Meeting discussionsStart with a topic.

I just wanted I just needed a little bit more clarity about what what exactly we're talking about how much you know on huge event what how how we're dealing with that water and I thought I remember that y'all had it in a different place and then moved it and that gives me some now I know the reason and trying to work with the community on that. Okay. And then also on top of that we have to meet code through the jurisdiction. We have to go through their guidelines and checklist to make sure we meet the requirements per Georgia standards as well. We got a civil engineer as our city administrator. So I know he understands that stuff there's anything I was just going to ask um hi thank you for coming tonight. What is the uh great separation from this property in Woodland? So if I remember correctly, I think it's roughly about 10 feet, but it drains. So the high point is at the corner from the north. So like where the um crossing is at, then it drains to that side. So with the town homes and the graves, you can slope the town homes 1% to 2% because they drop stagger. That helps with the grays. And then on the dog park, depending again on the direction we go with the garage being retained or not, that helps the site out a lot as well because you're losing roughly 10 to 12 feet with the draw with retaining walls. No problem. Okay, thank you. Next speaker, please. Um, Alex Mone, 4801 Claybrook Drive. Um, I don't really have much. I know that Philip's going to come up and Dylan and Bob. Uh there's not much more I could I just want to be sure I'm here to sign this sheet in opposition to this project.

minutes on the 20th. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda and a second? Second by Miss Hines. Everybody, please vote. That's approved. 5-0. We're now in the citizen participation portion. Uh we'll open it up to public comment. We don't have anybody signed up with this huge crowd. I'm surprised. Um but uh is there anybody who wishes to speak? Hearing none, we'll close the public comment, move on to ward and staff reports. Mr. Glenn Pickkins. Uh thanks, mayor. As the mayor mentioned earlier, uh we held a service day last or this past Friday with uh rebuilding together Atlanta and we worked on a house in Ward 7. Uh the owner had the owner's grandfather built the house in the 1930s and had been in their family since then. And we did a huge upgrade to the outside, cleaned up a lot of trash, did a lot of yard work, pruning, things like that. And made a huge difference to the neighborhood and the community. And people were very glad and I know the owner uh is very thankful for the work that we did. So, very good. Thank you, Miss. That's awesome. I heard a lot about that project. Um I I was able to be here for the jungle jog and uh um luckily uh Council Member Pickkins was our tribute and and ran it for us. Um but it was amazing and just I want to just give a a shout out to all the work. People don't know how much work it takes to to put on a race like that and um beforehand and the people who are here at 5:00 in the morning and everything. So, shout out to First Lady uh Laura Norton and Stacy Scott and Jennifer Bennett um and Patrick Deshi who were here uh getting everything done. Everybody had a great time.

If there's my boyfriend just moved his Oh, by the way, my boyfriend is an Eagle Scout and so are all his brothers and this year his mother died and he got his pin back and I just that was the saddest thing um to witness and my mother is a um is a Navy brat so she's lived all over the United States. Um but anyway, I what I would really like to see is an age in place where people who aren't driving aren't working anymore. people of Smyrna that are like my age. When we have these aging parents, where do we put them? It'd be nice if they could have they don't want to go into an old folks home or whatever. They want to be able to walk around in a village like this. They want to be able to do their own grocery shopping, but maybe they can't afford the maintenance on their houses. They're aging. Their homes are aging as well. So, it would be nice if they had like a place in downtown Smyrna where they could go and they could live and they could walk around and they could, you know, they don't want to be a burden to others, especially these um the baby boomers. And I'm going to be the same way. I mean, my grandmother's hundred years old and still lives by herself, but she has money and she has people, you know, coming to her house to clean and she has uh, you know, if she ever needs any groceries, there's people who will do her grocery shopping for her. these people. There's a lot of people don't have kids that are want to take care of them or they're still working. So, I think maybe we should look into instead of having these millennials making apartments for them, let's do some age in place kind of situation.

Um, but that's just me. Um, I I mean, and the site plan on this thing, it's a tough site plan. I, you know, I'll say that about it. I don't do traffic engineering. I don't do site plans, but but it it's got a lot going on. But still, that is not the way I would not go out on Oakdale Road and and try to get across the righthand turn lane into the lefthand turn lane with these people coming down Oakdale Road that aren't going to let me in. I'm going to go out on South Cob Drive. Right. That's why that was the first option that I went. Mr. Ogles will be next. Mr. Lindley. Hey, thank you. I I want to thank you for being here today. I I have to say this. I'm really disturbed that you all didn't do a traffic study. I stay in this area also. Uh that's really disturbing. What is your busiest time of the day currently for the current location? What are the busiest hours? Mr. Mayor, can I ask Daniel Lomax, who's the operator, to come forward? Sure. Do you need to swear him in too, Scott? Sorry, Scott. Thanks, guys. I wasn't planning on speaking today, but long-term Smyrna resident. We built a house right behind Market Village, so I walked over here. Um, I've been the owner operator of the Chick-fil-A since uh 2012. Been with Chick-fil-A for 25 years. So, Lo is above my pay grade. I just sell the chicken. Um, but I can tell you um just a little bit about the volume if that kind of helps. We're about twothirds the volume of the one that's closer to downtown Simrna and they just built one in Mapleton that took about 20% of my volume on top of that. So in retrospect of other Chick-fil-Ass we are below average volume.

It was moved closer to Argo Road, which you could argue was not above Woodland Brook, but actually it still is because the tennis courts are right there and the parking lot and the pool. how I've never seen any drawings of all the things. Everything is always shown level on all the renderings. They always look level. That is not the case at all. Is there are parts of Argo Road is probably about a blue diamond ski slope once you get away from Camp Highland and it goes down and it's even worse as you go closer to um Claybrook Drive. I'd like to know how the playground and the dog park are going to be made level. Who wants a playground that's on a slope if they're on the steepest slope? And if you do level it, how are you going to create retention on the downward side so that water doesn't flood into our tennis courts? Yes. So the pond, that detention pond was moved closer to Argo, but again, I don't believe that's the lowest point on the property. So how would the water be directed there? And when you look at the drawing that well first of all that 1.06 acres whatever is now totally pvious meaning water can soak in throughout and I didn't do the calculations but just doing a broad view of it I would say 60% or more of the property is now going to be impervious. That's a lot of water to manage when you get a serious downpour. And I've never seen any or heard any details given on gallons per minute or volume or storage or anything. It's all been very just general talk about water management. And I'm scared to death that our property is going to be damaged in Woodland Brook. And who's going to be responsible for repairing it? Are we going the HOA that I pay into?

Yes. I just wanted to be sure we have we there there will be a plan in place. Uh obviously I'm very familiar with his backyard and if I mean it can be a it can be really bad there if uh he's if it's overflow water especially storm water and also the tennis courts which is his next door neighbor too. He that was mentioned earlier. How will that be protect? You talked about a natural barrier which I do like right but that takes time right trees don't grow overnight. Correct. Uh depending if you buy already medium to adult trees. But to answer that question, uh currently west right now how everything already slopes there. So I'm assuming that he's already catching everything from the road without it being developed. So that's his current problem right now. When we come in develop, he's going to have significant difference of what's going back there from through our site period. So his concern right now is what he's seeing because there's no development. Right. So if he's catching everything from that road, everything's going to flow right into his property and unless someone comes and develop there, then he's going to have that continuous problem unless the city or something is interpreted on the curb and gutter or another storm drain system interpreted by the city. Mr. Welch, you have a a hydraology report. looked at it a few minutes ago, but uh is the water from the overflow structure piped or is it across ground? Is it from our proposed system? Yes. Uh that'll be determined once we get more information from the survey on the actual utility locates out there and then borings because we need that additional information to do that. And again, currently like typically when we come to these planning commissions or everything like that, we invest enough knowledge and we work with the city through the development getting some of the off-site contours and information.

And we give you all the glory and all the honor. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. [Applause] I pledge 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 all so much for being here. And youth group, thank you for coming, too. It's quite a crowd. That's the crowd we've ever had for a invocation. I'm pretty sure. All right, we're going to go now to We don't have any agenda changes. Um got a few items under the mayoral report. I want to just mention a couple events that we've had here since we met last. Uh we we uh revived the homecoming parade. Um week ago Thursday and um got it finished just in time for it to rain like crazy that one night. Uh it was really good. We had a bunch of folks down in the Village Green and um along Powder Spring Street over to the school. Uh wish the game had gone a little bit better the next night, but I I'm really glad to have that parade going again and hope that um that'll be a new tradition, a revived tradition here in Smyrna. Uh that same night, uh I want to thank those of you who came out to the support Smyrna uh second annual gala at the Reed House. We had 200 and some people there. In fact, the band, the marching band had planned to come over to the reed house and play for that event in the yard, but it was pouring rain. And so, the marching band played on the porch. You can imagine how loud that was, but we had a lot of fun and a lot of people came, raised a lot of money for the most vulnerable in our community.

And then the cola, that's a cost of living adjustment. We started doing this about three years ago and the initial few years to catch up to get employees where they need to be because it everyone had fallen far behind for inflation. We did whatever the one of the metrics that we use judging inflation. That's what the cola was set at. However, beginning last year, we kind of got caught up. We capped that at 3%. We're doing that again this year. And then the last line item you see there, 48,000 for unallocated contingency. This is essentially just to balance the budget to plug that. And that's for things that may come up throughout the year that that we need some extra funds for. A few other expenditures here. We have 200,000 for a comprehensive plan update. This is again Rusty's department for the comprehensive plan which is required every 10 years from the state. This helps guide future developments, land uses, housing. It is required again. So that's something we we must do. And then we have 200,000 for storm water master plan. Uh we currently don't have a good master plan. So uh our public works folks don't really see a good path forward until we get an exact plan of how we're going to address these issues as they come up. uh do things like inven create an inventory system, plan for expansion, R&M, reduce flood risk, which uh we feel confident will help us in the long run if we have a good plan. And then next we see 32,000 for blanket concert event series. This is a great series that parks began a few years ago. I believe they're increasing that from five events up to seven this year. They do those at the Village Green Park and the Reed House. They're budgeting for that once again.

Um, who who wouldn't want to live in this location. As I move on, here's why I think uh, Smyrna Council mayor uh, should love this development. First and foremost, uh the development aligns with Smyrna's 2040 comp plan. Maybe it doesn't align with the future land use map, but it definitely hits goal number three, which is to encourage uh the development of a range of housing choices in order to meet market demand and allow residents to remain in Smyrna across different life cycle stages. Uh policy 3.3 specifically says encouraging housing opportunities to enure uh that those who work within Smyrna have the option of living within the city. And again, we're projecting that a lot of our residents will uh be working along Highlands Parkway. This development checks those boxes. Um and as part of this, I know is brought up um in Rusty's uh presentation, but one of our profer conditions uh is setting aside five units um affordable units at 80% AMI. Um, and as a reminder to the group, our site is located within the Highlands Parkway Property Owners Association. And in order to move forward with this development, we needed the individual owners along this corridor uh to approve of our proposed use. And I'm happy to say that the businesses overwhelmingly support our development. Out of the 24 owners, we had 18 yes votes, which is just overwhelming support. Um, they want us to be here. Um, these businesses include the Home Depot Innovation Center, Engineered Solutions of Georgia, and Healey Brown, just to to name a few. And we have a an executed amendment that we included as part of this package. Um, and in addition to that, the property owners association board recommended approval to the ownership and we went door to door to introduce ourselves to the local businesses here, tell them what we're intending to do, and we had a handful of signatures there as well.