 Good afternoon, Madam clerk. Could you read the roll, please? Good afternoon, Mr. Taylor Miss Herbert here dr. Bussles mr. Brennan here mr. McDowell. Yes, mr. Duvall present Mayor recommend here. Thank you. Can we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Reverend McDowell would you share a word of prayer before we begin this meeting, sir? Sure. That is by our heads. Create a God for all that you've done for us, for the blessings of this day, for strength and empowerment during this hour. We ask that you might bless each one of us individually and collectively. Allow us to sense your presence as we gather in this room. Allow your anointing to fall afresh upon us so that the conversations we have, the decisions we make, that they are rooted and grounded in your grace. We ask it in your name. Amen. Motion to adopt the agenda. Mr. Mayor, I move we adopt the agenda with two amendments. One to add item 40. Discussion of negotiations and to propose contractual arrangement pursuant to SC code 30-4S782. And on item nine, to add an additional sentence that says the renewal cost is split equally with Richland County. The city's portion is $140,695.72. Is there a second? I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Further questions? Any comments? Hearing none, seeing none. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll please? Mr. Taylor? Aye. Ms. Herbert? Aye. Dr. Bussells? Aye. Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. McDowell? Yes. Mr. Duvall? Aye. Mayor Rickman? Aye. I was just, this is minor, quick clarification for the executive session item, the addition is to item 42, rather than item 40. Two, excuse me. Point Mayor, if there's any public input on the agenda items as outlined, we can take input at this time. Mayor, we don't have anyone signed up to speak at this time. Okay. And then we'll have the public hearing part. Thank you Mayor and Council. At this time, we will ask for approval of the minutes. Item number one council is asked to approve the November 15, 2022 council meeting minutes. Is there a motion to move? Second. Second. Any discussion, questions? Hearing none, seeing none. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll please? Mr. Taylor? Aye. Ms. Herbert? Aye. Dr. Bussells? Aye. Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. McDowell? Yes. Mr. Duvall? Aye. Mayor Rickman? Aye. Item number two, resolution number R-2020-099, approving the honorary naming of the interception of Blanding Street and Assembly Street, Judge L. Casey Manning Court. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Second. A motion is second. Any discussions, questions? Yes, sir, Mr. Mayor. Should we make the speed limit there the same as his Georgian Emperor at USA? I've never had that request before. I mean, that would be an interesting... We always thought the speed limit on George Rock's billboard should be 38 miles an hour. That's... What was Casey's number? Can you remember? I got 44 in the back of my mind. I had two on my mind. I should know that. You should. Former law clerk is supposed to know the answers of everything about him. We have a motion and a second. No further discussion, Madam Clerk. Could you read the roll? Aye. Ms. Herbert? Aye. Dr. Bussell? Aye. Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. McDowell? Yes. Mr. Duvall? Aye. Mayor Rickman? Aye. Thanks. Presentations, item number three, the Cooperative Ministry 40th Anniversary Proclamation. The Honorable Daniel J. Rickman, Mayor. Well, it gives me great pleasure. I had the opportunity to be there for the 40th anniversary celebration of the Cooperative Ministries, who's been an intricate part of our city in providing services. And it gives me great pleasure that we have an opportunity to honor their anniversary here today with a proclamation. And I'd like the opportunity to read that. Whereas the City of Columbia recognizes that nonprofits give shape to a community's boldest dreams, highest ideals and noblest causes, and feed, heal, shelter, educate, inspire, enlighten, and nurture people of every age, gender, race, socioeconomic status. The Cooperative Ministry was formed in 1982 by five downtown churches to establish a cooperative method of ministering assistance to the needy with the first services being provided Monday, September 20, 1982. The Cooperative Ministries has expanded its mission to increase the economic self-sufficiency of people experiencing poverty in the Midlands through crisis assistance and sustainability programs. Cooperative Ministry completes its mission by providing financial assistance and empowerment services, free clothing for work in school, emergency food, career improvement assistance, free tax, income tax preparation services, insurance, counseling, and budget counseling. The City of Columbia applauds the Cooperative Ministry for debt-free status, and that 90% of all expenses support program services. Whereas the City of Columbia celebrates the work of the Cooperative Ministry's local board of directors, staff, and volunteering, including the leadership of the chief executive officer. So therefore, I, Daniel J. Rickerman, the mayor of the City of Columbia City Council, along with my fellow members of Columbia City Council, do hereby celebrate with this proclamation the 40th anniversary of Cooperative Ministries. Thank you, Mayor Rickerman, and thank you, City Council, for recognizing the Cooperative Ministries 40 years of service to the Midlands and the Greater Columbia Area. And it is a true honor to be here and to accept this resolution on behalf of our board of directors, our partnering faith-based organizations in the Midlands, our donors, our clients, our staff, and all of those who support the ministry. Thank you so much. Thank you for what y'all do. We really appreciate it as a city. All 199,422 of us. And I know y'all have a lot to do, so don't feel obligated to hang out. Our next presentation, Mayor and Council, is the City Beautification Project Update. It's really meant to be a comprehensive update led by Mr. Robert Anderson, Public Works Director, but also with one of our community partners, Mr. James Bennett, Midlands Business Leadership Group. And this has been a long time coming for that second part of the presentation, so we're glad that James, I think, and Mr. Lee Bussles is here as well. Robert. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, City Manager. We've been working quite a bit. I'm going to give just a quick overview of the public works side of what we've been doing, and then, of course, make some introductions. So we've went through some of this. I'm going to be very brief on this. You know, we've got some current practices that we've been doing in Public Works for many years, and that's a 14-day mowing cycle, mulching beds, planting our yearly annuals, but doing a lot of conversion from annuals to perennials, shrub trimming, edging crews that the City Manager graciously put out a couple of years ago, especially on main thoroughfares, so they all look somewhat routine. Everybody don't know their yard at the same time. Tree removals after health care and curb painting, which we will get through. We have got one crew that does this, and notifications of right-of-way maintenance. So what we do now is we go out and maintain a right-of-way. We generally send a letter or a note to the homeowner, making it notified of them that there's their responsibility to actually maintain that. So future projects that we've got coming online. Some of these we've got some good news about. North Main. North Main is getting ready to be completed, I believe, so we will have the stretch between Anthony and Columbia College. Elmwood, we recently did a project for a safety project, but we replanted a bunch of low-growing plants on Elmwood that we will be maintaining on a regular basis. We have Green Street and the Green Street Bridge. I put that in my presentation. Later I have a comment about that. We are actually not going to maintain the Green Street Bridge. Ms. Gentry, and I believe some others here, worked out a deal that USC is going to maintain the Green Street Bridge, the Green Street Corridor, Lincoln Street from Senate Street to Blossom Street. So that will be on their plate, not on ours, which we're looking forward to. We will watch it very closely and make sure it's maintained. We've got South Main that will come on board. Five points we hear may kick off next year. And of course, the Assembly Street project. Forestry Division has been working on some initiatives, and what we're going to do is we're going to look at, we've grown so much in the last 15 or 20 years that we're going to look at contracting some of the mowing out on the interstates, Harbison possibly, I-126, Garner's Ferry, and I-277. We're going to try to maintain them a little bit sooner and the dandelions don't grow as quick with contractors. Then we're going to refocus our city crews and we're going to refocus them on several projects that I'll talk about in a few minutes. Of course, we've got our partnership, I mentioned, just a second ago with USC, they're going to do Green and Lincoln. We are going to work with the city center partnership. We're going to look at our local garden clubs and let them help design some of our projects. The project I looked at the other day, I reviewed with Kelvin and a couple others, is the City Hall 1800 Main Street, where the plants were over to 1800 Main. We're going to concrete the top of that and we're going to go in with a section of planters, both tall and small, keep the plants small for safety, but actually give that some color, hopefully tie it into the City Hall out front here with some more pots and stuff and we will change those to seasonal flowers throughout the year. So hope to change them out several times and get some good color going on. So there's a couple of other things that go along with this and I've got tree removal 1500 Main Street. So we were notified by a partner of ours, so the city the other day about a month ago and in front of Cowboys, if you're sitting there looking at Cowboys on the right hand side of Cowboys, there's a tree that needs to be removed. The tree is completely dead. I believe Sarah has looked at it so as one of our other arborists. We have a contractor scheduled to come in this Sunday. We've already talked to City Center Partnership. We'll be doing a little bit more publicity on it, but the tree will need to be taken out with a crane. So that is part of a, unfortunately, a beautification project is once we get it out, we've got to get the stump ground and got to get a tree back into the location. So as we have agent tree canopies, this is things we do not want to happen, but like I said, we'll make sure the communication's there in a notification process. We've already talked to City Center Partnership. Employee introduction. Caleb left us a few months ago to go live in Missouri and work for one of our arch rivals, which is a utility company, and now he's telling everybody how he wants to trim trees off the power lines. But in that, we found our new floor stream beautification superintendent, Brian Niger. Brian came to us. Brian came to us from one of the private tree companies in town. He's really come in with a wide, I guess a wide approach of looking. It's easy to do trees, as I told Brian. It's completely different to look at the beautification side of things. And he's really come up with some good plans that we're looking at. One of the things we've done recently is the SCDOT City Collaboration. We've met several times with the mayor and the Highway Commissioner and some others at SCDOT, Clint, about medians and about the condition of our medians. We did a pilot project with them. They cleaned the medians on Jervay and Hugie Street, and then we went back in and we painted Jervay Street, and that's where we stopped right now until we figure out what we're going to do. I know we got it. Somebody might be smiling, but we heard we were putting mustard all over the place. So we're going back to the drawing board to see how this will work. I think on Hugie Street, we're actually going to go back in with a forehead stripe around it. I don't think our crews have got to that yet, Councilman. So we're actually looking at the business corridor challenge. We don't know how that would work. And one of the presentations, I had actually seen it once, Councilman Taylor actually brought it in, is the pilot program that we reached out to Code Enforcement. And thinking about that pilot project and the potential beautification project it has and the impacts it could have all over the city. And to give a quick brief, and I think David Hatcher was talking to the company last week, this would be the company that comes in, takes pictures from our garbage trucks on the side, and actually will be able to, my understanding is to send out notices of property maintenance, tarps, mailboxes via email. And that's just a great way and maybe a cheap way that we don't have to use labor to actually get our word out to some of these areas. So I think we're going to do a pilot program off of that and David's just working on that as we speak. I think he met with them last week. So the next one I have is always solid waste. This time of year when things become dormant, we definitely see increase in litter and litter collection. So we will be using additional temporary labor as we can. Of course we're in our leaf season of 2022. Weather is always a factor of our leaf season. You never know what the weather's going to do. You never know who's going to rake their yard, when they're going to rake their yard and how much they're going to rake. Last weekend was a beautiful weekend. I even spent some time in my yard as well as I've heard of a lot of others did too. And we're seeing that right now. But I will say that our staffing levels this year are at a probably what I would consider is at all time high up until yesterday. I think we had three positions left in the solid waste division to include our CDL drivers. So we have lots of people to work. We are having some equipment issues and some equipment challenges this year that we're trying to work through and make sure that we get enough vehicles on the street each and every day to do our best. Those crews are working right now six days a week, 10 hours a day. And we'll probably do so at least at Christmas until we see this lightened back up. I haven't seen the Tunney's reports yet, but I'm looking forward to that. The additional service we did this year is we took our hook lift with our six containers. And our six roll-off containers were actually moving them every week to a new location, sending notifications out similar as we do to the Dominion tree trimming. We're sending them out to the neighborhoods. And those containers are available. So if somebody does not want to leave their leaves in front of their house, they can bag them and they can bring them to our container locations and they can put them in there. And it helps us a little bit. I will say up to date we've not had much success on that. We probably have less than 20 cubic yards, but we are moving them around and we'll continue to do so. And hopefully that will catch on later on. Is that just for leaves? Right now it is just for leaves. We've got a skeleton in one from Halloween. We are working with code enforcement. When they do their neighborhood sweeps, we are putting a container out within the neighborhood that's been successful of people just having a location very quickly to dump their stuff, keeps our crews from picking it up off the street. One of the initiatives we are working on is the Welcome to Columbia signage. We've got a budget this year. We've got put some goals to standardize the signage of primary, secondary and smaller entrances. So hopefully we'll have some consistency. So we've got RFP specifications developed after today's meeting based on your feedback. We will get with our purchasing department and start sending them out to companies. What we're asking the companies to work with staff to seek input, provide a couple initial designs that we can share. We want to be able to make adjustments. We want to be able to look at the colors, the fonts, the dimensions, the heights of the letters, the materials going to be made of and make sure it's long-lasting. We will do a presentation on the final design and selections during a work session to counsel for your feedback. We will demonstrate the materials selected to make sure it's a minimal maintenance. And of course we're going to want stamped engineering drawings for specifications, fabrications, lighting if we decide to do lighting landscape irrigation or signs. One of the things when staff talked about it was providing some kind of up lighting to the signs. You know, everybody's now wanting to change the lights on something. We've actually got automatic bulbs in front of City Hall so we can pretty much change these lights from anywhere they're hooked to the Wi-Fi. So these will go out very soon. After today, the other thing we have, of course, as we continue to remove the sign letter around town, the brown signs that are, you know, consistently going away. And I know there's still some on Elmwood pair. There's still some on Bull Street, too. I'm very excited about this. One thing I just wanted to note is, and I know we've talked about this, it's especially important for us to take a look at how these signs will be consistent with some of our previous signs, whether it's in partnership with Experience Columbia or some of the other branding that we already see around the city. So if we can incorporate that into our discussions with the final organization, I think that will be important. And then, of course, doing preliminary research, you and I both know that kind of opening up to companies that we wouldn't traditionally think be able to do this, right? So more of our signed companies or creative companies, I think we can really get a lot of bang for our buck and get a lot of gateways taken care of that way as opposed to the more traditional construction approach. I've recently seen a sign, and I'm probably going to steal somebody's thunder that was put out at Lake Murray that's a very attractive sign. Mr. DeVall. Mr. Mayor, while Robert's up here, I want to thank Robert and Sarah and Brian and Anne and all the others that participated in the Arbor Day celebration last Friday at Logan School. We planted two trees out there, one Deodora cedar and a cypress. Cypress, ball cypress. Ball cypress tree. There's two Deodora cedars on that. Did you plant the ball cypress? No, I was the ball cypress. And you are. There are already two Deodora cedars on that property and it looks real good. Arbor Day is a requirement for Tree City and we're getting ready to get about number 41 in Tree City. 44? 44, 44 in Tree City. Which is the longest in the state, am I correct? Yes, it's the oldest one in the state. It's not the first one in the state. The first one in the state was the town of Chirol, but they missed one year, so Columbia is now ahead of us as an award of Tree City, but we're right behind the city of Columbia. And while I have the microphone and talking about public works, I want to commend Veronica for her presentation last Thursday night at the South Kilburn Neighborhood Association. The reason Robert has gotten his employment up is because Veronica is out there at these neighborhood meetings talking about going down to public works and getting a job and how good these jobs would be. So I think that she has done a great job of spreading the word that public employment with public works is a great thing for the city of Columbia. Thank you. Thank you, Reverend McDowell and Councilman Brennan. Reverend, I want to thank you for this, for your support, of course. And we're looking at futuristic projections as it relates to beautification. Let me just look at it on the flip side. What have we done and what are we doing to maintain those areas, the areas that we already have, in terms of beautification? Councilman, I think it's a great question and I think with the additional funding what we've seen from the city by contracting out the mowing areas, it will bring our people closer to town and instead of running lawn mowers, we'll get to spend more time of weeding the beds and putting them all out and doing additional maintenance in town. We've grown so much that we just needed to add some people. We've mowed harvests recently. We've mowed it down to an inch and a half, I believe, just to see how it would look with the contractor. We've got a very good cost and we had a lot of contractors looking for business. Yeah, while the futuristic projections are great, that maintenance part of those areas, of course, is just as equally important as it relates to beautification. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Robert, I think everybody noticed Hugh G Street and Jervais Street, the medians getting some TLC that they deserve from not only our city staff, but I think Department of Corrections had some crews out there working that from our conversations with the DOT, how do we continue the collaboration and how do we, because it'd be fantastic if we could treat every road like we did for that little time span at Hugh G and Jervais. It makes a big difference. So I breezed across the top of that and I'll go back and discuss that a little bit, is the idea of doing Jervais Street and doing in front of the State House and down Jervais Street and Hugh G Street or Hugher Street, whichever one, was to let everybody see what is going on. The idea that we had through the collaboration with the Mayor and the Highway Commissioner and some of the individuals with DOT is to do in front of the State House. Now the next part is more of a political deal is we want the State House people to see how good our city can look and how people come in and while 70% of the streets are owned and maintained by DOT, there's no reason we can't strike a partnership, but they need to come to the table with some funding that they don't have to actually do these projects. Mayor? One of the things that we have to add to the legislative agenda is there's no O&M money for our roads. Everything is projected for the highway. So part of this was a collaboration between the SEDOT, the city and the county because we need the county portion as well because all our entranceways are split. So we want to future address all the entranceways and all of our secondary roads. And I think this was our first step and working together to collaboratively go to our legislative delegation to get money set aside for maintenance for our streets because there's... For just beautification or... No, total maintenance, there is absolutely no money scheduled for that. And so that will be one of our lobbying efforts this year to address. Mr. Taylor and then Ms. Herbert. Robert, let me just say thank you for what you guys are doing. It's really rewarding to see us really take, once again, pride in the way the city looks. I can remember when I was a kid riding down Trinum Road and seeing that sign that said, welcome to Columbia, all American city. And I see my friend James sitting there and we've talked about this a lot. And the better we make things look, I think more people take care of things. The lesser crime that we see and so forth and so on. So I just want to tip my hat. I want to publicly say thank you to Bill Dukes, who's our resident highway commissioner who I know has spent the time with the mayor and some private citizens as well to reinforce the importance of it. Two things. Going back to the solid waste for a second. We refer to committee of ways that we might look at taking the Herbie Kirby's off of our main city streets to the back of buildings and maybe substitute dumpsters and things like that. I want to make sure that that's still somewhere in the study and the dialogue. And then is it worthwhile, we don't need to get into that debate today, but it is worthwhile for us to look at some programs perhaps where people put their household garbage or trash on the street the day before pickup versus seeing mattresses and couches and things out on the street for a week. I know people get a little testing sometimes when you take about it, but as I was coming down Trenton Road it looked a little bit like a Sanford and Sun commercial in front of some of those houses. And I just think that's something we ought to take a look at. So the first answer is I haven't reviewed the map yet about the downtown area and the five points of stuff. I hear it's ready. I need to review it. I did it 15 years ago and looked at it. I just need to look at there's been so much development downtown to see if anything's not been landlocked. It did work years ago. The household we'll look at. We did look at it years ago and that's a fun one, trust me. But that's where this dumpster program could come into play too is getting that and using that as well because that would eliminate that so the sooner we can go down both of those paths, I think it would be great. Ms. Herbert. I just said one last thing. I was going to say on the inner city Herbie Kirby's for commercial deals I mean, don't we have some restaurants and things that might have seven or eight or ten of those green boxes that are picked up multiple days a week and if we can look somehow to whether it's credits to them and switching to dumpsters in the back with a private thing or something put those off the screen. So we do and there's a lot of areas that never had a location for a dumpster but there was some that was not located for a dumpster. The reason we added some of the carts was for them to not put their garbage on the ground at least it would be containerized. The one that really strikes my mind real quick that is closed right now is Starbucks in the Vista. There was absolutely no place for a dumpster whatsoever. I know Missy Gentry is sitting here. We worked many times on Park Street before we got the garbage dumped about using somebody else's dumpster and that's all great until somebody spills something on the side and you have the dispute and you're back to step one. It's something we can work on. We have to look at each one individually. Let me just say again, thank you for what you're doing. I would remind the mayor and council members the yellow he's picked out to paint the curves happens to be the same color as the first in Missouri. Oh my goodness. Thank you sir. So how about garnet and black curves? I hear you. So Robert help me just for clarification under sign removal and sign litter. Are you referring to because we have a lot of businesses who have signs and believe that after a business is closed these old signs need to be removed or the names need to go but then we have these people who run for office and they put all these yard signs out and they don't come back to get their yard signs and they're there for weeks. Not any of us, I'm sure but they're there for weeks and weeks and weeks sometimes months. Do we have any particular policy on whether or not we'll pick them up or anything like that after a certain amount of time because we have tons of yard signs in June but I have primary signs that are all throughout the neighborhoods. So I can address the first part of this fairly simply is we're looking at there's a museum sign on Elmwood Avenue and right after the museum a brown museum sign that DOT put up we have a way finding sign that shows the museum turning left. That's the signs we need to remove because they're just duplicates and the state's all for that. 277 in downtown directing you to the museum. Somebody like me might need all 12 but I can understand the duplication. So political signs are signs in the right-of-way, signs in our beds we do remove during the election season we do hold them, they come back and get them if they need to put them back out but then after that I believe Krista I think that really falls under your will house is they're supposed to be removed like a record. So do we remove them when folks don't do what they're supposed to do? Yeah code enforcement does code or zoning one of the two teams does. In the right-of-way we will remove them if they are on private property we will contact the property owner. And we're doing that now? Well we are now Tina. I'm just saying Are we doing that now? We have contacted property owners on that signage. So we can take a look. Hey Robert one quick last question fantastic to hear the recruitment and retention for the employment levels that are so high. For the seasonal employment do we have any plans to keep those seasonal employees on for other beautification scope anything that we've talked about? So a lot of our seasonal employees do not have driver's licenses and we do require driver's licenses except for solid waste they actually have four position that does not but anybody that has a driver's license we are looking to employ anybody and everybody we can we're still using the express policy to where we can onboard people in two or three days that has been a very big help for us about getting us back to normal. CDL drivers we're getting applications CDL drivers every day the problem with CDL drivers are it's working great for solid waste it's working great for people that want to drive trucks but the operator side of that is they don't want to get in the ditch and they don't want to scoop anything they just want to drive trucks. But you don't need a driver's license to be a part of the landscaping team to run a weed eater on medians in our major thorough affairs right? Is there funding for to keep those seasonal employees on year round? As they get in a long time budget yes but we do as public works budget quite a bit of money for seasonal labor. Thanks Robert. That brings us to one of our big initiatives that I think our city manager said first and foremost it's been a long time coming and I think the long time coming is anytime you put I don't want to steal anybody's thunder but anytime you put as many municipalities as we have together and the document we have to make sure that every government can agree on this document is a big deal. The one thing I do want to point out before I introduce the individuals is that this project is based on not within the city it's based on just areas of traffic and based on needs and I think some of it came out from March Madness back when they had the football game here basketball games here in town that flew into Columbia had to drive down 302 and it's great to drive out of the airport but when you get to 302 that drive to the interstate is a tough drive so this derived from that so every municipality that's working on this and every county is putting in money for the maintenance side of this based on population the first two sides of our population is about $25,000 we may have to adjust that number for inflation like I said I got involved quite a while ago and it's been great to see this project come hopefully to a head and get done two people I'd like to introduce the first one is our current chair of the Midlands Business Leadership Group and that's Lee Bussells and then the former chair who I've worked with probably most of the time is going to give the update today Lee's the chairman he's the former chair James has the crown now I've worked with James about as long as anybody okay so so long I guess I've got it all confused but I'm going to let James update you on our progress okay to members of council Mr. Mayor thank you for the opportunity to be here today I represent the Midlands Business Leadership Group I am the current chair of MBLG who used to be the chair of governmental cooperation which is now Lee Bussell and we also have with us Aston Pearson who's our second director of the MBLG but I want to first thank our city manager Teresa Wilson and Robert for their continued support of this initiative this was a pre-COVID initiative and so we continue to work and as Robert mentioned it's like hurting cats but we've been told that during our history it's the first time that we know of where City of Columbia Richland County Lexington County Town of Lexington West Columbia Springdale Irmo, Farsacres they've come together in a collaborative effort not just for the gateways but for the region and if our region is to continue to compete with the Greenville and Charleston it's going to take collaboration and so it has taken us this long to get through the process but we wanted to make sure that we were doing it right we involved the Cawk who has been working on this IGA agreement over the years in Columbia to make sure that we had taken out the unincorporated areas and we had to tweak on behalf of Richland County now Richland County is the only governmental entity to date that has approved the IGA hopefully before you finish the day that the City of Columbia will approve the Cawk and then we're close to Lexington County for the approval but when you get to the smaller entities like Farsacres, Irmo, Springdale, West Columbia and Casey they have their own MOU that protects them because a lot of those entities want to pay all the money upfront and not tax on an ongoing basis one thing I'll say about the MBLG they have put the money where their mouth is we are taking on the responsibility of raising the dollars for implementation of the eight gateways the total project is a little over two million dollars the first two projects is as Robert mentioned it's I-26 and I-72 which is the airport corridor and then the second immediate implementation will be I-77 and Fars Drive because of the extensive need at the airport those two gateways round a million in two and so the business community has already raised those funds and we will continue to raise the funds for the other six what the IGA asked individual governmental bodies to do is to provide ongoing maintenance and as Robert mentioned it's based on a pro-rata share based on the population but Rickson County, Lexington County and then the city of Columbia will have the pro-rata commitment to those gateways now the other six gateways if you can imagine I-20 and US-1 I-20 and 26 with their merge I-26 in Harbison and that's the exit that is in the city of Columbia also I-20 and 277 I-20 and one I-77 and then I-77 and 26 and so although we explain to the governmental bodies is not a gateway per governmental entity this is a regional approach but I think after you heard where the gateways are located by and large majority of those are in the city of Columbia and so again we are here in support what you're doing for beautification because we think it is so important I notice that your existing identification of gateways involves signage hours is pretty much just the landscaping but signage is very much welcome in those gateways it's just it was kind of cost prohibitive from the to create signage on all eight but individual governmental bodies or municipalities are free to add the signage to the gateways but what's so great about this is that once you enter into the midlands you know that you're into the region because of the consistency in the landscaping and so that is what sets this project apart and after meeting with Mr. Taylor and Dr. Bussles I think when we look at the gateways that you all have identified in the city they overlap pretty good and I think you all have chosen one that we didn't have but I think it was a great gateway I think that's the Elmwood and I-26 that's a great one but by and large our gateways are within 10 miles from the state house and that's how they came up you know Mr. Mayor I'd be glad to answer any questions that you may have Any questions for Mr. Bennett I would great to see that this is all coming together and excited to hopefully have the regional cooperation happen quickly and efficiently what is the timeline for breaking ground for the first gateway that you all have identified by the airport so we are hopeful that this spring that we will be breaking ground for 302 and 302 with the help of the city we were able to put the pre-emergent down this fall to cut back on the growth and the weeds we are now preparing to go forward with the RFP that hopefully by January or early February we would have identified the contract of the landscaping in hopes to start the planting early spring or mid spring Mr. Taylor we have already approved this not what James said earlier should only Richland County have approved it approved it today it's in our agenda it's on your agenda for today Mr. Bennett, thank you very much for your hard work being part of that committee I thought COVID was going to kill this like it killed a lot of other things but the miracle grow kept it going and we appreciate it thank you all for your commitment to help raise the money this is going to be a great thing I think with the added signage and the cleanup and all the things coming together the efforts with DOT and Richland County working together along with Lexington County to improve our gateways to make our community inviting we are the capital city region and we need to look like it good and thank you all thank you for what you do every day to continue to make our city great well Mr. Bennett let me just say how good it is to see the business leadership of Columbia and the council chambers I mean good to be here you are kind enough to serve as a member of the Tax Modernization Committee and your personal involvement to make our city a better place is truly appreciated thank you all thank you sir at this time we will move to our final presentation item number five capital city Lake Murray Country update Ms. Miriam Atria president and CEO for the capital city Lake Murray Country Regional Tourism Board and I also brought along Vicki Davis our vice president of special events and funding good evening capital city Lake Murray Country continues to break records now heading into our 42nd year in business hosted 25 nations to the Columbia Canal Riverfront Park and Lake Murray in the region on October 16th we spread the business all across the four county region we promote with the 16th World Black Bass Championship first time ever on the United States and the United States many of our international visitors stayed over three weeks Vicki was told day one we only have 16 nations interested and then the magic happened and we had 25 nations visit we have included in your packet this evening the television coverage schedule which does not show all of the social media videos and exposure that will be planned across the United States and world we have an audience alone from the top bass fisherman Scott Martin and Jacob Wheeler who were on the U.S. bass team who we sponsor every year they have produced major video coverage of this event and just FYI we are submitting this event for a statewide tourism economic impact award we as of today are currently working on and confirming a bid and contract to secure the colonial life arena for three years for an event to feature 350 plus chefs across the world we are trying to lure this business from Dallas, Texas to Columbia, South Carolina this is a result of national press received and our organization's efforts in the recent final table which was hosted in Columbia in April of 2022 and we've been in discussions with Mayor Rickerman regarding this business and the impact also in the month of October we hosted the Southeastern State Park Directors and Staff from 14 states and they toured the entire region and dined heavily in the city of Columbia we made sure of that they enjoyed our hospitality and we actually blew them out of the water they could not go to Congaree National Park we brought Congaree National Park to them in a hotel conference room 360 degree view in video experiencing kayaking down the rivers biking and the scenic beauty of Congaree National Park we have dropped off for you this evening our annual report we present our annual report differently because we are charged with promoting a four county region and this is a very large geographical area and talk about working regionally we do and we hope that all the members of council will really take to heart the information we are sharing with you and give us a call if we need to explain any of that information we are here tonight also to present our visitor guide which highlights a lot of information that is shared all across the United States and now all over the world our organization do you realize is bringing the potential of two world events to this region the strong for staff of five we are very proud of our record but tonight we want to share with you our 60 second version of our television ad and when I say our television ad this ad literally does run across the world we are charged by our state house to promote four counties some of our counties have more population more dollars than others but we can't do our job without the support of this council and we thank you for any and all support through the various tourism funds and we want you to know loud and clear we are putting skin in the game for tourism and economic development each and every day and even more days and more nights than days so this time we would like to share with you the 60 second version of our television ad and we feel you'll agree at the end of the day it shows our visitors there is so much to do in this four county region and in capital city like Murray country region we make you come alive we have so much to offer play the video please and you turn it up and it was kind of perfect time that we're here there was a lot of discussion about beautification I hope all of you have had the opportunity to see our new destination landmark that we just unveiled at highway 6 and 60 this is the first part of an extensive project that we've been working on for years as well we raised $100,000 in the community to make that portion that is now in existence happen that is not the end of the game in the spring we too will be doing some beautiful landscaping we're working with store mongo and some other community minded interested citizens to bring to fruition the beautification of the Lake Murray Dam it is an iconic welcome to Lake Murray and we appreciate once again this time this evening your support to bringing a lot of business to Columbia, South Carolina thank you any questions or comments yes Mr. Debal I'm always amazed by the amount of tourism you bring to the Midlands area especially the international and national events like the chef it wasn't called the chef's table but the final table but we want the big boys we want the world to change and the long lasting events the events that last weeks here in Columbia it's a real added to the economy and I appreciate what Lake Murray Country does and hope we can continue to be good partners with you and then I haven't forgotten what Vicki is currently working on in April past masters arrives any other questions thank you very much for being here good to see you Madam City Manager yes sir at this time we will take up the consent agenda items 6-25 Mayor and Council is there a motion I have a motion is there a second any comments, questions or concerns Mr. Taylor Mr. Taylor can you end your mic thank you just would like for to be noted in the minutes items 12 and 25 we just have requested not a date specific just a presentation in the future yes sir that's 12 newly noted we had a motion to second any other questions or concerns at this time hearing none seen Madam Clerk could you read the roll please Mr. Taylor Mr. Herbert Dr. Bussells Mr. Brennan yes Mr. McDowell Mr. Duvall I recommend thank you we do have two second reading items that are zoning planning matters the first is item 26 an amendment to the unified development ordinance for non-conforming sites the first reading approval was given on November the 15th 2022 is there a motion motion is there a second second I've got a motion to second any questions comments or concerns this will be the second reading hearing none seeing none Madam Clerk could you read the roll please Mr. Taylor Mr. Herbert Dr. Bussells Mr. Brennan yes Mr. McDowell Mr. Duvall I recommend thank you 27 zoning planning matter for first reading is an annexation the interim future land use map amendment and interim zoning map amendment for 3800 overbroot drive in 16 Super Street good evening city council so this is not actually a zoning public hearing item these are annexations first reading and an interim zoning amendment you will see the public hearing for the confirmation of the zoning at a later date however we do know that there is interest in this annexation before you but this is a donut hole that has been a priority area for city council to annex for a number of years it is coming in from the county with a high density residential zoning classification you are looking to apply an interim zoning of a medium density residential zoning classification in this area it is in the rosewood community Mr. Mayor yes so what we are voting on today is an interest and not the actual ordinance itself no it is an ordinance it is an annexation ordinance so you have two methods by which there is an annexation with an interim zoning which this is and then at times you have an annexation with the actual zoning which will come later yes sir so what next steps and at what points does public have input in that process well the public can have input into your annexation state law though really provides only city council with a planning commission any advisory capacity with regard to annexation it is solely within your purview the zoning is within planning commission to advise you so the next steps would be to bring the zoning map amendment in the public hearing to you if there are any development proposals for this site that require planning commission review which we understand there will be that will require that planning commission review at a later date as well and those plans that are reviewed by the planning commission are those the final designs or can the developer stray with design after that planning commission approval there's a small amount of latitude generally speaking if it's less intense than what was proposed to planning commission that can be reviewed at a staff level if you have more intensity then that would be required to go back to the planning commission I also like to remind people too that the planning commission review is largely administrative it's not necessarily a discretionary review they were reviewing what are the regulations and whether or not it meets it so I do like to remind questions about this for example this is a motion to annex would we be annexing in at a different zoning that is currently annexed currently at the county are we changing the zoning when we annex it all our zoning classifications are not identical it's as similar if not actually a little bit less intense this is their high density residential so it's zone higher density at the county we're basically bringing it at the same or a little bit less it's about the same yes the density is about the same we had several people sign up obviously you're here we'd like to hear from you and Whitney Denton was the first person to sign up this Denton look at this well they've signed up good evening council thank you for allowing us to comment this evening I'm here not only for myself but for the south kill born neighborhood association we very much do agree with annexation of the donut holes because we do understand the challenges that they present but I do have some issues with the permanent designation request in the annexation request that went to planning for the urban core residential which under that states that we have wide streets parking is often on the streets so the building developer has a little bit more leeway under this designation it has very little setback to adjacent properties it does have them facing the road which the design Mr. Bowlers presented to us in October had four buildings all facing a middle parking lot we tried to do a parking space count we could not even count out two spaces per unit so the roads surrounding this are not wide they are actually very narrow the houses that butt up against this on super street if they have a car parked in front on their side there will not be another one allowed on the opposite side if the fire truck needs to come through it will have to take out somebody's car parked on the road same with an ambulance we have narrow roads the neighbors surrounding South Kilbourne road right now will tell you how miserable it has been for the past several weeks because they are now experiencing increased traffic the rosewood 25 year plan 11 years ago has stressed traffic concerns we had a pedestrian struck on South Kilbourne next to the Montgomery they did a few years back we are also stressing that in addition to traffic being out of control speed traffic safety study we are asking please to consider not 31 I actually support you holding water taps hostage for annexation and I think you should reduce the number required for that to more like 10 not 25 that is how much I do support annexation but I cannot support this project as it has been submitted to the neighborhood and not to mention two water main breaks in three days actually one was on a Thursday reported the second in front of 3800 overbrook on Friday it was not repaired until the following Tuesday so we have active leaks another reported today we are not handling the residences in our neighborhood and these water lines are phase three of the improvement thank you for your time Miss Denton so right now again we are just voting on whether or not we want to annex this into the city there is going to be other steps along the way to look at design and zoning and some of those other factors correct that is my understanding for staff to answer that because I think that is the clarification is that we are just talking about annexation no design or anything else at this point correct you are reviewing the project at this time there is going to be a huge room zoning classification but you will have another opportunity for the actual Mr. Robert is that correct did I say that correctly we have thank you Mr. Mayor members of the council I have lived with my wife at 3850 overbrook drive the last 36 years we purchased the house not long after graduating from University of South Carolina and I am an attorney in town I do hope you will do a visit of this area because the water problems as you have already been told are very bad we live about a half a block from the corner here at 3850 and there has been water problems water literally running down the street from the top here at 3800 overbrook by our house and others my neighbors are I just turned 65 years old my neighbors have been there longer than I have some other neighbors that are here today that you will hear from and we all have problems with this the traffic and I hope you do visit this traffic we have south kill born here rosewood goes into a little cut all super and the traffic is already very bad there I cannot imagine and I am not overstating our case putting in another 31 units calm apartments calm townhouses calm what you like on this corner I go to work about 7 o'clock every morning and the traffic is already bad there are school children standing along south kill born busses it is already bad again not overstating my case trying to take a left turn from south kill born on to rosewood drive and if you approve this in the form that it is in it is literally going to be a danger for school children and for others and there have been accidents in at least one person I know of hit representative Taylor earlier in the presentation you would mention herby curbies and the roll carts totally another different context but we are either looking at dumpster problems here or another 31 roll carts herby curbies calm what you want or 62 when you are counting recycling and it is already a mess in that neighborhood there are very big problems with this project is proposed and it would be a danger to the community and I hope you will do like a jury view and go look at this now you are not going to get a true sense of it I see them out of time because the roads closed off on south kill born with all these water problems but I think you would get an idea of how much damage this would cause to our community thank you Mr. Mayor I do appreciate the interest that everybody has but what we are dealing with tonight is whether we annex it into the city or not none of us have seen any development plans whatsoever and I would say to you for some of the problems you are having when you are speaking the question is whether we annex it or not and I hear you loud and clear on what you are saying and frankly people shouldn't have to go through lots of those things and I think if we annex you in which is at the current it doesn't change I think what our zoning folks said it doesn't change the zoning that is there now it actually makes it a little bit less but it gives us an ability as city council which we don't have today to cut down so really the question tonight is simply we want to be part of the city or remain part of the county I want to make it clear I do think we can help you a little bit more on these inner city things if we move forward with the annexation any project things I think you heard Ms. Christus say just a little while ago the project stuff will come we really just have not the things that you're talking about because we haven't seen that but I think as part of the city all of us would be here to help you the last person for that issue Ms. Kittle thank you so much for all your efforts and all the people that you listen to I know that there's a very good chance that every decision is difficult because you have to balance we need more money to come in to do all these wonderful things that we talked about today and to answer your question I think we're kind of split some people who only have dirt driveways are concerned that an annexation coming in that now that they're up in age they're going to be required to bring their yards up to the standards that you all hold really very high so there is concerns about that but there is definitely a benefit because code enforcement is something that I would love to see on Overbrook and just to throw in a plus your code enforcement officer is awesome he has an incredible relationship with the residents so if that's what you're looking for then that's what the outlying areas are already seeing but I only have one voice and I know there are many that were still at work that couldn't come because they want to raise the concerns that you've heard here so as the guardians of the beautification not just where tourists get to come and just drop in drop some money and leave we're asking that you will take note of the red flags that we are raising that we are saying please please be the public servants to the people that are already here that have already invested their lives it's not just a bunch of senior citizens who don't want to see some change I almost audibly laughed when you talked about Trenum Road because if you think that is bad come to Overbrook we also understand that there's a need for more housing because of our college students Overbrook already has born the burden for so many you know monthly family rental units that are around there and don't have a problem with the product but you know 31 units that they've said is 250,000 plus with they've got 6-3 bedrooms which I assume would be higher so he's going to walk away with 8 million less all his expenses but the City of Columbia and the South Kilburn neighborhood are going to be left to handle the fallout from the mess that this is going to make when we went to a neighborhood meeting where the representative was there I asked about traffic studies impact studies on Gills Creek and he said we're not going to be required to do that and I said well do you want to just suck all the life blood out of this community and walk away or do you want to be part of the community and he said studies cost money so red flag please watch out for us and you know whomever the next step is because this is your legacy right thank you thank you ma'am as we stated earlier this is about the annexation and a lot of the issues you brought forth and some of the emails we got we appreciate we're not at that step yet but currently everything you've addressed are issues that are ongoing now and don't change because someone could take it and not annex it and do exactly everything we talked about I think Mr. Taylor's point is is by annexing it now having an opportunity to work together to create a good product that benefits all the community code enforcement all the things obviously you know we're working through phases I know that the neighborhood is very much in tune to what's going on with water and the phases and where we are in the long term Rosewood projects so we appreciate that and thank y'all for being here tonight I'm sorry we didn't have an opportunity to speak earlier I think there was a miss about this public hearing and so we thought you were going to speak there but I wanted to make sure that your voices were heard why you were here this evening so thank you for being here Mr. Mayor yes you know this is a good time they have given us a heads up that this isn't the pipeline for plant and Columbia water for us to take a look at how not just this development is going to impact the time frame between now and phase three there are two major water issues currently if our request that we take a look at that area and if there's any impact of near term projects that can be done in unison with a potential development in that area I think that's important and something that you need to look at motion to approve second motion there's a second second comments questions concerns hearing none seeing none Madam clerk could you read the role Mr. Taylor hi hi Dr. Bustles hi Mr. Brennan yes Mr. McDowell yes Mr. Duvall may I recommend thank you this is just information so our friends here know this is a first reading it takes two readings to approve annexation so after we do the next reading it will come under our code department and things like that item 28 is another annexation interim future land use map amendment and interim zoning map amendment for 1921 pine view drive second there's a motion and a second any questions or concerns hearing none seeing none Madam clerk could you read the role Mr. Taylor hi Mr. Herbert hi Dr. Bustles hi Mr. Brennan yes Mr. McDowell yes Mr. Duvall hi may I recommend I moving into a period of resolutions item 29 is resolution number R 2020294 authorizing the city manager to execute a governmental agreement relating to a regional gateways project between Richland County Lexington County the city of Columbia and Central Midlands second you got a motion and a second any questions or concerns Mr. Mayor could we make with the motioner motion maker consent to amending the motion that we named council person Bustles as our designated elected official to the project strategy advisory project steering advisory I don't have an issue I mean that is part of what the committee we were on and there's obviously an open space there so that shouldn't be an issue any concerns may I my only question I'm sorry Ed is the cog Central Midlands cog is project manager on this is that correct yes yes which has which has city appointees I'm all for if we want to make Dr. Bustles an appointee on as an outside project management participant that's not with me but I just want to make that point technically I believe she would be on the MLBG regional committee not the cog perfect perfect it says it's each elected official each municipality appoints an elected official to that project steering that's there's a lot of other by the way there's a lot of other appointments of staff and things like that there's four or five I just didn't want to confuse the fact with the cog that's a good clarification so we have a motion with amendment any other comments or questions hearing none seeing none Madam clerk could you read the roll Mr. Taylor Mr. Herbert Mr. Brennan Mr. McDowell Mr. Duvall Item 30 resolution number R 2020297 the City of Columbia adopts the following resolution in support of requesting the South Carolina legislature to enact a statute to require security cameras at the entrances and exits of nursing homes so move will you let the record show that I have abstained from discussion on this particular one due to a possible conflict yes sir move Mr. Mayor a motion and a second Mr. Taylor is abstained or the conflict will get him a form any other comments questions hearing none seeing none Madam clerk could you read the roll Mr. Herbert Dr. Bustle's aye Mr. Brennan Mr. McDowell Mr. Duvall I Item 31 resolution number R 2020298 authorizing the City Manager and Fire Chief to execute mutual aid agreement for fire protection between McIntyre Joint National Guard Base and the City of Columbia motion to approve motion is there second second any questions concerns comments hearing none seeing none Madam clerk could you read the roll please Mr. Taylor Mr. Herbert Mr. Bustle's aye Mr. Brennan Mr. McDowell Mr. Duvall moving into a period of ordinance's first reading I would ask that our planning and development services direct to Ms. Hampton come forward along with Fire Chief Jenkins just to give an overview quickly of ordinance's first reading items item 3239 Mr. Bustle can we have the opportunity to approve these as one we have to do a minute we don't get a motion for that this is a code cycle that we regularly have to update based on the South Carolina LLR and I'm going to take this opportunity to turn it over to our building official Todd Byers who I don't know that you've been introduced to in our Development Center Administrator Brandon Burnett who assisted me with putting them together actually so Todd if you will be behind me members of council good evening International Code Council mandates all of our building codes our building codes start out with ICC which is International Code Council and then is handed down to each state then has the opportunity to go through the codes and make them their own through modifications, through modifications of that international code for the South Carolina modifications once the South Carolina Building Code Council gets finished with them they then go over to the State House the State House they're then approved and become ordinances within the state so what we are required to do as a municipality jurisdiction is to adopt those codes both the International Building Code and all its related codes which would be the mechanical plumbing international fuel gas as well as NEC National Electric Code along with property maintenance the International Residential Code and the International Fire Code all of those are mandated from the state for us to adopt we actually adopt those with the South Carolina modifications about one fourth of the actual code changes go through the modifications that make it South Carolina for our builders HBA gets involved the homeowners association gets involved with the residential side local contractors get involved with the Code so on the commercial side of those any questions on those one more explanation we are allowed to not adopt administrative section chapter one because that interferes with the proper governments of the city by the city manager city mayor and administrators yes sir that is correct all the administrative side is taken out we do not adopt those that is done by jurisdiction so that the city of Columbia employment goes through the hiring and firing of the building official and all those yes sir just haven't been through this not in the city level are there any things that are going to be we are going to peer back on this we just have to do a good job with the memo whether it is sprinkler somewhere they didn't have to be there before is there something that is going to come up are we early passing this or are we late is it already been filtered out in some other places yes it has already gone through the south county building code council so like the residential sprinklers is the biggest example that comes up inside the international residential code residential homes have to be sprinkled the south county building code council then goes in and says no they don't so that modification all those modifications have already been approved and take effect January 1st so they have gone through all those sections yes sir last question is really directed to this hand is this a blanket approval of container housing or does it have to meet certain zoning guidelines throughout the city so it is still anything within the building code still has to meet our zoning ordinance as well but it does at least now acknowledge some of those items any other questions or concerns container homes there is now an entire section on container homes for both residential and commercial occupants which is now becoming a bigger trend as we all know in a lot of places so any other questions concerns I know Miss Hampton laid it out pretty hard I think Mr. DeVall is going to provide us a motion to do a clean suite of items 32 through 39 that's exactly right Mr. Mayor I'd like to make a motion we approve items 32 through 39 together as one motion a motion to approve second motion in a second any other questions or concerns hearing none thank you Miss Hampton thank you all for being here and the preparation prior to Madam clerk could you read the roll Mr. Taylor hi Dr. Berber Dr. Bussells Mr. Brennan Mr. McDowell Mr. DeVall that brings us to a point of committee reports referrals and new business Sir item 40 public safety committee report for November 15th 2022 Honorable Howard E. DeVall Jr. Mr. Mayor the Public Safety Committee report is attached to your detail report of our discussions of the public safety meeting the one thing that we referred to council was the safety cameras at nursing homes which we approved tonight as a resolution in support of a local comrade who had a mother that wandered away from a nursing home so I would give the written report as my report tonight. Thank you Mr. DeVall item number 41 technology committee report for November 15th 2022 Honorable Tina and Herbert Thank you and there is a also a detail report of the minutes from our technology committee meeting I do want to highlight a few things that I thought were that would be important and for the goodwill of all council first of all we expect to do a soft go live with InterGov business license upgrade on December 5th that we wrote this before so hopefully they did that on December 5th to allow businesses to pay their renewals and licenses online and we've been working hard trying to get that electronic the other thing that we realized when we're getting calls and people and asking when they say they can't reach folks and they call us what we realized is the biggest missing link is that we're not knowing when something is done you know when is the project done so that we can report to people so before we get new software we want to make sure that we're fully utilizing the software that we have. Right now we have FQA which I had to admit I have never used and so we're going to do a training hopefully in February for city council folks to see if we fully utilize some of the things that we have already if that will help us kind of close that gap. I think those were the highlights from the meeting. Thank you. May I like to add one more highlight from the meeting for me after seven years of trying we finally have got a backup system for our data that is dispersed across the United States in two different places and gives us a disaster recovery capability that's been unmatched in the seven years that I've been on council and I feel safer at night when those 757s come over our building at low level if they fall into that building we can operate wherever. I appreciate the safety I feel with our data back then. Thank you very much for that highlight Mr. DeVall thank you Ms. Herbert at this point Madam city manager we're at public input just a point of personal privilege absolutely Reverend McDowell just like to report that the administrative policy committee did meet last month I believe our discussions centered around boards and commissions we are in conversation we are still talking and have not and we're planning to bring a report as a latter date to our council. Are we talking about January can we kind of get this wrapped up and finished up? Probably. Probably then later? Probably yes sir. I hate to have to get you over here on Christmas Eve to get this done. And I'd hate to have to come. Mr. McDowell I might add to that because it was a good meeting and I think the plan would be to bring an updated version of the boards and commission handbook back in January for a review. That's wonderful. Thank you. I would also like to announce that the short term runals committee will meet at four o'clock on September the 14th in September. Excuse me. December. Mark. December. Thank you. And we have been in negotiations with both the neighborhoods and the industry and I think we're getting very close to coming out with a product that will be dissatisfying to both which means it will probably be right. Thank you very much for that update. With that I'm going to move into if anybody have any other points of personal privilege, comments, questions they want to add at this point. Not. I'd like to ask Mr. Carroll did you want to still speak? You're good. Thank you. I have Ms. Harris please come on up. How are you doing Ms. Harris? Great. I'm a first timer. Not a first timer. Maybe speaking but you have been around. Absolutely. So this is more of an announcement than anything. So I want to I am Kalita Harris the director of the No Address documentary series and I want to invite you all and everyone in the room to a screening that I'm having at spotlight theater this Friday at 7pm. It's part two of the documentary series that features Atlanta and it talks about the criminalization homelessness as well as practical solutions that we can all start implementing. So I know we are moving forward with some solutions but I would like to implement more and show you all more that we can do on a permanent basis to end homelessness. So if you all have not seen part one which features Columbia, our city, you can go to our website, NoAddressDocumentary.com and you can view it there. So we have a great panel from Atlanta and Columbia and I just want you all to be a part of it and let's have a conversation and create some real change. And I do, Mr. Mayor would like to follow up with our conversation about city owned property and possibly putting that with my foundation, nonprofit foundation. So thank you all and I hope to see you all there. Can you give us that website? Yes, NoAddressDocumentary.com Documentary.com Documentary. NoAddressDocumentary.com And what time is the event? 7 p.m. Will there be another screening? Not here. I'm on tour right now so I'm... Will you then load it up so those of us who can't make Friday night have an opportunity to see part two? Absolutely. It's on the website as well. We're doing more intimate screening and that's behind Columbia Mall and it's on the website as well. All right, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Harris. Demetra McNeil. Hello, greetings, salutations, everyone. This is also my first time. Well, welcome. Thank you very much. My name is Demetria McNeil. I'm actually a native of Charleston, South Carolina, but I attended college... Benedict College graduated 2018. I am the president and the founder of a nonprofit organization called the Poor Rich Kids and I founded this organization at the tip of the pandemic January 28, 2020. I had a vision to bring together creatives that's within the 20 to 30-year-old range of age. All of us are creatives and upcoming entrepreneurs are already within our entrepreneurship career. We want to work together and be today's leaders and role models within our community by putting creative events for both the youth and also for adults between the low country area, mainly either Columbia and also Charleston, where like my members were evenly split between Columbia and Charleston. We create creative events such as performances for the arts community and it's very how can I say it's not limited to just one or two different art figures. We have dancers, we have artists that draw and paint, we have singers, poets those of us are inspiring to be entrepreneurs and we also have a youth mentorship program that we started in the school system in Charleston, South Carolina and we like to bring that here to Columbia to focus on children who are often overlooked, teaching them confidence building, teaching them how to express themselves through arts and how to become more self-efficient and within their arts how to start a business within the crafts and the gifts that you already have. We have our third Gala that's happening March 4th here in Columbia. We partner with CMFA on 914 Pulaski Street. This Gala we introduce who our members are within our organization. We offer opportunities for vendors, those who own their own businesses to be vendors and expose their and showcase their brand in their businesses. We also allow our platform to be a platform for those who showcase their gifts so either you sing, you do poetry, you dance, whatever you do we like to open up the platform for those to show that we have a lot of people that's within the art community but it's like it's kind of fearful to speak up or to just do more and we know that arts is a need and it's also helpful in different ways for both the youth and well all ages really. So I just wanted to come here today and give a light introduction. Next time I come back I'll have a presentation of things we've done so far within the community. It's very diverse of the things that we do from protest. We help with a million man march. We've performed at different events. We just did an interview with and we just did a networking event November 19th here and it was for the adult community just trying to bring our community together in different ways but be creative about it and we just want to get the word out of who we are and need help with funding so we can be able to put on a lot bigger and more impactful events for the city and our community. Probably get with our staff and go through the different channels for application processes for funding opportunities for events, hospitalities if you're bringing people in so all of that is due in March so I would suggest you look at our website or get with our staff and get the information. Okay, thank you. Thank you for being here. And may I also who do I contact then we'll get you set right behind you. Somebody will get your information and get you set all. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. Yes ma'am, thank you. And I'm sorry, just one question because I didn't hear you well. What is your name and the name of the organization? My name is Demetria McNeil and the name of my organization is The Poor Rich Kids. Yes, it's actually one word Poor Rich Kids with two Z's that's the name of all of our social media platforms where you can find us and also our website www.poorrichkids.com Thank you. Thank you. You guys have a good evening. Thank you ma'am. I do have somebody else who signed up. I can't read the signature but it says the address is 1230 Main Street. That's somebody who signed up to speak or somebody who just signed up. They thought it was a sign-up sheet. Not seeing anybody. I'll take that as that was a mistake. So, with that Mr. DeVall, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Mayor, I move that we go into executive session for discussion of negotiations and incident proposed contractual arrangements pursuant to SECO 30 days, 4 days, 78, 2, Bevere dear home assistant program, discussion of the city's CBD BG disaster recovery program incident to the proposed contractual arrangement pursuant to SECO 30 days, 4 days, 78, 2. Is there a second? Second. There's a motion in a second. Madam Clerk, could you read the roll please? Mr. Taylor? Aye. Ms. Herbert? Aye. Dr. Bussell? Aye. Mr. Brennan? Yes. Mr. McDowell? Yes. Mr. DeVall? Aye. Thank you.