 Good afternoon, Madam Clerk. Could you read the roll, please? Absolutely. Mr. Taylor, Ms. Herbert, Dr. Bussles, Mr. Brennan, Mr. McDowell, Mr. Duvall, Mayor Rickamon. Here, for the record, I wanted to know that Reverend McDowell has had car trouble and will not be here today. I don't think he's going to make it to the meeting. He was a distance out of town coming back from a funeral. Also want, for the record, that item 16 has been deferred for anybody who was here for item 16. That has been deferred. That will not be heard today. If you could stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. It is to the Black, the United States of America, and to the Republic of Georgia State, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So who's the volunteer to do the invocation today since our in-house Reverend is not here? Ms. Herbert, would you like to do the honors for us? Do not. Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity to come together once again. Please guide our hearts, guide our spirits as we make important decisions about our cities. Help us to make each and every decision looking at what is just and what is righteous for both our citizens, our businesses, and all other people that need to be considered. Lord, help us to make people's lives better. That's what I committed to doing when I came to city council. And so help us to make sure that we are keeping the right things in the forefront of our minds as we make decisions. And we're looking forward to having a successful meeting. And dear Lord, we pray that Reverend McDowell will be here for the next city council meeting. We pray that he'll get here today and give him traveling mercies. Amen. Thank you, Ms. Herbert. He's shitting the look away. Chair, thank you, Councilwoman Herbert. At this time, Mayor Frickerman, oh my goodness, we are asking for the adoption of the agenda. And there are a few amendments, the deferral of item number one, I believe, Mayor Frickerman. Yes. OK, as well as Mayor Frickerman already mentioned, the deferral of item number 16. And I would add, Mayor, to defer item 35. 35, OK. I have a motion to adopt the agenda with the following amendments, the deferral of item one, item 16, and item 35. Move to approve. I have a motion. I have a second. Any discussions, concerns, questions, not hearing, unseeing none. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll please? Mr. Taylor. Aye. Ms. Herbert. Aye. Dr. Bussells. Aye. Mr. Brennan. Yes. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mayor Frickerman. Thank you. Thank you. At this time, Mayor and Council, we would ask for any public input related to the agenda items as outlined, recognizing there will be another opportunity for public input as well at the end towards the end of the meeting. And of course, the zoning public hearing matters. That would be item 17 through 23. There will be opportunity at that time for comment for those items. Is there anybody who wanted to speak on any of the agenda items, those that are on the public hearing will be heard later on? Mr. Chairman, I would move that we defer item 23 so that Reverend McDowell will be here for that discussion. Thank you. I don't believe you can make a motion, Jim. No, it was a good try, but I don't think that's going to fly. I think the next election filing is a year from now. Seeing no other public input at this time, we will move into our presentation period with item number two, the Advanced Metering Infrastructure Update to be presented by Mr. Frank Estridge, the Director of Utilities for Columbia Water. That was NBC, by the way. Mayor, Council, Ms. Wilson, the Advanced Metering Infrastructure Project has been successfully completed. This $48 million project took 3 and 1 half years to put in the ground. And we now have over 152,000 AMI meters throughout our customer service area. Prior to this project, our meter reading team had to read 145,000 meters every month. That means between 14 and 15,000 meters had to be read every two days so that we could support the monthly billing that we provide to our customers. You can imagine that if there were a car parked on a meter or another physical obstacle, we're not reading that meter that day. So we began sending estimated bills. The estimated bills began to undermine the confidence in the accuracy of our meter reads and, therefore, the accuracy of our billing. In 2016, the city of Columbia began working with Jacobs Engineering. And today we have with us Joe Camparini, the project manager from Jacobs Engineering, and Jimmy Harris, with Badger Meter, who was brought in. Badger was brought in in 2019 to pursue the actual implementation of the project that Jacobs developed the business case for in 2016. Badger had the only cellular-only project proposal. And we wanted to have that capability to get the data from the field to our computers. The project that we ended up pursuing has Badger meters sending digital signals through the AT&T phone network to our servers. The project team involved just about everybody at the city of Columbia, IT, procurement, finance, budgeting, customer care, meter reading, office of business opportunity, water distribution. And I've probably forgotten some that I didn't intend to omit. City Council. City Council. Well, I was getting to that in Councilman Duvall. But yes, City Council. Jacobs provided the project management and conducted weekly meetings where we kept the key performance indicators in front of us all the time for 3 and 1 half years. Badger provided the meters and hired utility metering solutions to do the field installations. They, in turn, hired a couple of local contractors to assist with this effort, most notably farmer construction on meter installations and AOS on concrete. As we go forward in time, we will continue to work with Badger because they provide a management solution that manages the data flow from the meter into our mainframe, our customer information system, and our billing system. We anticipate that that relationship will continue for another 16 years to bring us to the 20-year lifespan of this overall project. As important as anything is the Eye on Water app that's available to our customers, where they can look at their water usage and manage their water usage with the same information that we have. And it's free. All they need is an email address and their Columbia bill number from their bill. And then they can access information on a 15-minute increment if that's what they'd like to do. So we believe this project has been a great success. Our customers have transparent access to their data. And we have accurate reads where we can provide accurate billing to our customers. So on behalf of the staff of the city, we want to thank Council for supporting this major transformative effort. And I'm pleased to report it was a great success. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. But I don't want to take up any more of your time. Mr. Mayor, thank you. Frank, this has been a great project for us to get in the ground. And it's been painful three years getting into the ground. But the dividends are shown on the lack of telephone calls I am getting. Before we went into the AMI, just about 90% of the calls I got had to do with reading of the meter incorrect bills and all. They have almost gone away now from being a problem. So thank you for getting this thing done. And we're enjoying what it does for the lifestyle of council members. We used to have to roll a truck 1,000 times a month to go get re-reads. We're now down to 40 times a month. Thank you very much. At this time, Mayor and Council, we will take up Consent Agenda Items 3 through 14. Is there a motion? Move approval of the Consent Agenda. Is there a second? I talked about specific items. Second? Discussion? And now discussion. Mayor, I'd like to talk about item number 4 and number 14 separate from the rest of the Consent Items, please. So can we move 4 and what was the second one? 14. And 14. And then we'll take up the other items. OK. So 3 and 5 through 13. 3 through 5, no, because 4 and 5. 3 and 5. Through 13. Through 13. You ready? Mr. Taylor? Aye. Ms. Herbert? Aye. Dr. Bussells? Aye. Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. Duvall? Aye. Mayor Rickerman? Aye. Thank you. All right. Item number 4, Council is asked to approve a professional services agreement for fiscal year 2022-2023 for computer training, job search preparation, and online classes for our most vulnerable populations as requested by the Community Development Department. The award is to fast forward in the amount of $100,000, which is not an increase from the previous fiscal year. And the firm is located in Columbia, South Carolina. Yes, ma'am. So I have been following fast forwards work for a long time. And I think that Dee and her team do a great job with working with a lot of different vulnerable populations. My pause here is that some of the money would be coming out of the Water and Sewer Special Projects Fund. And I'd like us to move away from that unless there is some sort of explicit connection to Water and Sewer related jobs or whatever. So for that reason, I would not feel comfortable voting for this as it's currently being funded. So are you requesting that we hold it and allow staff to go back? I mean, if that's a possibility, or I'd like to understand whether there is a connection to Water and Sewer. This is the way it's traditionally been funded. Since I've been on council, I believe, is that correct, city manager? Yes, sir. I sent you all an email explaining that. I mean, that has just been what previously seated councils have, or a majority of them, I guess, have done in an effort to fund the full amount. I mean, obviously, the full amount is $100,000, and $50,000 is what has been allocated out of community development because that's the amount that's available there. And I think in an effort to fund the full amount that was requested, that's the path that led us down to funding the rest out of Water and Sewer. There have been other partner agreements where you do look at jobs creation and that sort of thing, which I guess answered Dr. Bussell's question about a correlation with Water and Sewer and economic development and job creation and that sort of thing. I can't sit here and say that I can make that correlation necessarily. I appreciate that. I just think, you know, I appreciate the history and the traditions of how previous councils may have done things, but I also think it's important for us to be very intentional about how we use different funds. And if there is a possibility to find that $50,000 somewhere else, I'd be very supportive of that, but especially if the only reason that we're doing it this way is because it's always been done this way, I just don't feel that that is a valid enough reason for us to continue doing it. So we used to be, just for clarification, that we used fast forward to do a lot of the training for our personnel in Water and Sewer, but what I'm hearing now that no longer is part of the equation, is that correct? It hasn't been part of the equation in previous most recent budgets either. My suggestion is that we defer this item to the council so sees and allow the city manager to come back to us if there's another option or solution at this point. Mr. Mayor. I don't know that there he is, but I can look. You want to move forward with the 50 that's not coming from Water and Sewer and then take, move forward on and then see if we can find another option. Because I really do like what this group does. I tend to agree that it's not taken up from Water and Sewer, but let's just see what we can find. Mr. Mayor. Ms. Wilson, in the past, have we not pulled from CBDG federal funding for this program? That's where the community. So that's the entire, I guess, all the funding from the past came from that? No, just half, just a bit. Consistently in the past. Yes, sir. Okay, thank you. Should we withdraw the motion and restate it at the 50 with asking staff to go back and look at the other portion without the correct Madam Clerk? I think you can do that. And I do think that Ms. Albrighton will probably need to be involved in this discussion, because I'm not sure how she allocates the funding to do whatever training that she is doing with vulnerable communities. So why don't we defer the item with the understanding that the 50,000 from community development will be awarded and that we're going to sit down with Ms. Albrighton and staff to look at what other opportunities if there is, because the program is a great program, but we are where we are and it makes a lot of sense. So if we could do that, let's defer that to the next council agenda. But we're into almost October now and we approve the 50. Yeah. So you don't need a hundred today, right? What was the motion that's on the floor? We've already had a motion in a second because we're in discussion. So is the motion that we're deferring or is it that we are approving 50,000 and looking for the other 50? We're deferring the item, but with them knowing that the 50 is available at this point until we can muster up the other hundred, unless y'all would like to withdraw the original motion and restate it, who had the original motion? Mr. Taylor, we moved forward with the 50,000 from community development. That was before we went into discussion because we had the other motion was on the table for us to get to this point, right? I did not have another motion when we went to item four. We went straight into the explanation into the conversation. So we just need a second for the authorize the fifth. Second. Motion in a second. We've had discussion and we'll follow up from there. Please call the roll. Mr. Taylor. Yes. Ms. Herbert. Yes. Dr. Bustles. Aye. Mr. Brennan. Yes. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mayor Rickerman. Aye. Thank you. We include Mr. Shelly and his group because I think that there are some opportunities that will make it real fit pretty easily so that we can fund it as budgeted. 14 is ordinance number 20202089 amending ordinance 20202052 to adopt the budget for the city of Columbia, South Carolina for the fiscal year ending June 30th of 2023. Move approved. Is there a second? Second. Discussion? Yes. One of the things that we talked about during our work session was the importance of getting the word out about various city council events and happenings and city related events and happenings. And we had talked about potentially finding other options then for the 10,000 that's budgeted for Leisure Fund which is the website that the city has used and I noticed it was still included in this budget and I'd like to request staff to make that more of a general budget line so we can for communications and website promotion so that we can find an avenue that is well trafficked and that people use. So you... So how do I make an amendment to the amendment? Not with the budget, no meal. Not with the budget, why are you gonna do that? I'm trying to make sure I'm understanding what the request is. So you're specifically asking about the Leisure Fund item itself. So the Leisure Fund item is, as we talked about during the budget workshops, is another one of those things that I hear you loud and clear about historically items that have been approved by previous councils. We were intent that the way we left the discussion was that the funding would be there and we would go back to see if the contract, if the work has already been done towards this fiscal year and if the contract terms would allow us to get out of it or not. And so we need to do that unless staff is about to walk up here and tell me they've already done that. And in addition reallocating it to the communications department, is that what I'm using? No, no, no. Finding, you know, we talked about a lot of other options and so I just wanna, it's fine. I'm fine with the 10,000. I think it's great to allocate that to get the word out but I want to know that there's flexibility that if we do have an option to move away from Leisure Fund that we could use it for something related but maybe a more up-to-date website or something that has a lot of traction. Is the $10,000 in this amendment or it's in the hospitality funds? No, it's in this amendment. It's in this amendment. So I guess what we could do if it's the council, the funds would stay in the budget as outlined and if that's what council is wanting us to do, we could not renew the current year's contract but I'm gonna have to get with legal and all that. We had to figure out those nuances but I just wanted to make sure that we were still keeping in mind that the general consensus I felt at the work session was that we would look at other options as well. I'm not sure if that was the general consensus but if you all wanna clarify that right now for me, that would be great. I think we left it, we heard the intention to probably phase it out and look for other alternatives after proper notification I guess was given for this year because the vendor was probably under the impression that this was going to be funded this year and the current year for the contract renewal would be July 1 through June 30th. So again, because of that history there, I'm assuming that the vendor is probably thinking that the work is gonna go forward like it normally has but that doesn't mean we can't have that discussion. I just, we just need to do that if that's the intention for us to not have the contract renewed this year. I really think it's too late in the budget year to make a change. I think we do need time to renew for this year because they're probably anticipating that as a part of their budget and give staff the next six months or so to figure out what a new option is because I don't know if there is a new option. Or something else that could be used in that state. But I do believe when we've had long-term contracts that you wanna give people a little bit of notice for their budgetary reasons about before you cut it. So I would, I mean, I'm saying no amendment to the budget and this is just to prove it if I had, I'd say. We can move to previous. Unless you have something to do. You were checking on the contract and have we done that or we end contract mode at this point? Right, I mean, as we indicated before, the contract would start July 1 and go through June 30th. I think it's more about the intent having been given to not renew. I don't think that intent was given for this year. That's not to say if that's the preference of the council for us to go ahead and do that. We can. I don't know what all work has gone into Leisure Fund at this point to produce what they normally produce. So we would have to check on that, but no matter the contract terms are for a renewal starting July 1 through June 30th. I think in the future as we move forward, we need to make sure that every contract knows that there's no guarantee after the July 1 date. Unless they've been notified by the city. Just because I think we're getting ourselves where we're trying to make sure that we're updating communications. We're looking at things differently. We're trying to make sure that we're getting as much information out to the folks. I do wanna make sure as we move forward that we allow all yearly contracts to know that there's no guarantee after July 1. But I don't know how you unwind where we are today at this point. There are no guarantees unless the contract says that there are automatic renewals. So that's what I'm trying to clarify real quick. So there's no automatic renewal for this one. Again, it was the history, kind of the same thing you all were talking about, the last item with fast forward. You would be obligated for August, September anyway because those things have been published if you go online. So we have some obligation, correct? Do you wanna consider through December and then we do something different starting in January? Pushed for the new budget year. Is, you know, on board. I just think that I'm hearing at one second, oh, they're expecting these funds. And then I'm hearing, oh, but there's no obligation for these funds. And, you know, I understand the history of the project and perhaps it makes sense to move forward, but the mixed messaging of like expectations versus reality has been really frustrating in terms of understanding the best way to be the most transparent around our budgeting process. Well, we talked about it during the budgeting process. So we can certainly handle it now if that's the preference of the council. What's the will of council? This, we've gotta move forward. Well, I agree with Dr. Bussells that the method of advertising needs to be reviewed and that I've had conversations with one Columbia, they do the same thing. And so we may be able to eliminate one contract and let it be done by one Columbia with more up-to-date contact information. We've all, I think, made a motion to approve. So if you withdraw that motion to make a motion to approve suspending this, we can go forward. Okay. Is that a permissible, Madam Clerk? It is. All right, I withdraw my motion to approve. You made the motion. And again, this is one item within the budget amendments. This wasn't... That's a massive budget amendment. All right. It is a massive budget amendment. Mr. Harden-DeBalls will make your motion. Because it's... He was being sarcastic when he said it was massive. It's really not even part of the amendment. I think maybe you all, because when we do a budget amendment for the items that were part of the amendment to the budget, you're seeing the rest of the budget, which is what you already approved. So that's why I keep saying this was already discussed and reviewed. However, you can certainly vote on the budget amendments which are before you. And if you all wanna make a separate motion, maybe to give us direction on how you wanna address this. Make the motion to approve the budget amendment as stated, item 14, the second. Second. We have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll? Yes, sir. Mr. Taylor. Aye. Ms. Herbert. Aye. Mr. Brennan. Yes. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mayor Rickiman. Aye. Dr. Bustler. I'd like to make a motion for us to review our advertising and communication strategy with Leisure Fund and get a report back from the city manager on where that contract is and whether or not it can be changed or suspended. Second. There's a motion and a second. Any more further discussion? Hearing none, seeing none. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll? Mr. Taylor. Ms. Herbert. Yes. Dr. Bustles. Aye. Mr. Brennan. Yes. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mayor Rickiman. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. And a point of clarification, Mr. Brennan, you asked about the CDBG dollars being spent on fast forward. It's actually the 50,000 comes out of the CD operational funds, it's not through CDBG. Thank you. Want to make that clarification. Appreciate it. Ordinance is second reading, number 15. Ordinance number 2020-080 amending the 1998 code of ordinances of the city of Columbia, South Carolina, Chapter 14, offenses and miscellaneous provisions, Article 1 in general, Section 147, reporting of loss, stolen firearms, firearms recovered from crimes or criminal activity. I excitedly make a motion to pass this ordinance. Second. There's a motion. And there's a second. Any further discussion? I'd just like to thank, I know Tina couldn't be here, Councilman Herbert couldn't be here last meeting. I just wanted to thank all of you for your hard work on the Public Safety Committee for getting this through and to thank the community and the Columbia Police Department and our state lawmakers for their support on some of this work. And once again, Columbia leads the way in terms of creative solutions to address violence in our community. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll? Mr. Taylor? Yes. Ms. Herbert? Yes. Dr. Bussell? Yes. Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. DeVall? Aye. Mayor Rickman? Aye. Thank you. This takes us to our public hearing and first reading for zoning and planning matters, starting with item 17, item 16 being deferred, the Annotation Future Land Use Map Amendment and Zoning Map Amendment for 218 Carolina Street. And Ms. Hampton has come forward to assist with these items. Just to clarify for the public, item 16 was deferred or withdrawn? I've heard two different things. Yeah, they have asked for it not to be heard tonight, so that is a withdrawal. A withdrawal? Yeah, deferral withdrawal, they use the term defer, but really it is a withdrawal because it will have to be re-advertised for November. So that is currently the intention for it to come back at your November public hearing. Thank you. Got nothing on my screen either. Nothing on my screen. Where's the IT department? Wait just one moment, so y'all can see what we're talking about. We're having some technical difficulty, so just hold on one minute while we get set up here. Someone stole my remote. We are, I'll go ahead since this slide is up. No worries, thank you, sir. Our first matter for consideration is an annexation Future Land Use Map Amendment and a zoning map amendment for 218 Carolina Street. This is a request to annex the property, assign a land use classification of urban core mixed residential, assign a zoning of residential two-family mill district. A portion of this is within the flood plain overlaid district. Is there anybody here to speak for or against this item? There's a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? Questions or concern? Item 17. Hearing none, seeing none, Madam Clerk, could you read the roll please? Mr. Taylor? Ms. Herbert? Dr. Bussells? Aye. Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. Duvall? Aye. May I recommend? Aye. Thank you. Number 18, an annexation Future Land Use Map Amendment and zoning map amendment for 157 Saskatoon Drive. It's a request to annex the property, assign a land use classification of urban edge residential small lot and a zoning of residential single-family small lot, RSF-3, at the time of annexation. Is there anybody here to speak in favor or against this item? There's a motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. There's a second. Any discussion or questions? Any further? Hearing none, seeing none, Madam Clerk, could you read the roll? Mr. Taylor? Aye. Ms. Herbert? Aye. Dr. Bussells? Aye. Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. Duvall? Aye. May I recommend? Aye. Next is an annexation Future Land Use Map Amendment for 79.05 acres on the north side of Persilville Road and 4407 Persilville Road and .775 acres on the east side of Newland Road. It's a request to annex, assign a land use classification of urban edge residential small lot, urban edge multifamily and urban edge community activity center and zone the property residential mixed, residential mixed two, light industrial. Is there anybody here to speak in favor or against this annexation? Can you slide ahead to them, Matt, please? Excellent. There's a motion. Is there a second? Second. There's a motion and a second. Is there any discussion, questions, concerns, seeing none and hearing none? Madam Clerk, could you read the roll? Mr. Taylor? Aye. Ms. Herbert? Aye. Dr. Bussells? Aye. Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. Duvall? Aye. May I recommend? Aye. If it pleases council, you can take the 20 and 21 together. They are both for 12.59 acres on shop road extension. It's a future land use map amendment and a zoning map amendment for previously annexed land. The future land use classification of IND and the zoning classification of light industrial. Motion to approve. Is there anybody here to speak for or against this? Seeing none and hearing none, there's a motion on the floor. Second. Second. Any discussion? Further discussion? Mr. Mayor? Chris, could you please have staff send a summary of the annexations in the Carners Ferry shop road corridors from the past two years so that we can share with some of our state representatives that have requested that? Mr. Link? Great. Thanks so much. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll? Mr. Taylor? Aye. Ms. Herbert? Aye. Dr. Bussells? Aye. Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. Duvall? Aye. May I recommend? Aye. We are now moving to a zoning map amendment, also known as a rezoning, for 2470 Millwood Avenue, 2514, 2520 Cherry Street, and 0.05 acres on the west side of Cherry Street. The request is to rezone the property from mixed use and residential mixed district to MU1. So that portion in the back where the zoning is being requested, and maybe one more to where you can see the zoning, one more just in place. Thank you very much. Yeah, so the purple in the front along Millwood is the MU, the portion in the back with the hatch and the light brown is the residential that is being requested to be zoned to be mixed use. It will not extend on to Green Street. It will remain in that rear portion. A question has come up. We want to go ahead and address. It appears as if Cherry Street is being closed and a portion of it rezoned. That parcel has existed for a number of decades and has transferred hands, and so it has been in the hands of private owners for a number of years. So that is not a part of Cherry Street, is not a new parcel in that area. There are a lot of folks here, so who would like to start? We have a sign-up sheet for this item, Madam Clerk. Did anybody want to speak for or against this? If y'all just kind of come up one by one, that would be great. Thank you. Just state your name and your address for the record. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Vivian Clark Armstead. I'm president of the MLK Lower Waverly Neighborhood Association, so I'd like to bring greetings from us. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, city manager, and the members of City Council, and also the members of our community that are here in opposition of this move to rezone our community. We have looked at the space that has been, they're talking about rezoning presently. They're using it to park 18-wheelers and tankers behind people's homes. The trucks are coming in late at night making noises, waking people up. It is cheering up Cherry Street, Green Street. Those streets are not even equipped to handle the type of traffic. It is now a flex parking lot for 18-wheelers. This is a residential historically African-American community and has been for several years, and we are vehemently opposed to any rezoning of our community and removing any of the residential or historical covering from that area. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you for giving us a few minutes. I'll be brief. It wouldn't state your name and everything for the record. I apologize. We all know you. Yeah. But the public doesn't. My name is Dr. Bambi Gaddis. I live in the Martin Luther King Lower Waverly area. I've resided there with a husband, grandchildren, children, and now grandchildren for 30 years. We love our neighborhood, and so in that light, number one, we are a complete opposition to the rezoning and the amendments that have been posed to you. Staff approval of the amendment, in our opinion, portends a complete disregard for community concerns, which were outlined on September the 4th. We provided photographs to the zoning board to make the petition that it be disregarded as it states from masterline reality, the vote according to the paper was 4 to 2. So it is our opinion that to supersede the decision of the zoning board puts into question a number of things about their authority and why they come to serve in governance. Thirdly, the city council, we would like the written outcomes of it was said during that meeting that there was staff input, that there was assessments done within our community. I'll call it a focus group, if you will, to discern whether this was the best thing. We have yet to see those outcomes, and we are very interested in seeing how they came to the decision where the staff is giving its approval. Enclosure, if you go down in the neighborhood, you'll see the public posting for this meeting on today. But there were numerous calls and letters that were sent about the meeting with the zoning board that was held on the 4th. So there is some question of credibility as to why we were notified to this meeting, but not notified of the proceedings that occurred on the 4th. So we are asking that in the future, if there are dictates or decisions that are being made about communities, that we'd be permitted to get that information and sync with your processes for the future. And we thank you very much. Thank you. Did anybody else want to speak? You're welcome to come up, ma'am. I'm Jim Daniel. I just want to re-emphasize again that the Planning Commission voted 4 to 2 to turn this down. Secondly, when you look at the map, the left parcel which fronts on Cherry Street, Planning Commission historically has not approved taking zoning across the street. That's been done in Chandon, and it's been done in Rosewood and all these other areas. And that's what this would be doing. It would be taking the zoning from the millward side and then pushing it across Cherry to that location. So I would hope that you would deny this. Thank you. Ma'am. My name is Frances Parker. My family owns the properties at 924 and 928 Short Street. I guess as a result of death, I've kind of been appointed the family matriarch. And I'm here with two of my family members who reside at 928 Short Street. The property that they want to rezone is already disturbing the quality of life for them. There are trucks going in and out. We feel that this would not have happened in some other neighborhoods in Old Chandon. And we don't feel that it should happen in historic Waverly. This has been family property that has been in my family through my aunt since before I was born 65 years ago. We are vehemently opposed to the quality of life in our historically black neighborhood being disturbed by someone who wishes to park tractor trailer trucks there now and says that there's going to be some future development but can't define what that development is going to be. And we were all in attendance for the Planning Commission. And we're here today because, as Dr. Gata said, we were kind of misled about the meetings. But we are going to remain vigilant. And we're going to do what we can to protect the quality of life in our neighborhood. Thank you for being here. Is there anybody else that would like to speak? I just sit there. Well, I want you all to move. I've been in the Waverly community about 73 years. Could you state your name and address for the record? My name is Chesley Price. Thank you, Mr. Price. My address is 2018 Woodrow Street, and that's in Columbia, 29205. My concern, everybody's talking about the man's trucks. I got a problem with that too, but I got a problem with the fact that there's a street. It's called Cherry Street Alley. Somehow we've seem to forgot that, but I grew up on a Cherry Street Alley and it's been closed off by this place, by the zoning, it's been closed off. And from what we were told the last time we were here, that the city gave him that property. I wanted to know how did you close the street off and build a restaurant? He said, gave him this property. And then I said, well, the city's in the business of getting the property. I want to call them Cherry Bay and Main Street as soon as the city gets it. You want to pay the taxes on it, we'll give it to you. Yeah, I pay the taxes if I give the business the money from the taxes. But my concern is that there was a street that's been closed off. And I just want to clarify, I thought you stated earlier that that street was not closed. Is that correct? I just want to make sure I heard the same thing. That sliver that looks like it's part of Cherry Street has been a parcel since at least the 90s. So someone was able to close that part of Cherry Street so that has to mean the 90s. That wasn't something that we did recently or anything. It was never closed. That street, that place has been closed. It's just closed since that man, since the gentleman who moved in with the business, closed it off. It was never closed. It stopped at Cherry and it didn't go any further. It used to go Cherry to Cherry Street out. But when that, and it was there, Woods had grown in that vicinity. But after he moved, the gentleman moved in, he closed it off. My concern was where's the street and who's giving away streets in Columbia? But you all have a nice one. Thank you for being here. Mayor, I have Ms. Lysif signed up to speak. Ms. Rosanne Lysif, my property agenda to this young man's, with those diesel trucks coming through there and you have breathing problems, how can you breathe? But I'll let these a few smelling through there. Nobody ask us anything, but y'all will give people permission without asking the neighbors and the residents and the owners who live around there. So I never receive a letter of either meeting that y'all had. I heard from somebody else that day before the meeting. But that's not how you do business. We shouldn't know everything what's going on cause we pay tax in the city and we pay you all tax and we vote y'all there. But y'all not helping us at all. To me, like y'all taking advantage of us, not explaining what's going on in our neighborhoods. But the process for posting on a property gets posted on the property and there's contact. So we need to confirm the postings for both the Planning Commission and others. That's how that process works. And again, but we need to confirm that cause until today and over the last few days I've only gotten received phone calls from folks about this situation. I didn't hear about it when the Planning Commission met. But we'll confirm that the property was posted because that's the legal process and then it gets posted legally in the newspaper as well. Well what happened when you don't get a new newspaper? I don't receive a new newspaper. But the property was posted and so that's what we do with everything we do. We don't treat any area any different than any other. That's the process that goes. But I hope this don't pass because my house is right there. My neighbor's on the other side. It's not fair. We're smelling all the fumes. Yes ma'am. All these big trucks coming through. That's all I have to say. Well thank you for being here. Sir, next we have Ms. Sharon Arden. Anderson. Protocol has been established. Good afternoon everyone. To piggyback on Mrs. Lys, I just wanted to know the protocol for contacting members because a lot of people in the community did not or was not aware of the information that was going on. Some received letters, some did not. So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that notification about meetings and what's going on within the community is published in a newspaper and through letters. When you rezone a property and everything it gets posted in the joining neighborhoods that the neighbors get letters, is that correct? No, everyone did not receive a letter in reference to this. I'm gonna have Ms. Hampton who runs the planning department. So I mean, I'm just asking in reference to community members who want to be a part of this and have a say in it, their voice and matter should. If you have a contact that if you're gonna post it on a property, is it a neon letter sign? And that's, cause a lot of people may not know to go on this property, it's a line, well let me go and look and see what's going on. Other than the newspaper, is it going to be the Columbia newspaper or is it just in general generic newspaper that someone may, perhaps may not read? Or a lot of people don't publish or receive or read the newspaper, so is there no social media type of information to be in reference to notifying or making an announcement that other than a word of mouth, cause a lot of people did not receive these things. So my question was, how would we get the community to be able to voice without being underhandedly or seeing that someone is sneaking or have something to hide? Yeah, it's posted on all sides and that's the process that we go through. Now what we need to confirm is that all of those had been done correctly to the letter of law, how we've done every property. And we need to ensure that everybody knows what's going on. I know people went to the Planning Commission so people knew about it and now we're here today and people are here. So I think we just need to clarify that everything went through the process. Now if there are ways to improve that process, obviously we need to do that as well. But I'll let Ms. Hampton address since at the Planning Department about the postings and everything to ensure that it was done properly. Ms. Anderson, did you all, most of you all come today because you knew about the city council item? How did you all know to come today? Maybe one person might've gotten the letter and then it was just like a trickle of phone calls but did you know they were trying on, they were planning rezoning this and making it commercial, blah, blah, blah. A lot of people did not know in the community and it was upsetting and alarming to a lot of elderly people who may not know what's going on. So I mean, a lot of people, like me, I didn't know you post something and then, and that's how it was done. So but unfortunately it's an unfair concept. Ma'am, the procedures for notifying the public are published by our staff in accordance with the state law. The state, there's a state law, a Comprehensive Planning Act that specifically tells you how to notify the public and we follow that law and you're going to get your way in a minute, I believe if you. No, it's, it's, I'm just asking, I mean. So that we don't have a whole lot of discussion about this. Well, not that I'm stopping it, but I think that tends to be, that's a big question. Can we get Ms. Christon, I got your name. Ms. Hanson to let us know what is done. I think someone may understand what I'm trying to say, the underlying thing, Publishment and it's just doesn't feel like it's fair to people in the community who may not really know how publishing goes. Right, I think that is important to make sure we hear from the planning director exactly what is done and then we'll make sure. And what was done for this item, Christa, if you don't mind, if you could please clarify what is supposed to be done and what did we do. I want to know that. Thank you. I mean, just cause you published it, didn't mean, yeah, okay, thank you. According to the ordinances adopted by council, you are required to place a legal ad 30 days in advance of the meeting. Yes, understood that that's probably antiquated but that is state law to do that. We post the property 30 days in advance of the meeting. That is how we do all the properties. We send letters to the adjacent property owners, properties adjacent to the parcels being requested for rezoning. We request the applicant to meet with the neighborhood. We cannot mandate that, that is not state law. We strongly encourage the applicant to meet with it that is not a law, that is not an ordinance, that is a courtesy and we strongly encourage it. The system works today. It works. So, I mean, it's... And most effective because it is just adjacent property owners to whom the letters are sent. And so really we find that the most effective ways of communication is the applicant meeting with the neighborhood association because that would get the word out to those who are not directly adjacent. So, was there anyone else who wanted to speak against or for this item? Yes, ma'am. I have a letter of one of the letters that was sent to someone in my neighborhood. It clearly outlines it says this public hearing will be held Tuesday, September 20th at 4 p.m., et cetera. What one of our points of contention is that the real decision to have approval or disapproval was made September the 4th. Actually, the Planning Commission is only a recommendation. I understand that. I do. And they actually denied it. Yeah. Yeah. All I wanna say is the system worked and y'all are here. Like the system really did work and y'all are here with great numbers. And this is the first time we're hearing it. So it really has worked. I mean, it really has. And it will work today. Well, it has worked means that we're assuming that y'all support our requests that it's not. Ma'am, can you come to the mic? I'm glad to allow you to clarify something. But we gotta do it at the mic. We gotta stay in the system. Thank you, ma'am. I'd like to clarify, sir, the system did not work. One person with adjacent property received the letter. Other people did not. It is because of that one person, Mrs. Elanda Green, that the community knew and was able to come out. So she's not the only person who owns property adjacent. So if the procedure is to notify the person or persons whose property is adjacent, your system did not work. It worked. We're here because we're a community and we connect with each other and share information with each other. But everyone who should have been notified was not notified. Well, everybody that the state law requires to be notified was notified. No, everybody with the adjacent property was not Mr. DeBall. Come on, order in the room. The property was posted. We're moving forward here. You've given us some guidance here. We're going to confirm that on that. But thank you. Mr. Mayor, and to some of my most favorite community members, I am going to personally look into how we're notifying above and beyond state law. I think I'm crystal clear on what the community is saying as far as the planning commission level and any notices for them to. Yeah, it seems to be working really in the process continue. But I think what I'm hearing is the community perhaps wanted to be involved at that level and they didn't know then. And so we're going to look into why that happened on a staff level. And there seems to be, I think, the communication from the proposed development hasn't happened. And those are all things, some of it's not required. But those things that would have diffused a lot of the concerns at this point. Is there anybody else who would like to speak for or against? I just wanted to comment of saying, like the piggyback of some of the councilmen, Mr. Earl, about maybe not doing the same way because it's the way it's been done. Hopefully, since it's a community that mainly is African-American, and we know they have been disadvantaged in the past or face circumstances that might have not included them in the process, in the same spirit that you're taking to look at budget line items and make sure that's transparent, look at your process of how you communicate with certain communities. Every community doesn't look at the same notification the same way or have the same avenues of communication as other neighborhoods may have. So just because it worked in the past, like we heard earlier, doesn't mean it's going to work now. So even if it is in accordance with state law, when you get to know the community and get to know these people, find out what is the best way for us to get in contact with you, don't just go by the book. Because even though I'm at 9-12 King Street, technically it was Shandon, the portion of what was Shandon I went is inextricably linked to lower Waverly and its historic value. So again, just look at that way. So being transparent and moving forward and being progressive with budget and how we do things in the new day, do the same thing with how you do, put that same energy towards zoning and how you communicate because clearly there's a communication breakdown. So just make sure their voices are heard and find a new way to communicate. Thank you. Well, thank you. Sir, please state your name for the record, sir. My name's Jared Johnson. And is there anyone else? My name is Thomas Coulter. I'm a deacon at Taylor Moore Baptist Church, 104 Short Street. Yes, sir. And this parking lot for the trucks is right behind our church. We stream live, Facebook and YouTube. So you can imagine what noise track the trailer will make coming down through there. I can speak personally. I used to drive track the trailer. And sometimes drivers do get lost and they're coming out through there on Sunday or on Wednesday night when we do Bible study, we stream live. And that would be a huge disturb at churches. I don't tell them more, but other churches in the area. Thank you for being here, Reverend. Is there anyone else? Thank you. Thank the council for allowing me to speak. Thank the community more importantly for allowing me to speak as well. Jason Corsi on the owner of the property purchased the property. I went to USC, I believe Garnett and Black. I used to live on Green Street for like 20-some years ago. I'm married. I've got one kid. I've got one kid on the way. My wife and I work full-time. And we purchased this property on Millwood as an investment. The 2470 Millwood is a cinderblock warehouse. And the five adjoining lots were purchased last year. Those three lots on Cherry Street is the one we're talking about in the blue interior section only. The request is the interior lots, not the ones on Green Street, to be rezoned to M1 Light Industrial. The concern, as was mentioned before about Cherry Street, was 2008 that was abandoned. I only purchased the property last year. I was a gentleman as William Gregg Sr. he owned, Millwood, as well as the five lots on Cherry and two on Green Street. The property has been typically five different lots. It was a lot lines were abandoned to make it one contiguous parcel. The two other properties, as was mentioned, was Taylor Memorial Baptist Church, which is the lower left side, butts up to the back side of the property. That's M1 Light Industrial as its orange party shop. I'd like to apologize to the neighborhood for the trucks being there so long. We had bad tenants. They've since left August 31st. They're gone. They're out. The trucks were there. We met no disrespect to the community or anybody in there. We really sincerely apologize about that. I've tried to get them out for months. They do have a lease. I've downloaded that lease. They've paid on time. You can't legally evict someone. But those are gone, right? I've provided a letter to the city of Columbia that says we're not going to renew the lease. That was sent USPS certified mail to the city inspector. Lease is over. Last week, as I promised, two weeks ago, I brought my neighbor up there. He's got his CDL license to drive trucks. I do not drive trucks. We tried to move them, but nothing worked. They've been sitting there inoperable. The two big ones that were there, I don't know what's wrong with them. Batteries, the air brakes were locked up. We couldn't move them. We tried that last Tuesday. Since then, I've contracted capital city hauling, which is a tow company to remove the tractor trailers. The tow signs have been posted earlier this week on the front and back. And since then, they've been removed. Page two on that three-page document I gave you is a picture of the yard that was earlier today. I was over there today cleaning up, cleaning up some trash, debris, et cetera. There's nothing in that yard as of today, so that's the good news. Lastly, I'd like to define a little bit the planning for MU1 zoning to these three interior lots. Third page of that, and I'm happy to share this with whoever like a copy, I've got extra copies, is the back parcel of that property, there's a cinder block structure. The only goal would be to build off that addition. Maybe add 1,000 square feet of offices, that's it. Additionally, comply with the city-required buffers for the property. And it will continue to work with the staff and the friends to be in compliance with this historic Waverly District. The goal is to make the space better, not worse. And even since last week, it's considerably better. So again, I do apologize to the community about that. We meant no disrespect. We'll try to get rid of them as quick as we can. But thank you for your consideration, everyone. Sir, is there anyone else to speak at this time? I'm starting not to say that my name's Diane Wally. I'm starting not to say that. But I grew up in that neighborhood. I was on the corner of King and Cherry. And the main thing is Millwood is for our office, and you know, but that part that he's talking about, you got people that live there, children go up and down the street, and it used to be apartments and everything back there. How would he feel if he was living by tractor trailers? Hearing a lot of Lord noise. I'm starting not to say nothing, but they cannot do this in our neighborhood. They cannot do nothing. You know, you can't keep taking. You already took Willa Hill. What else are you gonna take? How much, when the people come? When the people come to take up for their neighborhood, you're supposed to listen. That's all I got to say. I was right there on that corner. Love you, Ms. Wally. I love you, too. I love you, Ms. Wally. With that, I make the motion that we deny the request. Second. Any discussion? I do have some questions from Ms. Hampton, though, just one question. Just so I know for a general deal. MU and residential mix, it allowed trucks? No, it did not. We had several enforcement actions against the property owner, one of which was the tractor trailers that he had to remove them. Those were not permitted. In addition, there was a fence constructed that still needs to be removed along Green Street that also is in violation. And MU-1 would allow trucks? No, it would not. It would not. So they were not allowed there at all, regardless of the zoning classification. Thank you, ma'am. I'll second. Any other discussion? I also just wanted to add to the residents of the neighborhood that your council person, although he's not here tonight, was also looking out for his community. So we do, the system worked. It may not have been perfect, but it worked. And he made sure we understood what his position was on that. So there's several layers that in this system that from our perspective, it was effective. Maybe that's a better word, it was effective. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll? Yes, sir. Mr. Taylor. In support of the planning commissions for two denial. Motion, Ms. Herbert. Yes, for the denial. Yes, Dr. Bussells. Yes. Mr. Brennan. Mr. Duvall. Yes, for denial. Mayor recommend. Yes. Thank you. Our final matter for you this evening is an amendment to the Unified Development Ordinance Offsite Parking Requirements. Amending the Code of Ordinance's Off-Street Parking and Bicycle Loading. It's a request to the amenity table, the minimum number of off-street parking spaces to add MU1, MU2, NAC, CAC, and RAC to no minimum column. Eliminate parking requirements for non-residential uses occupying buildings of 7,500 square feet or less citywide. Reduce the parking requirements for certain warehouse and manufacturing uses. As this is a public hearing. I'm actually gonna go through a few items. Oh, please. Just to explain. I'm gonna let you go first, Ms. Hampton. Just to give people a little bit of a background to make sure there's some understanding. So a summary of this, and we are adding a number of our districts to the no minimum requirement. Those districts that alphabet soup represents our mixed use zoning classifications along our corridors. We exempt non-residential uses of buildings 7,500 square feet or less. So non-residential, 7,500 square feet or less citywide exempt. Yes, sir. Would you tell us what the MUM, M1, M2, and those? So everybody will know what you're talking about. So it's mixed use one and mixed use two. So those are low level mixed use districts, kind of of a low intensity. NAC, it's the acts we call them. The NAC is a neighborhood activity center, this community activity center and regional activity center. What those are, what is really terrific about our code is it takes into account context. And so neighborhood, community, regional, those go up in scale. We also have already within our code that are exempt from parking requirements, the downtown and the mixed commercial districts as well. So it is a bit of an alphabet soup, but it's based on the context of the area and they are mixed use zoning district classifications. We also took the opportunity because we saw the need to reduce requirements for certain warehouse and manufacturing uses, largely we're seeing a lot of computerization, no need for all of the parking associated with those. The planning commission recommends to city council a change we had taken the dormitories and eliminated the parking requirements for those for the public but not the private. Though we've brought that back, made that consistent so that public and private dormitories would have the 0.5 bedrooms. I want to point out this amendment does not make it so you cannot build parking. It does not remove the requirement for parking. It just makes it so that we are not setting the number of parking requirements. Current regulations, many people are surprised to hear we've already been experimenting but you can't call that when you've done it for 40 years with not having any parking because in our central business district along Sumter main street and assembly streets we've had no parking requirements for over 40 years in our new unified development ordinance because we figured that worked pretty well we actually extended it out into the Vista in the inner Vista area, the DAC so all the way over to blossom trying to extend those same benefits. Citywide retail and some service uses for the past at least 10 years have not required any additional parking. What was there was there didn't have to provide it trying to get buildings reused. The Five Points district recently had exemption for 4,000 square feet or less of non-restaurant uses and our urban design districts also have parking reductions in them and generally speaking in all of the other districts our current regulations are based on the use. Talk about impacts of this parking amendment and these are the ones that will provide benefits because really as you read about this and I've read a lot about this minimum parking requirements can have some really harmful effects for cities and they are in conflict with many of the goals of our comprehensive plan and other plans and policies of the city. For one, housing costs, mandate out street parking increases the cost of housing without necessarily benefiting the residents. You may have some costs that benefit the residents open space, those types of things parking does not necessarily and the cost is the same regardless of whether the unit is small or large, affordable or luxury and obviously it impacts the small and affordable greater. Business costs and impacts of minimum parking requirements are felt the most by small businesses who are unable to absorb the cost of parking and in larger developments it's generally added to the cost of all your goods which at over 8% inflation is probably not the best right now. Something near and dear to my heart are development patterns and the mandated minimums result in less compact development contributes to urban sprawl. These surface lots are unproductive as a land use, decreased development potential, limit space for new business and housing and provide little in the way of revenue for city services. Make cities less walkable, degrade the fabric of the street, lead to a less envying environment for pedestrians and cyclists. The average space taken up by a parking space for the space in the access is around 300 square feet. So what you see in essence is your parking actually takes up more space than your building. Environmental impacts, mandated parking which in most cases low cost or free for the driver actually induces vehicle trips. There have been studies that show it induces vehicle trips. It increases emission and then it increases congestion, associated air pollution. Large paved areas increase stormwater runoff and then intensifies heat. So you might think we're just kind of some radicals here at the city. However, the case for parking reform has been building around the country for many years. It's gained momentum and is now firmly entrenched in the establishment with multiple publications by the American Planning Association. And it's not just planners, they're joined by the Institute of Traffic Engineers, the Urban Land Institute and the National Parking Association, the latter group in the 2018 study with Pricewater House Coopers. In a myth in fact, here was the myth, current parking policies are effective at setting the right parking supply and reducing congestion. The reality, they lead to an oversupply of parking and induced driving, increasing congestion. These are cities who have removed parking requirements entirely, not just the incremental approach that we're suggesting here, which is along our corridors. These have eliminated all parking requirements in the entire city. And you may think that those are only in your transit rich Western communities. You've got Fayetteville, Arkansas, South Bend, Indiana, very recently Ann Arbor, Michigan, Raleigh, North Carolina, Norman, Oklahoma and Dunwoody, Georgia. Back when we had a study, we had a great grant from the Knight Foundation to look at public space in the city, Gale Architects. They quantified parking availability and they mapped it out at Surface Parking and this was 2016. And a recent study called parking availability in cities a lavish and research reveals an investment in parking that is out of balance with current demand in almost all cases. Columbia is not an exception. What Gale did then was aggregate this, what if we put this all together in one space, what would it look like? That would be the Surface Parking in our downtown, which is essentially that one mile. That is a lot of parking. So they then, you know, a lot of it is perception. We think that when we're somehow on a street we have to be right in front of our destination. However, when we go to a shopping center that is not the case. Columbia Mall is up there before you and showing generally how far it takes to park and walk to a facility. On the left is that same image of Columbia Mall and then our downtown showing the associated space and the distance. They took what was devoted in our downtown to roads and parking and they recommended we find more space for people and less for cars. And the situation regrettably in those years since 2016 hasn't changed very much. Mayor, at your request, our fantastic folks in GIS did a quick study here of Surface Parking. Big disclaimer, this is approximated based on some analysis. And so this is not completely accurate but I think it's still a good representation. The purple is our Surface Parking, which really is pretty astonishing. That's not to say that we are, that there may be some negative impacts that you must consider and monitor and there are some proactive steps that we can take to address them. Eliminating minimum parking along our mixed use corridors may result in increased demand for public on-street parking that is provided by the city. This demand can be managed through appropriately pricing and managing our on-street parking in high demand locations. This includes the option to implement residential parking districts. Also in many studies on parking and congestion to include the GEL study, their recommendation is to encourage cities to realize that on-street parking is a valuable asset that needs to be better managed through pricing. This concern is a serious one and I know it impacts many of our residents and they are concerned, but the benefits accrued by this amendment to have increased affordability, a more walkable city, greater affordability, less asphalt with its attendant runoff and heat and focusing on creating more places for people than cars recommends this action for approval. Stand ready for any questions. Chris, where did those pictures, that the mayor sent them out and it was on page, it said page 95, is that out of the UDO? Where did that come from? Which, I'm sorry. The yellow pictures of the parking. That was from the GEL study that was called the public life public space study from 2016 that was funded by the Knight Foundation. For the city of Columbia. Okay. Central Carolina community. Yeah, Central Carolina, so the Knight Foundation through Central Carolina funded a grant that resulted in, remember all of the activities we had at the state house where we tried to call it the city's front porch? That was one of the recommendations. But it was really about how we create a city for people and activity and getting people places to sit for activity. And one thing you have to do is actually give them places instead of the cars. So right now we've been designing our cities for cars. We wanted to design them for people, at least in our mixed use corridors. A couple quick questions. Christopher Ford, more public comment. I just wanna clarify. Handicap parking ratios would not change. A property owner would still have to provide a certain number of handicapped parking spots based on the square footage. Or is that, I guess as a good business person, would want to provide the handicapped and access for those spots, correct? I'm glad you're bringing that up. Yes, so zoning actually does not regulate handicapped parking spaces. We rely completely on the ADA. And the ADA does base them on the number of parking that is spaces available. So if a property owner has parking spaces available, they have to provide the requisite number of handicapped parking. Through the ADA. Through the ADA. Correct, and one last question. Through your planning, researching, experience through this process. I know you said you read a lot. You read a lot of case studies. You've contacted a lot of other municipalities and counties, it sounds like. What are some things that they are doing to promote transportation, to encourage alternative transportation, pedestrian friendly development when it comes to this new parking approach, biking, scooters, golf carts? Well, it's a lot of what we're trying to do here. I mean, we've got a fabulous roadmap in the WalkBike Columbia plan. In addition, we're about to kick off a bike share expansion study to see about utilizing that as a resource much greater. Really, we just have to find a way to access the resources to get those in place. You'll also know, I believe you might remember when the comment recently made a presentation to you, they are changing their model to allow for greater headways along our more traveled routes. What that will do is, the intent is to induce more ridership. It's called the ridership model. Because if I know that I'm going to get a bus every 15 to 20 minutes, I may be more likely to go out there and actually take it as opposed to if I know I have to wait an hour. So between the transit, between hopefully getting more of resources towards WalkBike Columbia, the bike share study, our urban design standards create a more walkable environment, which is what we're trying to do here as well. So it's really what all of our communities are doing and it's not rocket science, but it's not easy because it does take a lot of resources. Thank you. I was going to say, just for those who maybe challenged with what 7,500 square feet looks like, do you have any examples of what that building looks like? Thank you. Yes, I meant to bring that up. So just as a reference, most people know what a CVS and Walgreens look like and those are generally from 10 to 13,000 square feet. So it is less than that. I did find a picture of a building. It's actually a little over. So I didn't want to skew it too much. So that's a 7,900 square foot building. So that wouldn't even qualify because it's 79. Correct, yeah. But I didn't want to try to appear misleading. So I got one that was actually a little over. Mr. DeVall. Kristen, I'm concerned about the dormitory rooms that you've moved down to 0.5. We had the situation with the nines where they complied with the zoning but they had to rent another 100 spaces for their overflow cars when they opened up last year. Is 0.5 gonna be enough for these student dorms that we get in Columbia? I believe so. Again, it's going to, you know, each circumstance is different, which is why parking minimums have never been successful to a large degree because it depends on the context where it's located. To be perfectly honest, without digging too deep into that, I don't know that it was the private dorm part of that that was the issue because that was a hybrid model. They were townhomes as well as private dormitories. The townhomes, which went under our normal ordinance, require two spaces per unit. They were all three bedroom units. So in my estimation, it was that part of the development that may have actually caused the crunch as opposed to the private dormitory. Ms. Hampton. It's hard to say either way. And there was no parking requirement for public dormitory, is that correct? Correct, yes. So we've increased the public dormitory when it was no regulation. So now they're required to provide some. Yes, sir. But for, I would venture to say that all of the other private dormitories that were not that hybrid model, we've not seen those issues. But we did, obviously, for a time, struggle with that hybrid model. And it was because the zoning was split on that site and they could not do private dormitories over the whole site. And that was one of those we missed an opportunity to negotiate a better structure. And it didn't happen. So the result was is we got what we got. Did you have anything else, Ms. Hampton? Anybody have any more questions from Ms. Hampton? For those who want to speak, do we have a sign up sheet for that? Madam Clerk? I have Mr. Jim Daniel. Mr. Daniels? Okay. Is there anyone else who wanted to speak? Yes, ma'am. She owns that, owner's own and written out to students. And she's saying parking permit, why y'all don't give us parking permit for people that they block our driveway. We can't get in and out of our home. If you got to call an ambulance or somebody delivering furniture, they got to do it from the street because they can't get in your yard. So why don't we have residential permits then having all these people blocking us in and pulling your driveway and don't want to move, then they retaliate against you. Now this happened in old Shandon area. Yeah, I think you told me about your address which we're going to go look at tomorrow, but I can't speak to different areas. All of these are specific, but we're going to address yours tomorrow when we come over and take a look at it. Okay. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Anyone else who'd like to speak? Good afternoon, may I recommend members of the council? Ms. Wilson, my name is John Wilkinson and I'm serving as the president of the Elmwood Park Neighborhood Association. Several of you have visited us in our neighborhood recently and seen up close some of the challenges we are facing and some of the opportunities before us. And probably the most glaring is the lack of investment and development along our stretch of Main Street north of Elmwood, just three blocks up the road here. If we have a parking problem, it's that we have acres of empty paved parking surface and for what? I was glad to see Ms. Hampton's presentation on this. I did my own quick Google measurements on Google Earth before this meeting and of the approximately eight and a half commercially zoned acres on the west side of Main Street adjacent to Elmwood Park, six and a half acres are literally parking lots and paved surfaces. 76% of the land adjacent to our neighborhood is not generating value for anyone. Hope Google Maps is pretty striking. We are concerned about stormwater like everyone else and this is a far greater contributor than some of the other topics recently. Our neighbors want a dense walkable district along Main Street north of Elmwood full of energy and life and this will help us get there. And maybe one day we'll be able to safely walk from the neighborhoods just up there to downtown. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak at this time? Mr. Daniels, you're up. A couple of things. Back to the student housing. Hopefully that trend is gone. I mean, there's two under construction now. Hopefully you find somebody to live in them because you've got the one next to the library and you've got one on Catawba Street. So, but I know in Wheeler Hill, we have an issue with if you have three people in a house, we took, if you have five, we had to read the riot act to a bunch of them. But anyway, the bigger issue here is I've had a chance to talk to Raleigh. I've had a chance to talk to Fayetteville. I've had a chance to talk to a consultant in Portland who all have gone through this. The two cities went through pretty intense evaluation of their situation. Raleigh just passed this, the 1st of 8th March. So it doesn't go into effect until the 1st of May. So they don't yet know how well it's gonna work. Fayetteville has been a real success. The big issue I see is we're overnight going to 7,500. I would suggest we use the five points as a version. They went to no parking up to $4,000, 4,000 square feet and excluded restaurants for a certain period of time and that seems to work. Now they wanna go to the full Samoa. I would suggest we do the same thing. I would suggest we go to 4,000 square feet. We include the restaurant. So we have some idea how it's affecting them. Do it two years and let's see how it goes. In the two years, we'll reevaluate. To give you some idea of square footage, the Bohemian Furniture Store on Devine that just sold to a road state company is 6,000 square feet. Rockaways on Rosewood is 7,500 square feet and when you add in the patio, it's 8,182. They have 91 chairs. It was busy both the past two weekends. They've got more inadequate parking on site in next door. The big worry is the corridors, the ones that where you have no parking on the street along the corridors, Millwood, Devine above, Drear, Rosewood, Millwood, North Main Street going out towards Dutch Square and then you run into the issue of they all back up to neighborhoods and what are we gonna see? If it's not adequate parking on site or on a side street, they go end up in the neighborhood. So at this time, we think better ideas let's have a trial one and see how it works. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor, you all earlier today received an email from Mr. Bart Walruth, president of the Vista Neighborhood Association. We've also placed that on the record where he's in opposition to revising the off street parking standards. Is there any more discussion council? I'll take the motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. Any more discussion? Mr. Mayor, this is a very controversial topic and Ed McDowell is not here. I know that his neighborhoods are particularly concerned about this particular ordinance and I would like to defer this until our next council meeting and maybe even have a work session so we can get into more details with Krister about this and potentially come up with something that we all can support. Mr. DeVall, there's a motion on the floor. We've had two months since the public hearing for people to ask questions, be involved, do their research, which a lot of us took a lot of time to do the research, et cetera. And as I hate that Reverend McDowell isn't here, we went through with a very situation in his neighborhood as well through that. So we're gonna move on for it before then, Ms. Herbert. Well, I just wanted to add that I did talk to Reverend McDowell earlier today and he lives near, is it First Nazareth or Second Nazareth? First. First Nazareth. And he says for years that cars come and park. They do have to come because they're at the church and the church has parking, but people still don't, for some of these still don't use their parking, but he also knows that they're there temporarily. And so from my understanding, I would never misrepresent him, but from my understanding, he didn't have any problems with the ordinance. If that helps you with your issue regarding deferring. With that, Madam Clerk, could you read the roll please? Yes, sir, Mr. Taylor. Ms. Herbert. Aye. Dr. Bussell. Yes. Mr. Brennan. Yes. Mr. Duvall. No. May I recommend? Aye. That completes your zoning public hearing. And I did want to add to as a part of the convert. I forgot to add earlier, we have some spaces in district one, particularly Columbia College. So I'm kind of excited. They have wanted to develop on the corner of North Main Street and Columbia College forever. And they wanted to put restaurants because the kids don't have any place to eat in that area. And when I first met with him either last year this year, he said, well, we wanted to put some eateries, but we won't meet the parking requirements. So this is for my district and for certain places. I think this is an opportunity for us to meet a couple of needs. So I'm excited. That's exciting. I think I also just wanted to say to Krista, I mean, the thought and intention he put behind looking at some of the benefits and really I think what resonated with me is we got to focus on people and not parking. And I'm just really excited for what the future holds for Columbia in terms of being a walkable place where I can walk to Soda City for my neighborhood without any issues of abandoned lots and that growth comes in and people want to stay here. So I think this is a step in the right direction. Madam City Manager. Ordinance says first reading item 24, ordinance number 2020-079, granting an encroachment to Jays Bar and Grill for the use of the right of way area of the 900 block of Gervais Street for the installation and maintenance of one hanging sign, one gate with two brick columns, horizontal metal railings and cables to be added to existing brick columns and to the south end of the covered porch, a black metal railing on the covered porch and a wall mounted television adjacent to 902 Gervais Street, Suite F in Richland County. Motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. It is all of those properties have a Gervais Street address. It's the very end. There any further questions or concerns? Hearing none, seeing none, Madam Clerk, could you read the roll? Mr. Taylor. Ms. Herbert. Dr. Bussos. I, Mr. Brennan. Mr. Duvall. I. Mayor Rickiman. I. Thank you. Item 25, ordinance number 2020-094, granting a franchise to ride John LLC for operation of a microtransit free ride service in the downtown University of South Carolina area. Second. There's a motion to second any discussion. Mr. Brennan, you ask about alternative modes. Here's one of those alternative modes of traffic. Transportation to get people through downtown. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll? Mr. Taylor. Ms. Herbert. I. Dr. Bussos. I. Mr. Brennan. Yes. Mr. Duvall. I. Mayor Rickiman. I. Sorry, Mayor. Resolutions, item 26, resolution number R202-082, authorizing the city manager to execute a quiet zone construction agreement with special provisions between the city of Columbia and Norfolk Southern Railroad. Mr. Mayor, motion to approve. Second. There is a motion. There's a second. Any discussion? I just want to make a quick comment. I want to thank city staff for the years and years of hard work going back and forth with the railroad. What are you, more than companies. They're giants. And to figure out the maze of communication to make these quiet zones phase one start to make it happen is fantastic for the neighborhoods in district three and the city of Columbia. As we expand out from phase two, we hope to take this further down the rails. North Belt Line. Quality of life for residents because of this quiet zone funding. And we got to thank our Senator Dick Harputlian, USC for putting in some funds and the city and the county. So again, thank you to staff and thank you to the railroads for working with us. Mr. Bennett's comment. Special thank you to Senator Harputlian for being willing to go to bat in the state house next year for the funding for phase two of this quiet zone. I think it's important for us as we grow the population of our city center to ensure that this is extended beyond Green Street all the way, I guess, to the Belt Line Boulevard. So Senator Harputlian has made a commitment to go after that for us. And so if you're seeing, thanking and reminding. You know, this is one of those issues that's very important to all of us because it's about quality of life. And we're one of the few cities in South Carolina has over 60 rail crossings downtown. So as we continue to push this forward, please support those folks at the state house and other places that are helping us get this done because this is about quality of life throughout all of our neighborhoods. Adam Clark, could you read the roll? Mr. Taylor, Ms. Herbert. Aye. Dr. Boussles. Aye. Mr. Brennan. Yes. Mr. Duvall. Aye. Mayor Rickamond. Aye. Item 27, moving into a period of event resolutions. Resolution number R-2020-069, authorizing consumption of beer and wine only at Paint the Town, Garnet and Black. USC homecoming event at seven. I'm sorry, this is withdrawn, apologies. Well, I read it into the record so that everyone knows that one was withdrawn moving on to item 28. Resolution number R-2020-075, authorizing consumption of beer, wine, and liquor at the- Motion to approve. Second. There's a motion, there's a second. Is there any discussion, concern, hearing none, seeing none. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll? Mr. Taylor. Aye. Ms. Herbert. Aye. Dr. Boussles. Aye. Mr. Brennan. Yes. Mr. Duvall. Aye. I recommend. Item 29, resolution number R-2020-079, authorizing consumption of beer, wine, and liquor within Boyd Plaza, adjacent to the Columbia Museum of Art. Motion to approve. There's a motion and a second. Any questions, concerns, discussion? Seeing none, hearing none. Madam Clerk, please read the roll. Mr. Taylor. Aye. Ms. Herbert. Dr. Boussles. Aye. Mr. Brennan. Yes. Aye. Other matters, item 30, is the Neighborhood Slow Zones Pilot Project, the Honorable Daniel J. Rickiman Mayor. I'm gonna yield my time to Robert Anderson, the head of Public Works, our new traffic guru that he didn't know he was gonna be. We're still looking for a traffic engineer, by the way, I just wanna make sure everybody hears that. So, thank you for your time today, Mayor of City Council, City Manager. Recently, the Mayor sent a document to me from Denver. So, the document was about 285 pages. So, I'm gonna start reading on page one today, and we might be here. You have three and a half minutes, if you can do it. Go for it. But, what I did is I looked over the document. The document talks a lot about Denver, but Denver did a lot of work with Boston, with Minneapolis and a bunch of other cities around that they went and looked at what they considered neighborhood slow zones or speed limit reductions. So, they held community input. That's one of the biggest things they did, is got it buy-in from each community to what they really were looking for in the communities. The other one is they developed a toolkit, which will go over here in a few minutes. They did speed studies on almost every neighborhood that was interested in the slow zone. The one thing we have that, I'm not gonna say it works against us, but we will have to develop great partnerships, will be that 70% of our roads are owned and maintained by DOT, and we still have a lot of private roads out there. Anything that's gated in Columbia is listed as private. We also have, as we've met with DOT in the past, and I'll cover some of this a little later on, we have several street classifications. We have internal neighborhood streets. We have collector streets. We have arterial streets that I know each one of us has dealt with in the past. So opportunities, when we look through the area of Denver and the others, there was a lot of opportunities. The one of them was the lowering of the speed limits. That's probably the biggest takeaway that we've got. I'll be honest, Denver did a 20 mile an hour speed limit through the city. Everybody else kind of stuck to 25, but the one consistency I found when each one of the cities did was a city-wide speed limit. And what they wanna do is they wanted to post them at the entrance to the city at various places. The reason they did that is it just, it drops the confusion down immediately from what they did. What I understand from DOT and from Lori Campbell, their traffic engineer there, is this is doable in Columbia. It has to be done through the legislators. They have to change something to allow us to enact that as a city law to do neighborhood-wide speed limits. That would probably still eliminate the arterial streets and the collector streets. So the one thing that everybody did was speed limit signage. Everybody, the Denver and Boston both did quarter-mile speed limits. Every quarter-mile, they put a speed limit sign. I know we've talked a lot about sign litter. That's something we need to look at when we, if we move forward with any kind of speed limit changes of what we've got. Because right now we're, I believe we have to, if we change the speed limit of neighborhood, we have to post everything coming into the neighborhood so everybody's aware of the speed limits. Of course, four-way stops. Feedback signs, the speed feedback signs. We have them in five points. We have them on Rosewood. We have them on Kilburn Road. Everybody knows that we have to limit the speeds on them, the ones in five points. It's not a secret. When we put them up 10 years ago, everybody was trying to see how fast they could make it read. So they do have limitations. We did change those limitations very quickly. Our old go-to is speed humps. Some of it's going through a signal timing. I talked to DOT about a month ago. They really need to go back and redo signal timings throughout the city. It is their signal system, so they're looking for signals right now. Bumpouts, bumpouts has been suggested in many of the neighborhoods. By the mayor, some of the Elmwood neighborhoods have been talking about that. Educational campaigns, yard signs. That was the another big take from Denver and everywhere. The buy-in has to be city-wide and it has to be well-educated. And the education campaign has to talk like that. Crosswalk markings. I think there's a lot of differences in crosswalk markings. I know the mayor and maybe a few other people in here would like to see 3D crosswalks. I don't know that DOT is all for that. So art crosswalks, I have seen those. And the other ones is bike lanes. Bike lanes are gonna reduce the road width and will actually reduce the speeds. I believe Ms. Hampton talked about that a little bit earlier. And Robert, I think, yeah, there's a couple things that were left out today. They're alternatives to speed humps. They're plastic platforms that slow down regular cars but allow emergency vehicles to move through without being impeded. We talked about the 3D painting and other opportunities there along with road diets. And these are all things that we're gonna continue to look at. And this is just the beginning of the conversation. Thank you. The one thing the mayor asked us to do is to pick up pilot neighborhoods. We do have a couple neighborhoods that we've talked to already. We have, I believe, the Earlwood neighborhood. And we've talked to the Greenview neighborhood. They actually wanted to read the document. So I sent the neighbor the document to Greenview. I'm waiting to hear back from Tracy to see if she wants to participate. I'm sure she will, but we've heard from her. So we are looking for a couple other neighborhoods and we've got a couple other in mind to make sure they're vastly throughout the city. Grant opportunities. We talked to last week, the Dr. Z, who's looking at grant opportunities for the city. The one thing we would like to think is maybe bring a consultant on if we get some free grant funding and look at a toolbox kit and some of the designs we could use and some help with some traffic studies and just a quicker way of doing this. Data collection. We would look at the speed studies and crash data. We would always continue to look at best practices throughout the city and then hopefully develop a toolbox for improvements to the neighborhoods. Challenges. The one thing, the several things we looked at was the road ownership. I still think we have a road ownership issue. I think we will work with DOT. They have adopted the, yeah, the streets policy right now. So they are really on board with trying to reduce traffic. The other one will be funding as we get to do this. The other will be implementation. The implementation for just building anything we see or getting the signs out or four-way stops or speed humps or whatever. And the lastly, it will be the enforcement of anything we decide to do, especially through the four-way stops and the speed humps and any other traffic modifications we make. With that, I knew I would be brief today. I think the idea is to do the four neighborhoods and do the pilots and see what we can get next and then look for funding and try to develop a toolbox to slow the speeds down in the neighborhoods. And Robert, I would add that we have a meeting next week, next Tuesday with the district office here with DOT and the commissioner as part of the beautification and other opportunities. And I think we come forth with some of these and get some more pilots so we can try to see what works. There's a lot of information. The Denver study has done a lot, but Boston, Minnesota, there's a handful of other communities I've reached out to have shared the positivity. A lot of folks still looking at speed cameras and other things to slow down and monitor, especially in school zones and some of our high traffic areas or walkable traffic neighborhoods. But as we continue to have discussion about road diets and redirecting 3D painting and these other things are other ways that we can trial things without large expense but gives us an opportunity. So I'll look forward to continuing to move this forward. Are there any questions from? Just a couple of questions because I know that there's some pending requests and I didn't know if you all have a timeline because if it's gonna be two months, that's one thing. If it's gonna be a year, I just want to be able to give folks who have pending requests what the plan is for the pending requests. Does that make sense to me? So I think that through the pending request, there's a couple of neighborhoods that have been on our radar for quite some time through the speed hump request, through four-way stops. We will continue to move through those processes with some of those neighborhoods as we do this only to maybe come back and add some of the other components to the traffic, to the neighborhood traffic slow zones. I do think that, and I want to point out again, as a city, we need to really look at a city-wide speed limit. Is that something that we're willing to look at and get our legislators to look at to see if we can post everything inside to be 25, the city? I think we're gonna have, because we have so many arteries in going through, we're gonna have to start and stay focused on our neighborhoods and then slowly get, we just have too many ways coming in to highway access. I mean, if you think about it, all our major corridors are all tied into highways and so forth. So between doing some of the alternatives to slow down traffic naturally along with, I think right now let's focus on the neighborhoods and what I hope is that we're gonna see a positive response from 20 as plenty in those trial neighborhoods, that we can go all neighborhoods at 20. Yes. Robert, you have so many times pointed to the fact that SEDOT has 70% of the roads. 71 to be exact. 71%. You know, with this, I've been in your ear many times about what would it take for us to take all those on? And it's a lot. I get it. You said the DOT would be happy to give us those roads, right? With this case study of a couple neighborhoods where we might have a mute button because he said the word take and I don't wanna take anything. Well, you, let's look at taking on those DOT streets that are in these neighborhoods. That's not the heavy lift that we're looking at citywide, but as we chip away at that, it'd be great to start the public education of what is that process? What is that cost? Because if you're only as good as your investment in infrastructure and roads, that might educate us on what to take to upgrade our roads. And there's a dollar figure, but I think that conversation needs to happen for us to have quality roads. And then another challenge, enforcement, you're only as good as your enforcement, right? So with the pilot projects, we please keep up with the frequency of traffic enforcement to see if that makes a difference with the traffic. Hopefully the traffic calming successes that we got through. We can do that. I think we can do that through return studies through the speed studies and stuff. So we can probably turn some of that around herself. I support them for enforcement. I do not support us trying to take on DOT roads at this time. We will be bankrupt within 12 months. What's the number? You know? More than we can afford, I promise you. They would love to give you the roads, but they won't give you the way to pay for, Yeah, that's the, yeah. So I'm clear. Are we holding any requests that come in for speed humps? We're moving them forward. We're gonna parallel pass, yes, ma'am. So the two that are pending now, one I think is for 25 miles per hour. Also as part of a speed reduction request, I wanted that it was in green view maybe. Green view, yeah. So I'm just trying to get clarification. What are we doing? I believe green view is supposed to be one of the pilots. So I think it's, it would be focused on 20 to try, not the 25. We're not gonna try different. That's the pilot. So we, so you're saying we are doing speed humps, Robert? I need to understand what you're saying. We have not met with green view yet. The majority of the roads are actually DOT and Greenville. So we were good. We was going to meet with Lori and green view at the same time, but we were gonna include them as part of this study. I do believe we're setting on a couple speed humps. I need to go back and look what they are. They could be in the Earlwood neighborhood and could be maybe the Helmwood neighborhood. I know Ms. Wiley's gotta, if she's still here, she's glaring at the back of my jacket right now. Oh, she's glaring at you. So she's been trying to get Belvedere for quite some time. I do think we're missing some of the information from Belvedere. Can we talk to her about it earlier? Oh, there, even with the pilot, we will have speed humps installed in neighborhoods. The pilot's just at 20. And to do the... Right, the speed humps. I hope to do the neighborhoods that we're already working with, with speed humps. So Ms. Wiley's been working on hers for a couple of years. So I would hope to continue those. We're getting requests from Pinehurst this week. They're on hold at this point. They weren't in the queue. So we'll look at the alternatives as we continue to look at the laydowns, plastic platforms, and so forth. You killed Brenda. So just so I'm clear, with respect to the pilots, what can they expect to happen next month? With their pending, because both of the pilots have pending requests. Right, we would reduce the speed limit to 20 miles an hour. We're not gonna do 25 here and 20 there in the neighborhood. We are doing a pilot based on 20 miles an hour in the pilot neighborhoods because that's the long-term plan is to get to all our neighborhoods to 20 as plenty. And the speed humps, they request it. And just for my clarity, and we can do that now. We don't have to have the meetings with DOT. DOT has to approve the speed home. And they also have to approve the speed limit. Okay. Okay, on their streets. And they've been very generous about doing that. So what we would like to do next, Ms. Wilson is probably meet with the Elmwood neighborhood. We still need to meet with the Earlwood neighborhood. I've got a meeting with the downtown neighborhood association tomorrow and then meet with the Greenview neighborhood. Everyone clear? Thank you, Robert. Item 31, getting a new generation started in peace, funding request, the honorable Daniel J. Rickman mayor. As we had taught before, we had identified the funding of unclaimed funds to put towards this. And there's some community funding that will match this to pilot the program for getting a new generation started in peace, funding for programs targeted on specific neighborhoods in our community to provide basketball and other instructional opportunities for our young folks through a pilot program. I think we talked about this at the last work session and agreed to put it on the agenda. So I have a motion to move forward for the funding utilizing the $28 million, 28 million. Whoa. What? The 28,000, I think it's $754 and 22 cents that we recovered from unclaimed funding. Second. Is there any discussion? Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor. Yes. In our work session, it was mentioned that this program was in the county. Is that correct? The facility, one of the facilities they're using is in the county. That is correct. As these folks applied to the county for? Yes, they have. Did they receive it? They haven't gone through the process yet because the county established the process for their request of $200,000 to be taken up with the 16 million that they're doing out of ARPA money. So this wasn't one that they applied to the county and the county turned down early? No, the county didn't actually turn them down. They actually told them they had to go through the process that they established with the $16 million. And so they can go through the grant process at the county and get this since this is in the county, correct? Well, this program that we're talking about is focused on transporting the kids in our most challenged areas that are focused on our kids. They're not working with the county kids. These are the kids from our neighborhoods. And every one of those neighborhoods would be in the county, correct? No, these neighborhoods are in the city. They're just in the county, sir, I believe. City in the county. That's what's that? Who's buried in Grant's tomb? Mr. Mayor. Yes. I would just like to note that I appreciate you finding these funds to support what I think is a great initiative. But that, you know, that for the public to know that this is a pilot and that this is something that is really a one time dollar amount that we are supporting to see if this is something that maybe down the road we could expand upon but there's no, I wanna be clear that, you know, for other future large scale investments that we would follow a process in terms of applying for funds and opening it up to other groups as well that may be working around the same issues, whether it's youth engagement, transportation to after school activities, et cetera. Ms. Herbert. Yes, I just wanted to just so folks would be understand how I feel compelled that I have to vote. And it's just because I look at it from a different perspective and I have to look at my former colleagues, but when I was here at the city I was in community development and OBO and as I called it responsible for putting money on the street and based on just my personal experience I can't support has no reflection on the organization at all, but the method that we're using I cannot support because we always have to have a process, so I don't want anyone to think that I don't think this great program is a great program but the process is just different. And I just think my former colleagues would hold me accountable as well. Madam clerk, could you read the role please? Absolutely. Mr. Taylor. No. Ms. Herbert. No. Dr. Bustle. Yes. Mr. Brennan. Mr. Duvall. Yes. Mayor Rickerman. Aye. Thank you. Thank you. 32 is my city manager's report. Okay, being handed up to you at this time, Mayor and council is the city manager's report and for this report, all of the items have to do with the Columbia police department and most of them are just bringing to your attention and the public's attention some really great recognitions. Obviously the annual 9-11 memorial service took place on Sunday, September 11th at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center and this service is always a reminder of the many sacrifices made by those in uniform and defense of our freedoms. I felt compelled to extend a special thank you to Chief Holbrook and the entire police department for the hard work that they and the Columbia fire department put in every year for the 9-11 memorial. I don't always see the thanks being given that day. I'm just being honest, so I'm giving it today and hopefully that will be rectified in the future. We would like to extend a special thank you to Sergeant Mary Sumter and Officer Eunice Bergeson for representing the CPD while joining other Midlands law enforcements as the honor guards for the service and I have pictures of them up here on the screen and I'm very thankful to these ladies as I'm sure you are. Additionally, Chief Holbrook joined Major Roberts and Lieutenant Wesley at the Eastminster Presbyterian Church for the Servant Leaders Service and Awards Luncheon which also occurred where two of our up and coming female police officers were recognized and presented with the Eastminster Presbyterian Servant Leaders Award, Officer Lauren Basil here on the screen and Officer Ashanti Rembert, Officer Basil is with our Southeast Region and Officer Rembert is with the TRU unit. In addition, and we're really thankful to these ladies, in addition, FBI National Academy graduate Captain P. J. Blundowski, who I know many of you know well, Chief Holbrook recently announced that the Southeast Region captain, a 20 year veteran of the Columbia Police Department graduated from the 283rd session of the Federal Bureau of Investigations National Academy. This is quite an accomplishment and this took place on September 13th in Quantico, Virginia. Captain Blundowski was among 285 fellow law enforcement officers representing 49 states and 21 countries, five military organizations and five federal and civilian agencies to receive the graduate distinction. He joins a wonderful group of our Columbia to police department officers who have gone through this training, many of whom have gone on to be on the command staff and you can continue to read in your report about all of Blundowski's background and the wonderful work he does for us here at the city of Columbia. I hope that we can have the two officers and Captain Blundowski up here at some point so we can formally recognize them for their achievements and their recognitions. Yes, sir, absolutely. Another initiative that the Columbia Police Department has been engaged with some of our partners, neighboring partners is the encampment cleanup and shopping cart recovery initiative. It has been given a whole name because it has been quite the effort that started on September the sixth in the 5,400 block of the Forest Drive Business District. The objective was to address the complaints of panhandling and urban camping by the transit population in the area. The complaints received and I know many of you have received them. I wanna thank Mr. Taylor in particular who's taken this initiative on with the police department but these encampments have been located in wooded areas and on a few business properties. Shopping carts were being taken unlawfully from area businesses to transport supplies used by the transit population with building the encampments and then they filled the debris left on the shoulder of roadways and bringing just blight to the area. The theft of the shopping carts placed an economic strain on businesses and the transit population used the shopping carts to store their personal property contributing to unlawful activity like panhandling and these businesses were being forced to spend money to replace the carts. On September 6th, the Columbia Police Department and code enforcement in conjunction with Walmart staff began the shopping cart initiative. Officers actually recovered shopping carts from wooded areas, encampments and street side locations. The code enforcement staff of the city of Columbia Police Department and the public work staff of the city removed several large encampments behind the shopping center and movie theaters out on Forest Drive. The Walmart staff was on site to receive, clean and sterilize these carts as they were returned recovering 106 shopping carts totaling a value each of $150 for a grand total estimated over $16,000. The area appeared much better. However, it will take a collaborative effort to continue between CPD code enforcement, Art Richland County sheriffs and the area businesses in order to sustain success and meet expectations of the community at large and the commercial code enforcement officers will monitor the businesses for continued cooperation and accountability. I really wanna thank them for this effort. This was huge and I wanna thank again Mr. Taylor for his involvement with bringing in management from Walmart and Sam's. You have in your report from me one of the emails thanking us from the Sam's Club complex store manager from Walmart and the Sam's Club store manager Bobby. But anyway, it was just a great effort by all. It shows what can be done when everyone works together and there's Lieutenant Wesley on the screen being thanked for the efforts on behalf of the department. Any questions? Excellent report. I think the mayor's motion to bring the people in here so we can salute them. Okay, we'll do that. I think she may have had that in mind today. He went to help rescue your colleague. I'll tell you all about that later. So, thank you. I would like to add to yours. I think Mr. Taylor and David Hatcher and others have also been meeting with all the property owners and really taking an effort that is spreading out to not only recover the carts, but to make sure that one of our most important gateways stays clean and that folks that are there have an opportunity to get to the wraparound services and other things that they need in a safe environment. So, I think it's very important that we continue those efforts. Absolutely. Well, that completes my report for this council meeting and with that we can move into the city council committee referrals, reports and new business starting with item 32, the affordable housing task force report, the honorable Tina in Herbert. Herbert? Yes, we are. I'm really excited about what we're doing with the affordable housing task force. We have restructured, I think I mentioned, and our two committees are the development committee and the other committee is the advocacy committee. Our development committee recently came up with the five major things they wanna address. Number one is capital for development, money, funds, resources. One of the things that we've listed, Mayor, is the discussions about looking at city property that may be available. And then market analysis to make sure we're addressing the highest need and not just creating housing and there may not be necessary need for it. We're gonna want to come up with a plan to address zoning challenges, such as mixed use corridors, minimum parking requirements and placement. The third thing that development wants to look at is fees and other incentives that may be available for developers. Look at more multi and single family revitalization, renovation projects, and so really focusing more on what we can renovate and multi-family, the town homes, condominiums, as opposed to just single family homes. And I think an example would be young adults or seniors. Everyone does not want the 1500 square foot home. They want something smaller. And then capacity building, which I really like, capacity building for faith-based organizations. We have a ton of churches who have been buying land near their areas to clean up, but they haven't had the ability to do anything with it. And so they come to the city oftentimes asking us to develop the property, but we aren't developers in that nature. But putting together a course or a seminar or materials to help them go through the process to see how they can develop their land or put affordable housing on there. That's what they choose to do. The advocacy committee is gonna focus on five primary goals. One is a education campaign about fair housing and really looking at how we perceive the perception of affordable housing. Right now there is a negative understanding or connotation of affordable housing. And so we really wanna address that affordable means affordable to that person. So we really looking at doing a campaign for that. We also wanna educate landlords. I think a lot of times we have folks who are getting into the business and to the investment business, but they don't really understand on the front end the requirements. A lot of times they don't have the funding to really maintain their property. So we wanna do some education in that area. And then create a housing directory. The CD has one, but we wanna make sure that our developers, our faith-based organizations and the like, they kinda know what the resources are. We see that some of these resources are redundant and so we don't want people creating things that are already there. And then finally establishing a housing court. And the housing court will address eviction. We have a high eviction rate. And we wanna make sure that we're finding avenues to where evictions are not proper that we are addressing those for those citizens. So very excited. The committees met for our meeting by themselves this week. And so we'll meet again next month to see what they come up with. Thank you. Oh, and one last thing. I did wanna mention that we're gonna be doing a trip mayor. I wanted to invite you. Northside Development in Spartanburg. There's a lot of talk about how they're doing affordable housing. And we're gonna go. It's a great project. Yes, on September 29th, if you wanna take a trip. Only if you're buying lunch. Oh, I don't know. We have to see. I can think of a handful of places we need to eat. And that concludes my report. Thank you, Ms. Herbert. Mr. Taylor. Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor. We met the Economic Development Committee met on Tuesday, September 13th. Nice presentation by Diane Sumter on the TAPS program and how that's involved minority contractors. I think the city manager's gonna try to edit that down and get that presentation up on our website so everybody will have a chance to see that. We went over the proposed grease trap rebate program and it was unanimously recommended that we bring it to council. We'll review that at next week's work session, I believe, and then have it for a vote the next time. We're gonna try to figure out how we can move these things straight from these committees up to council going forward. But we'll look at that next week, along with the revised or a proposal for having zoning hearings every month as a means to speed the process up and lower the number we have, like you saw today. We'll discuss that again at Tuesday's work session. We looked at Ms. Wilson's very fine recommendation on how we would structure our Economic Development Things department and how we'll move forward with the mission and we'll review that again on Tuesday, I believe. Actually, we've pushed that to either next Tuesdays or the work session after whichever time permits. That's the, Ms. Wilson will make that call. But overall, very, very good meeting. We had a robust discussion on property taxes and some things like that and we'll get a review from the... I was just adding and we discussed the food, the mobile food market. I just, we did, we looked at the mobile and referred that to OBO for future study since it wasn't referred up to councilized women. And everybody has a copy of the full minutes as attached to your agenda today. While I'm having the floor, I would, is this the way we make referrals too, correct? I mean, I would ask the mayor if we might refer second, first, and repeat code violations and that to be looked at by the Public Safety Committee. Mr. DeVall, we're gonna refer to your committee to look at repeat offenders on the code of violations and how we handle those. I know that's starting to come up more and more, a lot of complaints from folks in the neighborhood about things, repeat offenders. That will be coming your way. Be happy to discuss that. Dr. Bussells. So we've seen a lot of action around preventing and addressing homelessness over the last several weeks. For those of you all that may have heard, we unveiled with the support of the task force our rapid shelter Columbia, which will have a lot of different components, but two that I wanted to bring to your attention. One is that our inclement weather center now known as our rapid housing will be open year round to accommodate additional beds as well as address the unsheltered population. We will also be putting up 50 pallet shelters, which are single occupancy shelters that allow people to have their own space with dignity. And so this rapid shelter Columbia will really become that short-term solution for then our providers to come and triage those that are homeless or chronically unsheltered to permanent housing options as well as any other services that they may need. A lot of these plans that we unveiled very much were finalized and developed from input from our task force members. And so I thank all of them for being so involved. And in addition to this rapid shelter, we now have three positions open and being advertised on the city website around coordinating our homeless services. And so if you know somebody that's interested, please have them take a look at the website and then they can contact me or the city manager if they have any specific questions. Our last task force meeting will be actually tomorrow at 4 p.m. at the Busby Community Center. This doesn't mean that the work ends. It just means that we're taking a pause on the task force, which was always intended to be a short-term committee focus on really the urgency of the issue. We'll be reviewing the feeding ordinance that we've discussed in previous reports around requiring groups to notify if they will be doing a feeding to help address some of the environmental and litter concerns as well as lack of coordination that we've identified. We'll also be finalizing our long-term strategies that will be presented to city council in the next several weeks. And then finally, we will be concluding with next steps, really leveraging existing groups, such as the Midlands Area Coalition on Homelessness to continue some of these conversations and the work that's needed to be done around better collaborating and streamlining the services that we're providing those that are homeless. And that's all that I have there for the task force report. Do we have anybody else have any other referrals? I have one I'd like council to consider, which is because of so much information and things moving forward, I'd like to see if we could split the economic development and community development committee up, merge the infrastructure and environment and community development together. They haven't had a lot of items, but we got a lot of things going on in community development, but with so much going on economic development, I'd like us to consider merging those two together and splitting up the task so we can kind of keep the ball moving forward. I was curious if anybody had any concern if we made that happen. I think they're very related. They are, they make sense. And I just, I made the recommendation to the mayor because I just don't, we, you know, you serve on the economic development committee with we just haven't had, I don't think, an appropriate amount of time to commit to community development. And I think the environmental and infrastructure committee has some capacity there and has folks that can really help. Here I was thinking I get a little break. Oh right, there's no break. When I was the intent to send, not to send community development to the infrastructure committee, right? No, I can't support sending issues to infrastructure. No, we're changing it to the community development and infrastructure committee. You chair that. Dr. Bussles. I'm sorry, I have a lot of instructions today from staff, just forgive me. What's the question? I'm sorry. We were talking about taking community development. And, and, and merging that part of the economic and community development with environmental infrastructure so that with all the things that we want to talk about and address in those areas to keep the paths moving and utilize the standing committee as a lot of those environmental infrastructure and community development tie in together. So it makes the most logical sense. And the mayor had taught me about this community development environment and infrastructure committee would be the name possibly. And I think the question that I missed, I was trying to understand from Ms. Herbert was, were you asking about the community development action plan items specifically? Well, no, so when I said that I thought that they were related, I was really speaking more to economic development being related to infrastructure. I don't think that community development in and of itself is related to infrastructure. So it's, it's not a recommendation that I can support. So if we made community development and tied economic development and the other, you would, I mean, the point was trying to create more opportunity for us to get things moving forward in the city. And because there's so much from the economic development side that's being dealt with having us a parallel path with community development. And that's a standing committee that's logically that could handle that capacity. Or we could just, the next meeting address community development. We sit here almost at October the first. And unfortunately we haven't had the chance to include community development in any of our discussions. And I think it's an extraordinarily important part of our city's business. And when an environmental and infrastructure has had, has capacity, I'm not sure they've even had to meet yet, which would make it a great spot. I mean, I think, because I do think environment infrastructure and community development can go hand in hand together. Eric and I are just always trying to help. So to that point, are there less items that seem to be coming forward before the council for environment and infrastructure to have a whole committee about it versus having a community development based committee. And then if you do have some items that might be environment or infrastructure related, we figure out where those would go as they come up. If you haven't had anything, I don't know. I would be fine with that either. I just, I think we just gotta, we're trying to clear a path to get items addressed and have opportunity to utilize the talent that we have up here to get things done. So my suggestion is, is we marinate on this and we come forward, we come up with a plan that goes how we structured if it's one way or another. But I think we've got to move those past forward. And so I'm expecting that we come up with a result to make that happen. We obviously, we've got a standing committee that can be utilized and that's where it should go. I just think you figure out if you wanna change the name and then we push environmental and infrastructure to economic development at the time, if they need it or something, we can do that. Whatever y'all thinks best, come back with a recommendation. Let's move it forward. Just add to that. See, you know, with the homeless committee coming to a conclusion and the community development funds that deal with homeless and things like that, I just, to me, it just seemed like a very logical, logical landing spot. Put that on 399A of your list. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The intentions are always good and we will figure it out. Any, did y'all have any other referrals, Minister of Mayor? I don't. Is there anybody else having any other referrals? I don't have a referral, but I just wanted to remind staff that we wanted to do, we wanted the technology committee to meet in October to discuss how we're keeping track of the software that we're using to keep track of all of the emails and open items that we're getting and some, it's just a reminder so that we have time to prepare for it. I will reach out to you to get it scheduled. We don't have to figure it out today. Ha ha ha ha ha. We are at a point for public input if there's anybody who would like to speak. Did you have anybody sign up for any item outside of what we've already discussed? No, sir. Is there anybody who'd like to speak? Mr. Black? Yes, it's good evening now. The Columbia Council of Neighborhoods is currently having sponsoring a first responders stuffed animal donation drive. The purpose of this drive is to benefit Columbia's first responders with new stuffed animals to help ease the pain and fear of children in traumatizing situations. This has been going on for a few weeks now. We will be presenting the stuffed animals Thursday night at our monthly membership meeting to the Columbia Police Department and the Columbia Fire Department. I wanna take an opportunity to thank Assistant City Manager Pam Benjamin for helping to facilitate drop off locations here at City Hall and at the City of Columbia's new water department on Hardin Street. We also wanna thank Ms. Veronica Walker for her steadfast support in helping to promote this event for us and for just always being just there. With a smile. We've also added a couple more drop spots. Uncle Willie's on Main Street as well as yesterday we added a drop off spot for the Rosewood area at the El Nora Hubbard State Farm Agency located on South Shandon. And if you make a drop off there you might get to see Jake from State Farm. So we're the drop off locations are gonna conclude at noon on Thursday and again Thursday night will be presented. Could you say the dates again just so everybody could hear it? Thursday the 22nd, September 22nd. That's this Thursday. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to speak at this time? Mr. DeVall. Mr. Mayor, I make a motion to go into executive session to recede of legal advice relating to a pending threaten of potential claim pursuant to 30-4 as 782, late Catherine Seward improvements, discussion of employment of an employee pursuant to SC code 30-4 as 781, municipal court and economic development. The second. All right. Mr. Taylor knows. Ms. Herbert, Dr. Bussles, Mr. Brennan. Yes. Mr. DeVall. Mr. DeVall. Mayor Rickman. Thank you.