionable year.

Something I would just recommend providing to the contractor because there's a lot of times asbestos in roofing, especially with the,

asphalt that they use for roofing tops. So just throwing that out there, that's something we might wanna be able to provide the contractor with. Okay. Thank

you. Alright. Yes. Council member Hall.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation.

The section that was a, is that that's just that overhang that, where the bus stops are? It's actually on the field side. If you'll notice, you can see on the lower end. Here is actually the tennis courts that we talked about last night. Okay. This is actually the bus lane on this side. This is actually a late addition to what we can tell would be a, add on to the Crabapple Center. This is actually a long hallway

that runs along parallel to this is the field side.

It's just it's very it's much newer. You can tell it's been replaced,

much earlier than the remainder of b, c, and d. Okay. Thank you. Council member Hills.

Thank you, mister Knighton.

I know we've talked about other uses in the Crabapple Center potentially.

It's not in stone yet. Adaptive use for some of our special needs populations,

which would probably be at that bus lane, maybe. And then other possible

uses for, like, woodworking,

shop,

trade type, building type? Those areas,

you guys have already looked at whether or not we need to pop up or do anything with the roof. Right? That's so roofing now is okay and doesn't impede any plans that we have scratched out, not formal yet, but for those uses or others, correct? That's correct. Everything that we're recommending for replacement would absolutely encompass all the areas that we would be looking at for

recognized expansion and potential future expansions into that space. Perfect. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Any further questions or comments pertaining to this item?

Alright. Seeing none, we'll entertain a motion to move this forward. Motion by Council Member Morflin, second by Council Member Hills. Any further discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor? Alright. That passes unanimously and we'll move forward to the next mayor and council meeting. Thank you very much.

Item number three is listed on the agenda.

Consideration for the mayor and or city administrator to approve the contract authorization with

Musco Sports Lighting LLC utilizing the Sourcewell contract 041123MSL

in the amount of $3,658,500

for the LED light conversion

for athletic fields and racket courts with a total budget allocation

of $4,207,275

Mr. Malone. Thank you. This is another exciting project that we are thankful to be able to bring to you tonight.

This project will modern modernize

our aging metal hat. How wide

systems with LED lights. This is system wide.

This will replace six ninety nine fixtures on 167 poles with the

fixtures on 167

poles

with the exception

of Hembree Park and Grimes Bridge. I'll explain the Grimes Bridge component in just a moment. Hembree Park, the reason we are not considering that park for this upgrade is because we recognize that in 2026,

we will be doing a substantial

redesign of that park.

So we did not want to go in and potentially

change out light fixtures that could potentially be removed or moved in general prior to us going through Hembree Park redesign

design process.

You'll notice that this is a 2022

parks bond fund program.

To give you a little background, I mentioned Grimes Bridge Park. Grimes Bridge Park was actually used as a pilot program in 2021

where we worked in partnership with our Roswell soccer club to install

the same Musco

lighting and the controlling

package

at the Grimes Bridge soccer fields.

The result in the last four, four and a half years of operations of those LED lights, we've had zero complaints,

zero maintenance cost, and it is significantly helped us reduce our staff hours via remote scheduling

option again the control link and I'll get into that in a minute.

Some of the key benefits

from the L E D package that we're putting forward effectively reduces

energy efficiency by over 50%

The annual

energy savings that we are recognizing would be $36,000

annually.

The control link option, which is the remote

control

related to these lights, meaning being able to turn them on and off remotely,

provides an option for reduction

in our staffing by almost 25%

for part time

support in the evenings that equates to about $42,000

annually,

as well as the infrastructure impact. It lowers the electrical load and extends equipment life for existing infrastructure.

To tell you a little bit about the technology and the control, it is the Musco TLC LED

with the control link package.

It features remote scheduling, dimming, automatic monitoring, and 247365

a year support.

That is at no extra cost to the city.

The warranty that we were able to negotiate with Moscow provides a fifteen year comprehensive

coverage. That's materials and labor that effectively means for fifteen years, we will not have to manage any problems with this system.

This gives you a ten year review of those annual cost savings.

Ten years of energy savings is approximately 300 and 61 thousand and ten years in staff efficiency

gains, 400 and twenty thousand and ten years of maintenance savings, which it costs us about $55,000

a year to maintain the metal halide lights currently

from a materials and labor cost. That gives you a total return on investment at about a ten year mark of just over $1,300,000

This gives you the financial overview for this project. The total budget allocation would be 4,100,000.0

that includes 15%

contingency

costs.

The contract authorization would be for 3,600,000.0.

Funding sources the bond,

to 2,002

thousand 22 bond.

And

just to give you a little bit of background,

we had originally scheduled these upgrades

independently

within each individual park.

That was originally estimated at a $5,100,000

cost within the bond items and then in the priority list.

By combining them into a single project,

we potentially will save approximately

$1,000,000

in bond

funding that will go back into question two that we'll be able to do because we're doing all of this at one time,

with one contractor.

The timeline

estimated contract signing December 1.

Potential construction begins January. This would be a

fixtures would be installed by August

2026.

Happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. Mr Malone. Council member, Northland.

Director Malone,

during our review of this process,

you had, you'd informed us that the general warranty is a ten year, but you were able to negotiate a fifteen year warranty on this. So generally speaking with Musco,

they wanna come in and install the pole,

the lights,

and the control link all as one package.

And what that generally will obligate us to is if we go with the pole, the light fixture, and the control link package, they'll guarantee a twenty five year warranty.

Well, the majority of our light poles have already been converted from the wooden

structures to the concrete poles over several years. So we don't need the concrete poles to be replaced.

We just need the fixtures.

And typically speaking with just the fixtures, they only wanted to warranty about a ten year warranty. We negotiated

to a fifteen year. That's fantastic.

And the the IT that's related to this

is is part of this package, and we never have to worry about ten years, fifteen years down the road

repurchasing

that IT piece. That's correct. For fifteen years, it will provide a monitoring service seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days. In fact, their monitoring system generally will get ahead of us somewhat.

They'll be able to identify a light outage most likely before we would, and they would go ahead and schedule it and notify us of when they would be coming out to do the replacement.

Well, I can't tell you how thrilled I am not to be receiving phone calls and emails

about lights not being on at fields. So this is great. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Visa.

Two questions.

Could you clarify

why the Hembree Park fields are not included on that one? Sure. So Hembree Park is going through a complete remodel in 2026.

We wanted to leave that

option open in case poles needed to be removed. Okay. If we needed to move poles around at that time, we could the plan with the redesign at Hembree Park will be to upgrade those lights with the LED package as part of that construction

Hembree. So we just wanted to package that as one construction project,

not get in there and do the LEDs now where we might potentially have to remove something, move something, and it just wouldn't fit within the new redesign. Makes sense.

And then is there a reason why Sweet Apple Ballpark fields do not have lighting?

The Sweet Apple,

field lights currently are owned by Fulton County School Board,

not city property. Okay. So we just use those, but because of that, we can't control if there's lighting. We have a current,

intergovernmental

agreement with Fulton County that allows the usage of those fields, but they're not technically city owned property. Got it. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you. Any further questions or comments pertaining to this item?

Seeing none, we'll entertain a motion. Motion by council member, Northland. Second by council member, Beeson. Any further discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor? Alright. That passes unanimously, and we'll move forward as well.

Item number four,

consideration for the mayor and or the city administrator to award a contract Precision Turf

LLC

for the Grimes Bridge Soccer Fields construction project in an amount of 3564032¢

in project budget authorization

of $3,989,870.32.

And for this item, we have several of our team members here. If you would, for the record and for the audience,

would you introduce yourselves, please?

Well, since Steven's already had a lot of the mic time, Brian Watson, Director of Environmental Public Works and overseeing the CIP,

Division. Okay.

Corinne Valentine,

deputy director, environmental public works. Alright. Thank you.

Alright. Mister Malone. I'll kick this off tonight, but I will tell you I am extremely grateful

to have our partners

in the CIP,

team collaborating

together with us on this project specifically.

They are one of the best partners we have within the city to ensure that our projects are moving on time, on budget,

and are very,

helpful in all of our stormwater management.

Challenges.

Alright. Thank you.

The project overview.

It this is regarding Grimes Bridge.

This is the

recommendation to convert the two existing natural grass soccer fields to artificial turf.

This would remove and replace the retaining wall that currently separates

the upper and the lower fields,

as well as replace all the fencing and the netting around those fields.

Part of this project

has several stormwater

best management practices and a rehabilitation

of the existing

detention pond that is on-site.

This would be part of the 2022,

bond priority list.

To give you a little background on the projects, the field would these fields specifically were built in the early two thousands

on the native soil in that area.

While we've gotten better at the natural grass that has been there over the and improved it over the last five years,

it's still consistently sees significant amount of rain outs throughout the year.

The fields are typically closed from December and January and June through August.

This gives our teams opportunities to get in and do reparative maintenance

to get these fields up and running for the general

other what I'll call eighty nine months out of the season.

The key benefits

of adding this to the artificial turf fields is it provides

a ten year,

lifespan

with proper maintenance that gives us ten years with this product.

It provides twenty nine hours per week from February to November and approximate staff time savings. That's cutting,

edging,

painting,

everything else that goes into maintaining those fields. It provides a full size artificial turf field, which is one of the requirements for the league that we affiliate, which is which is the development of Players League. That's the home of all of our competitive soccer teams.

Expands the field usage.

We'll be able to to line more fields onto this space, which provides expanded program use year round.

The turf specifics.

It's a hybrid three layer turf system. This is very similar to the turf that we just replaced on Roswell Area Park, East Roswell and Grove Way.

This product provides an eight year warranty on the artificial turf itself.

This gives you an overview of the two fields. Specifically,

you'll notice that this is adjacent

to the Roswell

Adult Recreation Center.

We will be able to continue to maintain activities and access

to the adult recreation center with no disruption during construction.

There will be a few parking spaces adjacent to the fields

that will have to shut down, that will not be accessible

to the public, but those will primarily be the parking spaces that are right here along the field edge due to construction and lay down area.

There will be a temporary one way in and one way out for vehicular traffic through Grimes Bridge and the Groveway Parks during this construction, which we will be able to manage accordingly.

This starts to show an overview of the project scope, including the two new turf fields, the new retaining wall that runs through, as well as the

stormwater

enhancements

that will be made adjacent

to the field near the parking lot.

We will be doing some cleanup within the detention pond that is currently on-site.

That will involve,

the removal of approximately

95 trees that have, volunteered trees that have grown

and are starting to impact

that detention pond.

We do have 28 trees coming back for replacement

at the end of this project.

I'll turn it over now, to Miss Corrine, who can take us through our procurement process.

Alright.

So just a little background. I joined the city three months ago as part of the CIP team, the Capital Improvement Program team. So I've been working with the great Recreation and Parks department,

just on this as this project moves to construction.

This is not the only project that we've been working on together, but this is the first project that we are bringing to you as a team. So

there's,

some background information on the procurement process. We did put it out to bid in September. We got bids back in October. We have three successful bids.

We we really did actually. They were within

9%

of each other. And so I think that's a really good sign that the project,

was designed well and all the risk were considered. And so we, we had three

bids come in. The lowest bidder is Precision Turf LLC. They were the lowest response responsible

responsive responsible bidder,

and,

we recommend awarding it to them. We also are requesting

the the remaining 425,

thousand 316

funds to go towards construction admin and contingency.

And that leaves us with 11%

contingency.

And,

so one one risk we had kinda been concerned with with this project was

soils because there has been issues there and there is rock in that area. So one way we have,

I should say the team has mitigated this, is instead of

planning on much digging, the soils were built up or the turf.

And I I

I believe it shows in the bids that they they contractors

aren't concerned with risk. So,

anyway,

good project. We're excited about moving forward with it.

Moving forward,

we are bringing you to the council today

and

hope to have

a contract signed in December, which would start as construction January.

We have a construction duration of two hundred and fifty days, which is just over eight months, which will get us finished up by August

and get the soccer season started in time for fall. And I think that that's a perfect segue that will lead us right into our fall twenty twenty six season, which will allow us to get our programs back on that field as quickly as possible.

I think the other really,

interesting fact that comes along with this project upgrade with the soccer fields is that this will be concluding right in and around,

the World Cup ATL that will be taking place in June 15 through 07/15/2026.

So this soccer field improvement

will be coming to a conclusion right about the same time that the World Cup will be here in Atlanta, which I think is really cool for our teams.

Alright. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you all very much. Council member Hills, and then we'll be at peace. Council member. Thank you. I believe I remember that those fields are being brought up to I've forgotten the name of the league. League standard size? DPL. DPL.

You're right. Yep. It's right here. It's our development players league. Perfect.

You mentioned closing off the parking closest to the fields. Is that just during construction and those will be

reintroduced after the fields are opened back up? Correct. There's no there's no reconfiguration

of the parking. We just need to utilize those parking spaces closest to the field side to stage material

and stuff related to that. I was making sure it wasn't the expansion, which I'm for the expansion to the right side. The parking lot will remain exactly as is at the conclusion. There will also be a water quality feature that's going to be on the

east side of the the park to to mitigate and actually do the stormwater improvements.

We are utilizing

there's gonna be some on that, but we're utilizing some of that area too so that we don't have to have construction elsewhere.

Yep. Thank you. Council member Beeson.

I got questions.

Okay.

My I would say baby, but he'd be mortified if you heard me call him that. My oldest baby plays in the u ten league.

He does not play the u ten league. That would be weird.

My oldest plays in the u ten league on these fields.

He he dominates. So

I am very familiar with these fields, sit there quite often.

In terms of those,

the parking spaces that you were talking about,

I assume that the whole entire field is going to be closed off during the spring season. So where will those

games be rerouted to? So we we will be working with our program staff to make sure that that we will be able to the great thing about the Sweet Apple Soccer Fields is we're able to realign those in any different configuration that we need. So that's part of the plan in the the while these fields come offline for us, we'll be able to expand the some of the programming out there. The challenge with the Sweet Apple Fields still in that capacity while we're doing those,

interim games is it's still a natural turf. So it's still going to have the, you know, rainouts and the makeups and the things that go along with it, but that's a manageable

option we can take while we're under construction with these two fields. I love a natural turf field. That's one of the things I liked about this. I don't have to shake 5,000 pebbles out of my child's cleats when I put him in my van,

like we do with my younger Grime's bread or the other fields at Groveway.

That begs the question too, since this is a different product than we previously used, do we have any product letters from the vendor on it being PFO p phosphory?

Yes. We do. So it's been third party inspected? Yes. So this is these are the same materials that we have utilized at the other,

turf replacements that we've already done as far as far as the bomb program is concerned. Got it. And so is I assume this is gonna use a rubber crumb infill? Correct. Is that going to be retire

recycled tire

crumb infill? Yes.

Okay. Is there any way we could source that differently just because there have been several studies on the crumb infill possibly having heavy metals in them,

just because of tire usage?

So something we might want to look into.

Also, I know that some of the products we previously looked at, it was supposed to mitigate the temperature impacts.

It feels like you're on the surface of the sun. When there is no shade out there, there's no shade out there.

So is there

the way that this is designed, is it the cool field that we've looked at before or is this different? So this so we have,

we did do one of our fields in the cool tech. Yes. You know, that that basically,

that marketing material associated with that product,

explains that it lowers the temperature of the surface of the field. When we actually installed that field and we actually started doing some of our on field testing,

what we noticed is it was about a degree or two

that was a change in factors between the fields that had the cool tech on it and the fields that did not. And after that, we made that initial kind of evaluation

for the dollar associated with the cool tech, it did not seem to be,

providing an adequate return on investment. That's fair. Do we do any comparisons to the

natural grass fields?

Natural grass fields are always going to be significantly lower in your heat for sure. Got it. And there's no way that we would be

significantly lower in your heat for sure. Got it. And there's no way that we would be able to engineer this field to just have better drainage with natural grass?

Is turf the only option? I realize that you said that the league requires a turf field, but we also have

three turf fields adjacent to it. None of those fields would be adequate for this league? That's correct. So currently, there are no full field sized natural turf fields within Roswell.

We do not have a For artificial turf? We I'm sorry. We do not have a

full sized

artificial turf field within our facilities here in Roswell. Got it. And that's a requirement. That's a requirement. We've been able to work under an exception and waiver

with the DPL lead currently because they knew we were working on this option. Got it. Because it's temporary. Understood. That's helpful. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you.

Yes. Council member of Northland.

This is going to, match the other fields that we've done when it comes to the branding and logo as well?

Yes. We would take the same approach as far as the marketing and the logo and everything on the field. That's highly important to the mayor, so we wanted to make sure we got that answered.

Alright. Alright.

Council member Beeson oh, I'm sorry. Council member Moreland, will you finish will you finish, sir? Oh, yeah. Okay. Council member, Beeson. Council member Beeson. One last question.

After the remodel of this field to convert it to artificial turf, do we have any remaining soccer fields in the city of Roswell that would be maintained as natural

grass fields? Yes. Woodstock

Sweet and sweet apple would remain

natural grass. Got it. Okay. And so there's no goals for conversion on that one? That's correct. Understood. Thank you. Alright.

Thank you.

Any further questions or comments regarding this item?

Seeing none, we'll entertain a motion. Motion by council member Morflin, second by council member Johnson. Any further discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor?

Alright.

Thank you all very much.

The last item is listed on

is that the last time? Oh, the second to last

time.

We don't want to

prevent Mr. Stevens

from coming forward.

The next item, item number five is consideration of a resolution to adopt,

TAD, that's Tax Allocation District policies

and procedures and establish a Tax Allocation District Advisory Committee

or TAD, TAD number one, Roswell East West Connection TAD. Mister Connolly.

Good evening, mister mayor and members of council. Tonight, we're talking about the Roswell East West Connection

tax allegation district, also known as TAD Number 1.

These are proposed

policies and procedures,

that cover project evaluation,

funding and oversight.

Back in November 2024,

you all had established the Tax allocation district.

This is part of our economic development strategy, and this is one of several economic development tools that we established

or are establishing.

This particular slide is showing you the boundaries of the tax allocation district It includes,

several school six schools, three parts,

includes a full county library,

but it also has aging shopping centers,

shops that have vacancies. There's also some light in there.

And the mayor and council was you approved yourselves as the redevelopment

agent for the tax allocation division. What that means is that you have the authority to issue bonds if you want to. You also have the authority to approve

of how the funds are spent within the tax allocation district. At the time, we talked about

coming back to you with some formal policies and procedures, and that's what this is. And in your package is, 16 pages,

which has some some detail of those those policies.

The L L. Julie uses,

are defined by the Redevelopment Powers Act includes,

capital costs,

for construction renovation,

land grading, also professional services such as architectural

engineering fees and also real property assembly costs,

if you're

acquiring some property for redevelopment.

As we as we talked about, before, you could issue bonds and fund projects that way,

but

the funds are distributed on a reimbursement basis, so they would have to make,

incur those costs and then they they come back to us for, funding of those those costs ultimately.

You're approving for approving the funds or the spending of those funds

ahead of time, but then they would come back on a reimbursement basis.

This slide is showing a a tad advisory

committee. This is a proposed,

committee,

as we started,

thinking about and talking with the county and thinking about the school board application that we want to get them to participate in the TAD.

They are requiring

a TAD advisory committee to be established.

What this is showing is a five member

advisory committee. Three of the seats would be appointed by the city city council. You all,

one would be the,

the chair. It's a member of council.

You'd have two other members, somebody from the Roswell Development Authority and one from the Downtown Development Authority. Again, those three seats are appointed by,

mayor and council.

There's two other seats, Fulton County Schools in Fulton County.

They would be appointing their own

representative, to that particular

board advisory committee.

The roles essentially are

providing community input on planning design,

and implementation.

They would look they would also,

oversee projects and and tag bond allocations.

They would also monitor

progress

and recommend projects to the mayor and council.

We've established in these, policies and procedures,

a rigorous

project application process

where we'd have a pre application meeting with the

person or the company that is requesting funding. It would go through an economic development review,

initially, then they would make sure that it is, in alignment with the economic development strategy.

They would then file a formal application,

and and at that point, it would go to the TAD advisory committee for review.

We negotiate agreements and then it would ultimately go to mayor and council for

approval as the redevelopment agency.

We would keep you all advised as to where projects are in this particular pipeline,

but this is a project

process that we have established in the policies.

There are some guidelines

that are in there. So we would need to be consistent with

law and policy,

essentially the redevelopment powers law.

We would have to be in compliant with the TAD plan that you had established and approved.

We'll be looking at what is the fiscal impact,

the financial

need. There's

a thing called the but for test. So it's but for this funding would a project be feasible. So we'll be looking at that, looking at what the public benefit and return

would be for those projects.

This is a list of possible,

uses of funds,

could be for stormwater management, could be parks, open space,

could be for

educational facilities if we wanted to fund

a project that is on school property.

We have the ability to do that,

and there's also

other uses allowed by the Redevelopment Powers Act.

If a project is not feasible and you wanted to fund a project and make it feasible, you can finance or provide up to 15% of the project costs.

But there's a whole assortment of things that you can

spend money on within the tax allegation district.

The program and project eligibility requirements,

we thought about this a bit and we

we we landed on basically a minimum size of a million dollars,

unless there's a public purpose

or otherwise approved.

If it's a private property,

we're looking for that private entity to contribute at least 10% of the project cost. It's a public project that was waived

has to be within the TAD boundary.

The entity needs to control the property.

There has to be some financial necessity, and it needs to be compliant

and compliant with the economic development strategy

Applicants

would also need to demonstrate

that they have a financial need. So are there high development costs? Are there certain infrastructure requirements

such

as rebuilding some stormwater

or retainage?

Are there certain public amenities that we want to fund?

Or are the construction costs

high

and are there certain things that we want to accomplish in the redevelopment

plan?

In terms of project benefits, we want to make sure that the project supports the redevelopment goals associated

in the plan as well as the economic development strategy. Is it creating quality jobs?

Is it generating tax revenue

and reducing costs on the schools and the city?

In terms of the project evaluation,

we're going to run it through

a waiting criteria, looking at the developer's qualifications,

looking at the project readiness and looking at the project impact of that project.

In summary, this is essentially it's a framework for project evaluation,

funding and oversight.

We are asking council to approve

a resolution

that's adopting the tax allocation district policies, but also establishing the tax element allocation district advisory committee for this particular time.

Alright. To answer any questions you have. Thank you, mister Connolly. Council member Hall.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation.

How does this

compare to other,

other cities or municipalities,

their TAP programs?

I just

I'm currently working with one in in outside of Tampa, and and it seems a lot less onerous

than than ours. And I'm just curious as to how

this compares.

So so when we started to develop the policies, we looked at some other cities. We looked at the Decatur. We looked at some of the tax allocation districts in the city of Atlanta.

And what is the criteria that they're using?

And so we have modeled

ours on on those tax allocation districts.

Council member Sells.

Hi. Hi. There it

is. Christine,

would you elucidate on what was onerous and what what, what you're seeing differently just a little bit, if you don't mind?

Just the the slide that had the the process,

like seven items that were going across from left to

right. This one.

Yeah. That one.

That that seemed a little bit onerous.

And,

based on my experience

and and perhaps maybe,

some of this is behind the scenes

where the applicant doesn't necessarily

see it all. Right. I mean, I just looked at that and I thought, woah,

seven,

six.

Right. So

the pre application meeting, we're essentially gonna be providing the applicant with the criteria and there will be a guidebook.

So we'll walk them through what is the process for getting a project funded.

The economic development review is essentially making sure that they're in alignment with the economic development strategy. And so we have,

those those frequent meetings to make sure that with the economic development team, just to make sure it's it's in alignment. That's before they spend

a significant amount of time putting an application together.

The in the middle where you have the formal application, that's really where it starts.

You know, that's the formal aspect of it, then it goes to the the review committee.

So in terms of review, it's really, you

the TAD advisory committee

and then mayor and council.

The other parts are

And then also the minimum, the $1,000,000

minimum. I guess

1,000,000 isn't much these days. But

So

I know that there there are some tabs like in the city of Atlanta that goes down to 500,000 because they're funding different types of things and maybe funding programs.

They may be funding a grant program.

So we we were toying with that. Do we do we

have it higher and make it, you know, for much larger catalytic projects,

or do we

make it a little bit little bit lower

for could be, you know, the school wants to do a parking lot. Just just an example.

Perhaps somebody wants to redevelop

a parcel

in our TAD and and part of that redevelopment, we know that we have stormwater issues and and

and perhaps,

they're going to spend half a million dollars to,

upgrade or improve the stormwater.

And in that case, that wouldn't be eligible. They wouldn't be eligible, but that would be a big benefit to us.

So that's

Yeah. You know, that's

a that's something that's

I think that's, you know, we're proposing a million dollars.

If If if mayor and council feels though it needs to be or should be lower,

you know, it's a that threshold is a

It's a discussion I'm asking for. Absolutely. Absolutely. Council member sales. I think I'm the bad actor on the million dollars if I recall.

Wasn't I? Wasn't I? I I believe that was me. Yeah.

I mean, it's it's the,

it's the birth pains to give birth to a mouse

question. And, so so that was

my view on that. It needed to be large enough to, to be worth

I'm sorry.

Some some of my investment analogies are a little tame. Oh, really?

So let's talk about the process just a little bit if we could. I was wondering, so the TAD advisory committee,

is that

is that a yes no gate? Is that an advisory gate?

In other words, that's that's one question. And the second question is, in regard to, like, the size and all that kind of stuff, we're talking about basically offering a bond. So there's a debt instrument here

that would be the funding source, and the cost

of offering on a $500,000

is hard. It just it really starts to get to the cost of capital questions. So that's part of the reason for that. But do you mind speaking to the what the TAD advisory committee's

authority level is? It is a it is a review committee. It doesn't it can

make a recommendation

to mayor and council.

You have the ultimate authority.

We would we can come and present and tell you, you know, what's coming through the the pipeline,

but they do not it is it is advisory.

Thank you. Mayor Wilson. Alan, two points.

Yeah. You were the only I thought we were well above a million. Dollars So I'm a little Yes, I think that was $1,000,000

I think I was well above $1,000,000

on this because it's about The right secret scissors. Exactly. It's about creating catalytic projects. Exactly. And that's the whole point of doing this. The point is not for microscopic projects, particularly at this juncture. The second part is is that just kinda to your point, is that the second bucket bucket, the city economic development review,

that's the business we've gotten into, as you know. That's the business really that the economic

team is doing, which is today. That's the choke point. Yep. Yep.

So by the time it gets to four,

she's already been solidified.

I just wanna make sure that Fulton County BOE was not Oh, I'm waiting for No. No. On our project. Exactly. Number two should be the yes, no. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

The the city economic development review,

you and the economic team are saying, yep. We got council's guidance on this. Right. Right? And it's good to go or, no, that's not gonna fly.

Yeah. So so To your point. I guess the four,

the city's already on board. Exactly.

Right. We it doesn't get to four unless city's on board. Right. It's Coalition Building in number four. That's right. And making sure that we've checked all our wells with the interested parties. And to your point, you're you're starting Coalition Building

at two. Right. What if the city's good with it, if the economic team's good with it Right. Then you go to Coalition Building before you get him get into formal application because why waste anybody's time? Right. My all time hero, Jeff Leatherman, today shared with us his, his new and improved

process

to summarize

Yes. Deal flow and to bring

specifically,

you know,

not only the economic development, but the impact on the community. There's there's other

intangibles that are important to the city as well

as early as possible in the process of the review of the deal. As I like to say, if the answer is no, I wanna get to know as quickly as possible. Let's contrast this to the past. So in the past, if you were to build this it's funny. I'm glad you brought this up. It'd have three Start at number five. It'd have three buckets.

It'd have three buckets.

Right?

It'd have an application,

then the review, and then the merit counsel. Right? And it would take forever, and it'd be one big giant cluster doo doo.

And

right? And then there'd be no alignment, no agreement,

and there'd be massive,

you know, mass massive disconnect, and then a bad deal be put together, and then it'd be brought to the maybe the council would have to vote on a bad deal. Right.

This deal is basically a number two bucket.

The deal formulation

really is starting there. Because by the time you get to five, you're at the fine points of the lawyers. Right? The two is really where you're saying, okay. We have a deal in concept. We understand it. Now let's get to see if this makes sense to us. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And that pre application meeting, I mean, that's

I I had one of those at 04:00 today.

So it's that there is an opportunity. We're talking to developers just like the one we,

the MOU that we approved last night. We we knew what

the real estate,

owner needed, and so we were that that's that's almost like,

a that's that is a that is a

evolution. It's not a meeting.

The the first step is ongoing for a number of projects at all times. That's right. Yeah. Exactly right. And the negotiation of terms are happening from bucket two,

really, all the way bucket five is the

it is the

it's defined it's the ten thousand hours of lawyer time wasting over the fine points. Yeah.

Sorry.

We're getting we're getting better at that, by the way. I I wanna

as part of the process,

we are defining the terms and term sheets, and that's part of the reason we're going through LOI,

MOU,

term sheet,

draft docs, final docs, and closing. That's the way deals get done and not,

you know, just Crunch. Vomiting the whole thing on the lawyer's desk and say make a deal out of this. So so we're being much more Daryl and Jeff,

and Joe,

sort of Joe.

Oh. Yeah.

You know, we're being much more we're being much more deliberate about making sure that we have thought through those things as a group. That's

what we are focused on and making sure that it's a deal that will close before

we take it to the market, which Bill so eloquently demonstrated

recently.

All right. Thank you all.

Any further questions or comments pertaining to this item?

Seeing none, we'll entertain I think no one wants to say something about branding again.

That's right.

We'll entertain a motion. Motion by Council Member Sells,

second by Council Member Johnson. Any further discussion?

Seeing none, all in favor? Alright. That passes unanimously as well. Thank you very much.

And prior to getting to

our last item, item number

item number six, excuse me.

Item number six. Thank you, ma'am.

Item number six is a quarterly management review third quarter twenty twenty five and 2025

top priorities presented by our chief operating officer, Don Stevens. I will,

for the benefit of the audience here and the viewing audience

mention that the financial

the the third quarter financial analysis was provided at yesterday evening's mayor and council meeting

as well as the economic development report, was provided at yesterday's mayor and council meeting. Certainly encourage anyone interested in those two items, to view,

last night's meeting.

The content was,

detailed

and speaks to the vision of economic development

and the fiscal

stewardship of the mayor and council and so certainly encourage you to

view those items.

Tonight Mr. Stevens will, focus on the management review and one particular item I believe,

that has relevance

for today

and for, residents and businesses,

here in the City Of Roswell. Mr. Stevens.

Thank you, mister Knighton. Counsel,

yeah, we have a scaled down version of the quarterly management review.

To mister Knighton's point,

we typically go through this is more like a quarterly board meeting is how we fashion this, And there's usually an overview of goals and objectives, priorities, operations dashboard. We covered that in great detail during the budget workshop. So we're not going to need to go through that. And then

to Mr Knight's point, the quarterly reviews for the financials and the economic development report recovered last night. So yes, tonight is a much scaled down version, much more scaled down version.

We're gonna cover high level,

kind of a COO's view of where we are through the third quarter. We'll touch on the mayor's top priorities.

And then as we usually do, we'll pick one of the or two of the priorities and go into a little detail. Senior vice president Jeff Leatherman will come up and talk about business and resident services and the launch of the ribbon cutting of that today, which is certainly timely as well. So you'll be glad to know, especially after last night, we've scaled this presentation down to just over a 100 slides.

So,

very encouraging.

Take your jacket off. But no.

Grateful to be here and always,

always look forward to presenting.

Yeah. An executive summary. Again, a little bit of a CEO's perspective.

You know, if you kind of go back to the genesis of these quarterly reports

or quarterly report out, I should say,

we really talked about this in the leadership planning conference back in January,

February, and it was a commitment to for the staff for myself to

get in front of you on a quarterly basis. And here's how we're doing. And in that in that meeting,

we rolled out a very,

what I would call a pretty aggressive,

list of strategic imperatives, goals and objectives ranging from everything from transformational economic development,

investing and maintaining infrastructure, best in class public safety,

service excellence,

stewarding with integrity and establishing a great place to work. So a number of goals and objectives, we won't go through those tonight.

I'm very encouraged by the by the year to date results so far across all of those imperatives.

I think and I'll talk about this, in a in a few moments in a little bit more detail.

Economic development infrastructure to include transportation, we are somewhere around 50 to 60 projects.

I think last night tonight are a perfect example

of the projects and the volume of of initiatives that we have coming forward. And so,

very grateful for the progress that we continue to make with the projects.

But I'm also, you know,

really encouraged with the

in the midst of the projects, the focus around around systems, process, and structure.

I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment because that is, in my view, you know, essential to maintaining momentum.

This is a third quarter report. We're already a month into the fourth quarter. So we are we definitely have momentum heading into the end of the year. And I feel like I feel like good momentum heading into 2026,

not only from a project standpoint, but I think some of the structural components that we're putting in place to allow us to drive some sustainability

from a service delivery service excellence standpoint. You know, we've talked a lot about safe, clean, reliable,

responsive.

We just did our and we've we've talked a lot about the monthly business review process that we have put in place. We just had our September review last week, with all the departments.

And I would say, you know, this has been a crawl walk run process.

We have gone from just determining, okay, do we have performance standards and do we have measures in place? And I would say this last week

was the first time that I felt like really across the board with all the departments that we were moving from.

Okay, what is this that we're looking at a little bit of what are these numbers and getting our heads around it to actually getting into a performance management rhythm where we're like identifying root cause, identifying priorities,

focuses, those sorts of things, allowing the data that we're looking at to inform decision making and priorities. You saw some of that flow through into the budget that you approved last night becoming more targeted in that area,

developing leading indicators to allow us to focus in the right areas in real time. No, it doesn't mean that we're perfect, that we don't have areas that we need to focus on. That's not the that's not the purpose. The purpose is to illuminate where we do need to focus based on standards.

And I'll give you an example. You know, if you look at safe, clean, reliable, responsive from a safe and reliable standpoint, I would say we're incredibly strong.

Those are areas of strength.

Clean is getting,

is getting much better. It's a difficult area to

tackle.

I'll use,

bathrooms

as an example. In parks, we have roughly 13 parks across the city, 101

restroom facilities.

They're cleaned on a daily, at least daily basis. Some of them are cleaned multiple times.

We have established and I say we very loosely,

Director Malone,

Taylor, the team have developed an inspection process

where each week those restrooms

are inspected by a supervisor.

That's a documented process,

based on a standard operating protocol and SOP.

So and that's just an example of a wreck in parks.

Director

Watson, who was here, has initiated a number of the similar type inspection processes for facilities. Is he here? Oh, there he is. He's hiding. But, you know, this is an area that is typically,

easy to say that something needs to be clean. What is the standard and what is the process that we're actually checking to make sure that the work is being done? These are all processes and structures that have been stood up from at the first of the year,

since the first of the year.

And it's allowing to actually us to execute and target and align our resources a little more effectively.

Again, I kind of point to the budget you approved last night. There were a number of,

items in that that were included in the budget

to improve cleanliness and some of our facilities

again, not just in rec and parks, but in the facilities that brian oversees. I would also say one of the outcomes as well as we're getting a much better view as to what is clean versus worn out.

And that's important,

right? You know, there is a there is and I've done a few inspections on the wreck and park side with with Stephen.

You walk into some facilities and it's like, okay, this is

this is not dirty, but it's worn out.

And so you'll see in our initiatives next year a number of those facilities being replaced as part of the bond process. I expect, you know, those are those are leading to discerning

decisions

around. Yes, this is a replacement versus this is a clean issue and those sorts of things. So being able to distinguish,

clean versus worn and tired is incredibly important when you do facilities work. And so I'm kind of going a little bit deeper there.

Responsive is another area that, is again, I I believe for us, it's an area where we're we have some some work to do.

And it's mostly again because the the the KPIs in this area a little can be a little more subjective, a little more difficult.

This is where you get into looking at the getting feedback from your customers in terms of our product

and service delivery. And so we need to continue to, need to continue to focus there. But generally speaking, I'm pleased with

the level of service delivery that we are providing, and I think we have got good visibility to the areas where we need to improve.

You know, our CFO,

mister Godshall went over financial results results last night.

Very strong,

you know, and I think you can be doing everything you want to be from an operational perspective. But if you're not ahead of the game financially, then you're just you're not in a good place. It really doesn't matter.

So in,

very

grateful, encouraged at the results through the third quarter that Bill reviewed last night.

Obviously I'm not gonna need to go through those. I will point out the importance of a forecast from an operator standpoint.

Starting at the beginning of the year, well, I would just say, you know, you cannot you cannot overstate the importance of a forecast.

It allows us to

not look backwards but look forwards.

It positions operations more from a proactive stance than a reactive stance. And so the work that Bill's team has done not just with developing the forecast

but actually ceaselessizing the budget.

And really at the in in the first quarter and leading into the second quarter of the year to actually do that while we were in the middle of the fiscal year, it's heavy lifting. And it has allowed us to,

when you couple that with the improvements that we've made from operating KPIs and you start talking about those two things together at the the same time, that's really where we need to be from an operations management standpoint. So

kudos to the finance team and and and Bill in in driving those results.

Yeah. And we'll go into the, the progress of the mayor's top priorities here in just a moment, and, Jeff will give an update on on on resident businesses,

business services.

You've seen this list, obviously, before this was,

established in the leadership

conference at the beginning of the year.

It's, I think, somewhat helpful sometimes in, like, a quarterly review to take a step back and look at all of it at once.

You kinda see holistically

the depth and breadth.

And again, when I say aggressive approach, this is this is aggressive. There is a lot of there's a lot of depth and breadth here.

A little bit of the color coding you can see, you know, off to the left and the icons,

blue, green. Blue represents

priorities that there has been substantial progress made this year in 2025,

in my view.

Slowdown in Roswell as an example, we view approved the pilot program just a few weeks ago.

And and all if

I think most, if not all of these, they'll be this is kind of this year. These will transition into next year. This is not a one and done type of thing. Some of these are multiyear in their focus,

but you can kinda see. I'm not obviously going to go through the list of the blue items we've made. I I think we've made substantial

progress across the board.

The green items represent

areas where there has been some amount of work done.

Bulk of the work will take place in 2026.

The brand and the UDC standards, those were discussed,

to a degree last night.

Those are both covered in the budget that you've approved.

The financial shared services model, you know, Bill reviewed that in the in the, in the workshop, the transformation, the financial transformation, the organizational changes that he's looking to make there. He's already started some of that work.

And then, yeah, as we're coming out of the budget, we're really starting to transition our focus now into the three to five year business modeling.

And the

the priority around that, our goal is to have that really complete and started to having

some model outcomes to look at and then really that'd be one of the centerpieces of the leadership conference that we at the January. So instead of us having a deep dive like we did in the last leadership conference around, you know, one year's

goals, objectives and priorities, we really want to now that we're kind of kind of have that pass us with

the budget process and the priorities that have been approved there, we really want to extend that now and look at that over a multiyear period and have more of a strategic focus in the leadership conference.

So good stuff in my view in terms of progress here and just

so much appreciation to not just the leadership team but the council, the liaison,

the council liaisons

in supporting and driving,

these initiatives.

Well, a lot of good teamwork here over

really through the year.

And you've seen this slide before. I just wanted to touch on it again. If you recall again back to the

to the leadership conference at the beginning of the year, I had been here just about you know, roughly

one hundred days.

And,

these were some of my observations

in terms of priorities,

for the organization.

These are more structural. If you kind of look through the you know, you see your planning process

and a lot of the support service focus, those sorts of things. These represented areas where in my view, we needed to really kind of have some very distinct

actions to really help us drive consistency and execution,

increased bandwidth and speed in terms of,

delivery of projects and and, and operations and then ultimately sustainability.

This is not, you know, we're not undertaking this so that we can have

a one or two year

type of impact, which can happen sometimes when you get into just pure project management. When the projects were over, well then what? Right?

So there's an element here which is about sustainability and long term impact and a little bit of cultural change. So when you start to then transition into 2026

priorities, and this is just a rough these are some top of mind items. This doesn't represent what we will review

in the, in the leadership conference. You kinda see that we start moving from broad

words like structure and process and we're starting to now get into more targeted areas, targeted initiatives, targeted priorities,

and that will continue.

That will continue. So

again, you can pick any one of these topics and spend fifteen, twenty minutes talking about it. No need to. We'll have plenty of time to get into those. But one of the reasons I'm encouraged. Right? And we're not only continuing to deliver a number of projects and bring them forward, but I feel like

not so much behind the scenes,

but really from a foundational standpoint, we've got we're starting to really get

process improvement and quite frankly some

people on the team that give us a different level of competency than what we had in some of our support organizations.

So,

for me, that's very encouraging.

That is

three slides.

And that's all I have. If,

Jeff's willing, Jeff's

willing.

Jeff's,

senior vice president Leatherman's now give it over to him. And,

mister Knighton,

any questions,

certainly willing to answer those. Sure. Sure. Any questions at the moment for mister Stevens?

Alright. We'll welcome mister Leatherman, senior vice president.

Thank you, counsel. I'm gonna run through,

our

resident and business services,

initiative that we established as, mister Stevens has just outlined as part of the mayor's top priorities for 2025.

I had the pleasure of working with, council member Hills on this project

among others, and it is fantastic to be able to celebrate the ribbon cutting,

on the same day that we are providing an update in this 2025

priority list. And,

I think as as Don mentioned, it has been demonstrated over the the past couple of even council meetings and in committee meeting tonight. There's a number of initiatives,

that are on our list for 2025

that the the

entire staff team is undertaking.

And it truly is a team effort. When you think about

the the resident and business services, just a remodel component,

it has an element of not only our community development staff, but also our CIP team,

as well as every single member, which you'll see the list, has been involved in the true transformation of how we are providing services and really doing business in the city of Roswell for our customers, for our residents and for our businesses. And so it's been a very exciting

undertaking over the course of the past, really, two point five years. And it started right here in this very room as we received the initiative a couple of years ago to start to rethink how we were doing business in the city. And the challenges is we had several

front counter operations spread around the city. We had I don't couldn't even tell you how many numbers different phone numbers that we had published around the city. And the work has been to truly consolidate all of that information, all of that knowledge, but all of that service into a one stop service for our community.

And that is what we are delivering,

on day one today, the October 28.

But it has been a tremendous journey that it we have undertaken both digitally and physically,

in the city of Roswell.

The team gathered a lot of data, developed strategies, and created an action plan that included the consolidation of all of our customer service functions in the city hall into one team, including phones, emails, and front counter operations.

Very easy sentence to say, a lot of work to do.

Key findings in that process is we started to work with all the different departments.

Our permit and registration system needed to be overhauled. This is primarily our community development function, but also our resident our business registration function.

Front counter operations were spread throughout the city. Phone and email communications were handled differently by each department. And believe it or not, we really didn't even know what our total customer volume was in the city, whether it would be phone calls, requests for services or even front counter support.

That was disconnected because we didn't have the right systems in place to even track that information. And so part of our initial data gathering effort was really just to take a snapshot in time. It was August, and we had all of our front counters, all of our our first touch points throughout the city just physically log on spreadsheets all of their touch points with our customers both by phone and in the front counters just to try to get a sense of the volume that we were gonna be dealing with and and how we started to form the team.

That translated into a strategy,

that was really in two parts.

Part one was the digital transformation. And so while we celebrated the ribbon cutting of a physical space, I do not want to underscore

the opportunity that we took to truly transform the electronic function of how we do business for our community. And this is probably one of the most important moves that I think that we've made over the last couple of years and centralizing

all of our permitting and all of our licensing into a single location

on a digital platform.

This is the first time the city has undertaken this level of an initiative.

And so now we have a single point both physically and digitally in the city of Roswell to apply for a business license, to apply for a permit,

to apply for a deck permit is the same process that you would for a business license, and it's in the same hub under the same account. And so our community, our residents, our businesses only need to have one location where they go for any of our permits and in our licensing

in the city of Roswell.

That digital transformation literally took the past year. In the background, our team has been working,

literally every day, and you will see a slide in a moment of all of the different team members,

that we tried to capture that have been involved over the past twelve months in this transformation.

I will just make a little plug right now. Our community will start to see a number of different emails and social media posts about registering in our new online licensing hub. We launched it a couple of weeks ago. That is starting to take shape

throughout the entirety of the city of Roswell,

and there are a couple of steps that we need our community to take to register in the hub so that we can connect their existing business license to our new online hub so that we can marry the previous history of our licensing process all the way to the to their current

access point.

The second was the physical transformation of our downstairs area. And really, we searched all kind of high and low around City Hall to understand where was the best location that we could centralize all of this work. And we centered around the First Floor as close to the parking lot as we get on the Hill Street side of the building.

And for many of that, you know, our community development planning and zoning

department had to move and consolidate in order for us to make space for our resident and business services new hub. We took about 8,000 square feet of space and remodeled it into our new service center that is available for the community

in and around this area. You were invited, sorry that you missed it if you weren't there, at 2PM today,

to come for the official ribbon cutting,

and now it is officially open for our community, but a very exciting transformation.

I also just wanna point out that it was very important that we were able to

utilize positions from throughout the city, and this took a lot of trust from our different departments that we were able to pull frontline staff members from a variety of different departments,

and we are consolidating all of those staff members now under one team.

That leads to a level of trust amongst our departments that they are trusting us to provide the same level of service or better than what they have already provided, and we're committed to continuing to earn that trust on a daily basis.

This is just some of the data that we are starting to collect. Many of you probably in this room are aware, but some may not be. We actually started, the consolidation of the team about eight months ago,

and we started slowly in the background taking on new departments

month over month so that when we opened in October, we were truly a full service hub providing service on day one. So during the ribbon cutting process today, that team has been working together in the background, and this is some of the data that we've been collecting,

really since January. And you can see where different,

departments have come online as part of this initiative.

So at the top of this, you just see some stats on the number of calls that our resident business services team

has handled. This was at a point in time when our financial

services team was independent. As of Monday, those two teams have now combined, and that's the last transition that we have made as part of this overall

initiative. And so moving forward,

coming into November, you won't see the two left hand charts, independent of one another. Those will now be combined in one place. But then you can see on the right hand side the types of inquiries that we're receiving, the volume of phone calls that have been handled by campaign, utility billing, business registration, tax, along with general inquiries, questions about solid waste,

all data that we are now retrieving and receiving on a regular basis and really on a daily daily basis that we can use to determine

when we're working, how many hours we should be open, but also what services that we're providing on a regular basis. So this level of data has driven the decisions that we're making and will continue to drive our success as we move forward.

This is just one kind of snapshot as it relates to general inquiries,

how many calls that we've taken.

Months six and seven, you can see some increase around that time frame. We probably had a new service that we were providing, so we had an increase in phone calls. But this allows us to get data back and forth to our operators,

and to our resident business services team so that we can manage the number of headcount that we have, but also the services that we're providing.

As we think about the success measures just in the past couple of weeks, so this is the rollout of our new electronic platform again, the licensing hub. You can start to see day one,

the new resident and business accounts all the way through,

the twenty fourth of this last month, and we've seen even an increase in those new accounts over the last few days because of the,

communications that we've had through our communications department. And so this will continue to climb. You'll see this number reach in the six thousands by the time we have full implementation over the next few months.

This is just a general snapshot of the data that we're able to retrieve out of the system. This is the first time that we've been able to get our hands on this level of data

at this quick of a time snapshot. And so,

permits were added both by staff and by our resident and business users. This is just a snapshot in time from last week, but you can start to see the system being optimized and being used both internally

and externally

and all the number of permits that we're providing throughout the city of Roswell.

This is a really, really important graph, and I'll explain a little bit why. But you can start to see on the left hand side,

our back office application, so that's internal. That's the work that we're doing to help support customers, and then the online applications, meaning the customers are able to provide those application processes and do it themselves independent. And this is a really important component because prior to the launch of this system, all of this work was done manually

in our community development office and through email. Now the hub, we are able to provide all of this information, optimize our workflows, and move community members through the process much faster.

Applications by day. And if you can start to see when we launched the new hub

system, the back office application started to drop off, and the online application started to pick up. This just demonstrates the usability

of our new system and the way that our community members are able to access it and self serve in order to move either at the time frame in which they need to move or at this pace in which they need to do business.

This is all of the people that it took to make all of this happen over the course of the last, really, twelve to eighteen months.

Of course, we wanna thank our mayor and council, mister Knight, and our executive leadership. But literally,

this project did not touch it did did not miss any department across the organization.

We had members from every single department

involved both in the physical remodel, but also the digital transformation of how we're doing business. And I apologize right now for staff members if I miss you. We did our very best to try to capture everybody that has been involved over time. But I just want you to recognize as a community, but also as a council,

when we talk about breaking down silos across the organization,

this is just another example of how we're coming together as an organization to truly

move forward as a community, but also as a city in providing our service.

And it truly is a it is a system wide effort across the organization.

We can't do it without our people. This is our new team,

officially,

this morning,

starting in our resident business services on the bottom right hand corner. And most of you know Shay up in the top left hand corner. She is also part of that team. A couple of remodeled pictures, but I do encourage anybody that hasn't had the opportunity to walk through our new space, please come visit us, join us, learn how we are doing business differently in the city of Roswell as part of this initiative. We have more is yet to come as we're thinking about how we're continuing to improve our processes overall, but we're very excited to get to this milestone today. I wanna thank everybody for their support. And back to all of these team members across the organization,

thank you very much for tolerating

me and the team really upending how we do customer service here in our community.

Yes. Thank you so much. Councilmember

Sells. I just wanted

first thing I did was looked on my old huckleberry here to see how it looked mobile, and it looks like it was mobile first. It seems like it was developed Yeah. Mobile in mind. So it's very user friendly, it appears. It is. Does this tie into the, like, the submit online

services request, or is that a complete So that service request you're talking about, for citizens to report issues in and around the community, so the two do not interface with one another, but the same team manages both. So,

our resident business services team is also on the front lines,

addressing anything that's coming through the online portal.

The advantage of the online portal is it drops directly into the departments, but we do report and process the reports and then can troubleshoot any issues that our community is having right out of our hub. Right. And then and, you know, some of the number slides, I think it's really important to to focus on the fact that you transitioned. I mean, this is this started two years ago or Yeah. About two years ago is when the initial work happened and really,

I would say, took off in the last year as we started working on the licensing process as well. To go live with a an online approach and essentially do away with the manual approach pretty quickly like that, that is a very, very

significant change in the way Uh-huh. Business is conducted with Roswell.

Perhaps our mayor would be able to get his permit for his deck in less than nine months now. That would be a great thing. Right? That'd be the goal. Yes, sir.

Yeah. You know, just talking about the permit type real quick, you know, we have I think it's somewhere around 70

yeah. It is. It's there.

About 70 different

workflows as it relates to different permit types because everything's a little bit different. Deck, demolition, electrical

fire, they all have a different workflow behind it, and the team truly had to rebuild all of those workflows. So they became seamless on the customer's end,

and we can funnel all of those workflows right through this process and through the hub. So really, the customer doesn't see the back end work, and it really becomes, hand in glove as it relates to not only our community development, but all the other departments that are involved. It's very impressive. Thank you. Council Member Hall.

Thank you, and thank you, Jeff. And I just really want to reiterate

to the public and everybody that's listening

what a huge accomplishment

this is. I mean, three years ago, we sat at a management

conference,

And, I mean, this city was just departments, and it was just paper, just moving a piece of paper.

Departments didn't talk to each other. Papers did not talk to each other. It was,

I I mean, in my mind, to be a city of almost a 100,000

people

in in

in this century, in 2022

Right. To be operating that way

was

just unbelievable.

And,

just when when we came up with this concept,

basically

breaking down the silos, bringing the city into

into operating

as we should be and having these kind of results. I mean, it it's just incredible what this organization and the people in this organization have done. I I mean,

I I really

want people to recognize the gravity of this

this project. It's not just opening up a a a section of city hall Yeah. You know, where where where I mean, granted, it is much easier for for folks, but this is tremendous.

The data that we have, the,

efficiency

for the residents. I'm I mean, people need to understand

how how big of a deal this is. Yeah. And I really can't emphasize the names on this screen enough. The the the work load behind the last twelve years of both the physical and digital transformation of the city is a testament to all of these people. And and II tell you these people all sat in that room. I was here two two two two and a half years ago, and I think people were saying, you know,

we're in disbelief that we could get here. Yeah and and they did it. They did it under your leadership

under your leadership under you know every everybody.

It really has been a fast fantastic team effort. No doubt. And I appreciate all the department director's involvement,

their team members' assignment to this. And, you know, when you get involved, especially into a software project for anybody that's been involved with it and And Damien's team. My gosh. My goodness. I mean, that's a huge lift. Significant.

You know,

it's very easy to wear yourself out over a twelve month, process.

And it's it's very easy to start to take shortcuts, and this team dedicated themselves to providing the very best finished project product.

We will always find little bugs that we're gonna need to work out over the course of the next couple of months. That's just natural.

But they have committed themselves to continuous process improvement as a collective team across the organization Congratulations. Which is fantastic. Council member sales and I I'm a council member hospitals. Sorry. Yeah.

You know, when I when I joined council two years ago,

Damien wasn't here,

and,

the

it was they were nice people. They were good people, but their focus was, you know, making sure your printers work, making sure you had your computer on your desk.

We hired

as a city, I mean, under the mayor's leadership and our mister Knighton's leadership,

we hired someone

with a skill set that was beyond what we had been doing.

And we imagined something different, and it was executed because we hired, you know, many other people on that. But as far as, like, getting that to work on this device

easily,

form factor, understanding those kinds of things, that's what I do for a living or one of the things I do for a living, and

that's not easy. That's not something you're just going to discover by,

you know, watching a couple of Google videos. This is a guy who knows what he's doing, and he executed it well, and it shows. And so, you know, this is why hiring properly

Mhmm. Having solid, solid performers who understand

not only how to do it, but also what the goal is Mhmm. And can go from concept to execution. That's really a big, big deal. Thank you. Council member Hills. Thank you.

Jeff, can you go back to that pie chart,

that's shows the number that one. Yeah. That is that what kind of timeline is that? That was maybe, like, a not it was a couple of days, like, a week. But but it's the time you can get a snapshot of that, like Yeah. Of so I think this is really important.

And I know we've got small numbers. Two applied for a retaining wall. Three an LDP.

But this is huge because

the best example ever is the mayor not being able to get a permit for his deck for nine months. It's the best and worst example.

But

tying yes. Tying back to zero based budgeting,

I remember my first year here, the mayor's first year here, Will's first year.

We were like, well, how long would it take? How many are you getting of these type of permit requests or these type of activities that it

some some ask may have seven of these items tied in.

We couldn't even forecast other than let's get more file folders and somebody else to carry the files to each different department in the city.

So the zero based budgeting couldn't even be be addressed for departments because we didn't have any kinda clue how many touches that one file folder for one project that touched seven different permits or pieces of paper that were crucial to the execution of that project.

And here we've got it for I don't know if this is a week long snapshot, but you could track any given

project that comes in or request

by we know internally how many things it needs to it needs to touch. But I think this is it just speaks again to the mayor's vision of putting in place zero based budgeting. We all signed up for it, and knowing that, you know, we, being policy people and not procedure people on the elected side, couldn't say,

I know how many times that needs to be touched. We just knew it needed to be fixed. So this is the visual for me is not lost here,

to be able to see that. But I that's it's a massive

from the Flintstones to the Jetsons type move here. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. It's it's and that's for little old me over here saying that.

For the folks in the room that have put this together. That's, you know, light years ahead of me, but I see it. And I think it's fantastic, and I love that our residents and and business people that are using

using the city Of Roswell or working in the City Of Roswell don't have to know all that. They just know that they can get to it. They can handle it through their phone or here or both and and keep moving with the project and have a happy customer or happy life,

doing what they need to be do do it in the city. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Council member Northland,

Just to wrap this up.

Yes.

One of the best things that's come from this that I understand

is when someone puts in a permit for whatever they're asking for, the system is going to lead them through it, and the system is going to consistently remind them of how they're still looking for something on behalf of that that applicant's need.

As compared to getting frustrated with the city, calling city council elected members, calling calling the city administrator, talking about it's been three weeks. I haven't heard anything. Why haven't I heard anything?

This process and this system is going to alert them. Hey. We're still looking for something from you. It's on you to get this to us at at this point.

And so that communication and that openness is something that has been lacking and missing.

That's that's the big piece that I'm most excited about here. Yep. Very good job. Alright.

Thank you so much. Yes. Council member Johnson. They again, from last night's comments with the, talk with the g mailer to tonight, it shows that we have a staff that not only is efficient with the taxpayers' money, but efficient with the taxpayers'

time and energy.

And, you know, thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Don.

Thank you, Randy.

I want they Davidson is a Auburn fan.

But but, you know

no. I just this is once again just a a really, really

great

example of how this,

we are modernizing

the staff of the city

to to move into the next stage of what's coming in technology wise, what's coming

economically wise, and

really, really proud to,

you know, serve with you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any further comments

on the side? I'll just simply say,

that, this is I cannot underscore this enough. This is absolutely transformative

for the residents and businesses of the city, for the organization,

to undertake something so vast,

as

essentially reimagining and reinventing how you serve residents physically.

And in the electronic sphere,

is something that, certainly could be proud of in service to the residents. And ultimately, that's what we all do in our elected or appointed capacity

is to serve the residents and businesses of Roswell.

At the same time

of executing a $180,000,000,000

in bonds,

same time of,

addressing a very ambitious economic

development strategy,

At the same time,

I'm establishing a full time fire department

over a five year period.

At the same time, maintaining,

the highest,

class police pay.

And the many other initiatives that have been undertaken

that have been completed,

in service to the residents of Roswell,

cannot be emphasized enough. And so I think the, certainly the mayor and council for for ultimately, you are the you're the leaders, You are the policy makers. You set the vision,

and it's then left to us to, implement and execute. So thank you very much for your high level leadership.

Thank you very much for providing the resources necessary to the staff to be able to execute.

And,

we certainly,

appreciate

your leadership, your vision. And ultimately, again,

it is in service to the residents and businesses of Roswell.

And so, thank you, mister Leatherman, mister Stevens, the entire team, that entire list

of people who had a part in this.

And, we appreciate,

the opportunity,

to serve, and we'll continue to do so at the highest level. So thank you very much. This item does not need, any formal vote. And so with that, yes ma'am.

I'll I'll I'll, we'll, we'll do something here. We wanna since we have so many scouts here, thank you all again for being with us here this evening.

Many of our staff members and and or electives, if you were able to,

we'll stay just after when now we've got some commitments here. We'll stay after and if you have any questions, we'll entertain questions from you,

and, give you that opportunity to interface with us and ask questions on anything you've heard tonight or anything pertaining to the city. So thank you all for being here. We appreciate,

your attendance, and we appreciate the opportunity to serve. With that, we'll ask for a motion of adjournment, motion by council member Beeson, second by council member Johnson. All in favor?

Thank you very much.