 I want to thank staff, I want to thank all of you for this community conversation. If you were here last time, thanks for coming back. If you were here for the first time, thanks for getting and learning about us to be here. We have agendas, sign-in sheets so that you can be able to email and learn about follow-up. We can't answer all the questions tonight. We have experts here to give five-minute summaries. At the end of that, Mike's going to be handling the question part. We have handouts for information, emails for follow-up, and I guess we'll get started. And then, John, you want to introduce? Oh, wait a minute. I'm Commissioner Allison Wright. Commissioner Mike White. Commissioner John Colpepper. I'm Commissioner John Colpepper. Thank y'all for coming. We're excited about giving y'all some information. Starting the year off right. I'm going to introduce the hands-on staff members that we have here. We have Manager Blaine Williams. We have Chief Jerry Saltzman. We have traffic engineer Tim Griffith. And Planning Assistant Director Bruce Lyne. So they're going to be here to help us go over these topics we've got. We'll have a question and answer session after they go through everything. So just y'all wait until the end and just remember your questions. And I will go over those. And also, those sign-up sheets, y'all got one of those. And make sure you put your email addresses on there. And we'll send out follow-up answers to some of the questions. We might not be able to get all the questions answered today. With that, I will start with... Manager Blaine? Thank you. Where's that? Well, thank you. Thank you all. Thanks for coming out tonight. Thank you, Commissioners, for organizing this. You know, it's very important that you're given information in a timely way when big decisions are being made. And in our representative forum government, these Commissioners felt that it was important to pull this together. And I thank our staff for being here tonight. Thank you to Allison and the Commissioners for pulling together this agenda. So we're going to follow it. And so we're going to go through all the presentations very quickly and then save the balance of time for your questions. And with that, I'll turn over to Chief Jerry Saltzman. I know. Good evening, everyone. First of all, thank you for coming out. I'm glad to be here with you tonight. And tell me, you care about your community. You're out here on a cold, muddy night. I didn't know what to expect, so I brought back up. This is Officer DeRiles. She's one of our new officers. She just finished the Academy in December. And she's now our noted friend. We're certainly glad and feel free to ask her any questions. I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about 2023. Once we hit January 1, it started all over for us. One of the goals for the police department should and always is to be is to make this place, make this county safer for us to live and work and play. And we were fortunate in 2023 that we reduced violent crime, persons crimes, was down 6.8%. That's your armed robberies, robberies, aggravated assaults. Aggraated assaults was actually down 11.5%. And for the last two years, we've seen a greater than 10% reduction in those strangulation, stabbing, shootings, things of that nature in this community. Property crime is down 2.6%. Burneries down 31.4%. I don't really attribute that to technology in a lot of ways. And what I mean by that is so many people have different brands of ring cameras and different things. And that's really deterring of burners and property crimes, which is helping us entering autos down, throwing vehicles down. Thefts are up in general and frauds up. And I think that's something we're going to continue to see. We're looking at this year expanding our criminal investigations. Fraud get it? Just because so many people in the community have fell victim to different banking frauds and things of that nature. So we're going to try to look at more emphasis. What we see a lot of times though is once we start investigating these crimes, they're being perpetrated by people overseas. And then the only thing we have really is just to turn it over to the federal government and let them follow up. But I believe it's important that we have officers trained in this department that can at least start the initial to help you to try to regain some of your funds or give you some information. Grounds against society, we see an increase of 2.6%. This is DUIs. Our enforcement police was up total calls for service for the year. We answered 102,000 calls, nine of the one calls. And we did a total of 15,000 traffic stops in our community. And again, so by doing those, we found out some of the influence. We're making more arrests there. That 112% increase in drunkenness has to do with this great team called Georgia that won the national championship last year. And when they did, we had chaos in downtown Athens. And so we made about 65 arrests that night with citations and stuff. And that took our numbers over the top. So a lot of that's reflected in that. I'm excited about answering questions. I would like to talk about one more thing, and that's our recruiting. For the first time in four years, we see an increase in the amount of people that we've hired versus than what we're leaving. We have 256 officers. So we had a 10% attrition rate, which is pretty good. By all measures, we'd be losing about 25. We lost less than that last year, and we hired 31. And our applicants are reflective of our community. 45% of our applicants are minorities. So we're certainly proud of our efforts. And one of our focus of the 2024 is to get more officers out on the road so we can continue to work with you to make this county safer. Thank you. Step it up here. So I was asked to talk about five points, Intersection Safety Improvement Project, which is a part of TSPOS 2023. So TSPOS stands for Transportation Safety Improvement. So five points, Intersection Safety Improvement, this is a topic I'll briefly talk about. That's part of TSPOS 2023, and TSPOS stands for Transportation Special Purpose Low Blocks and Sales Hack. So that was that penny that you voted for. To set up this TSPOS 2023. And this is one of the many projects in there. And I see one of the originators of it here in the crowd. So if you didn't know, your neighbor, Sarah Beresburg, was very instrumental in getting this idea after hearing all of us concerned about the near misses and the intersection there at five points. And I also want to point out, John Williams, who at the time was a resident of five points, worked with Sarah to come up with some different concepts and help pitch this. And so at the end of the day, the Citizens Advisory Committee recommended that there would be a million and a half dollars for that project. And that was approved by the commission and approved by all of you. So that is all there, ready to go. And basically, it's for capital improvements to improve safety at the intersection. That could be sidewalks, relocation of crosswalks with ADA accessibility, signal timing and support. And I've learned a lot from Mr. Griffith here or Traffic Engineer. You'd be amazed at just what timing can do to change things. It can stop congestion and enhance safety for crossing. Pedestrian corner refuge renovations, pedestrian street lighting, traffic signals, other general improvements. So we won't be able to do all of that, but we can do some of that to make it safer. And so the process is for all of our SPLOS project, NT SPLOS, is that there's a user group and there's been folks appointed by the folks on this stage to serve on that user group along with staff. And they will look at different ideas for how to improve those safety there along with a design professional. And then they would make recommendations to the commission about what to fund and when to fund it. And so we're setting up the user group now. If you've got a handout, there's a timeline there. It depends on what it is. Obviously, it's not going to take us two years to put it in a new crosswalk. Okay, but if there's a whole rework of the intersection and the signals and the timing and all that, that might take a little more time. But we're going to get started talking about this year. And certainly by the end of the year, we should know what we're going to do there. And it'll just take some time. So that's what's going on there. At the bottom of the handout, you can see the webpage. If you want to go there and learn more about it or other projects with both TSPLOS and SPLOS. So I'll turn it over to Mr. Greer. Thank you, manager Williams. I appreciate it. Glad to be here tonight to see you all speak with you. I know you didn't count on me being quizzed, but does anyone here have a, would you venture a guess as to what my number one complaint as traffic engineer is? Street bus. That never happens in Athens. Street bus. Street bus. Have I heard it yet? Stop. Have I heard it yet? That's my number two complaint. I'm talking on my street. Speeding. My number one complaint is they're speeding on my street. What can you do about it? Well, most people don't like to hear the fact that the speed you consider unacceptable in your neighborhood you have probably driven that fast in someone else's neighborhood. All of us may be guilty of that. Of course not me. By the way, I've never had a speeding ticket. I don't think I could as traffic engineer. It's on his way, he says. Speeding is my number one complaint that I receive and sometimes there's not a day in the week that goes by that I don't get a complaint about speeding. Would we like to slow the speeds down sure? We definitely would. And we've been working on that here in Athens. We've got what's known, what's will be known as the residential traffic management program. And as a result of that, it's going to be, well, if you know anything about the old neighborhood traffic management program, you know, you had to apply for it. You had to meet certain criteria. Well, in this new one, you'll have to do that as well. And in your handout, it kind of explains some of the differences what we're going to be doing here with this new program. And I'm assuming that Mayor and Commissioner are going to vote. They definitely support this for you all. And if your neighborhood, if your road has over 300 vehicles a day, if your 85th percentile speed is 35 miles an hour, excuse me, or over, then you will qualify. And then we will rank all the neighborhoods according to a number of issues that they may have. The crashes now will play a part in that where they didn't before several things. But another thing that I really, everyone that I speak with says, well, my neighborhood's one thing, but what about these major corridors coming into Athens? People just fly down these and they do. It is a pet peeve of mine. And like I said, I've never had a ticket and don't intend to get one, but I even get passed on double yellow from time to time. And I'm sure y'all, I see all the heads nodding, so you experienced the same thing. Now, who said excessive weights at a traffic signal? Well, that slows people down now. Come on, give me a break here. We're trying to help you out. But we do try to maximize the efficiency of the traffic signals of all of our signals. I will throw this out to you. I've been here over 40 years. As of today, we still have the same number of staff in traffic engineering that we had in 1983 when I was hired. And probably not a whole lot more money than we did. No, we have a little bit more than we did then. But money's a big thing for everyone. We understand that. And we squawk just as loudly as any other department. But I think we do a remarkable job of what we have. One thing before I get into some exciting things, come to you. I'd like to mention that traffic engineering, our staff built our own traffic control center rather than reach out to a contractor or someone, a G-DOT, or someone to come in and do us a multi-billion dollar facility. They built this traffic control center just on dimes, really. Instead of getting the expensive monitors, we even went ahead and got large giant-screen TVs. And we can monitor traffic at quite a few of our intersections. But what I wanted to tell you was that we'd like to show people what we've done. We'd kind of like to brag about what we've done here and actually. So if you think you'd want to come out into our facility, let us know. We'll try to set that up with something that we're working on in the future to have regular meetings where people can come out in the evening and view what your tax dollars have been spent on the traffic engineering. So now, as I like to mention, it is truly exciting. If you know anything at all about traffic engineering, you know that we are bound by the manual on uniformed traffic control devices. It's a manual about this stick. And it's put out by the Federal Highway Administration. And we have to follow it to the letter. If I deviate from that manual, then I've opened you all up to a tremendous loss of money through lawsuits and also loss of life crashes. And we never deviate from the MBTCD. However, the MBTCD sets the rules. They are coming out with a new addition this year. And it should be available soon. We've already ordered hours and they'll be out hopefully within the next couple of months. I've made some cursory views online to see what's happening. Some of the changes that they've made, there are intersections where we've had a few crashes, more than just a few actually. In years gone by, we could not do anything at those intersections. For instance, well, I won't name an intersection, but several of the intersections that are problematic are two-way stop only. And you've got free-flow traffic on those. They've reduced the requirements for us to go to an all-way stop. And there are several of these that some of you good folks have been really urging us to do something about it. Our hands were tied. The traffic changes is coming in. I think Athens is going to become a better city traffic-wide or a city-wide for slowing down traffic. I think these things are going to really be exciting. Well, hey, what I know about excitement, I'm a traffic engineer. It's all three of us. But we're working on a local road safety plan now. And that's the former Air Commission as well. That will be adopted soon. We've also got a Vision Zero goal, a vision of zero fatalities in Athens. These fatalities hurt. They hurt us all. They hurt me, everyone that occurs on my watch. It's not a good thing. And we are doing everything that we can to reduce those. Local road safety plan is a good thing to hit forward with Athens. Also, the Federal Highway Administration has a speed management toolkit. You want to know about these roads that may or not in your neighborhood, speed limits are 35 miles an hour or greater. Federal Highway Administration is allowing us to do some traffic calming on some of those as well. So that's another exciting thing I feel like coming to Athens, Georgia soon. This year, hopefully, we'll have a plan in place for these faster speed highways. And we're going to have this Federal Highway Administration speed toolkit is going to be a big part of that. If you'd like, you can go online and view that and see that that will be something that we'll be presenting to Mayor and Commission a little bit later on this year. A lot of good things going on with traffic, a lot of good things going on here in Athens. I've been a resident of Athens all my life. We'll help all my life, not yet anyway, but I've lived here up to today. We're very thankful for the road system that we have here. And I was told to keep it in about five minutes, Commissioner Wright, maybe I exceeded my time. I appreciate you taking some of Blank's time. You're great with mine. I like it. Thank you. Who's next? Grace Guy. Good evening. So I get the last two items, and I'm going to do my best to do five minutes or less on each of those. So the two that are on your agenda that I'll be talking about, the first one of those is talking about our new future land-use plan. And the last item will be short-term rental. So the two are kind of linked. I'll hopefully make a connection as I talk and it will make some sense. In the end of 2023, we adopted a new comprehensive plan for Athens Park County. And the very first work item, the very first implementation item out of that plan was to work on our future land-use policies. It's been a while since we've done that, about 25 years, since we really took a holistic look at how we're growing and where we should grow. We all know that growth pressure in this town is reality, and it's a blessing, but it comes with a responsibility. How are we going to do this properly as we go through the next 20 years? And so the future land-use map that we're going to be working on and have started working on really this month started with an engagement process that we completed in the fall. So some of you may have been to our meetings. We had 26 meetings in September and October. We got about 2,000-plus comments. And we had a lot of opportunity to meet face-to-face and talk about the future of the community and what we wanted to look like. Coming out of that, we developed five principles that we heard as we were talking to people, these themes that kept coming up. And those themes are what we're going to use to think about how we want to grow in the future. So the five themes are listed there on your sheet. The first one talks about redevelopment, putting a focus on redeveloping our areas first. Second is to minimize how much sanitary sewer that we expand. Not that we won't, but to try to do that only where necessary and try to use where we've got the existing sewer network in place and maximize its utility. The third thing is to reduce travel distances. And much like Tim was talking about, we all have complaints and issues and frustrations as we try to navigate around town and sometimes it's just a relationship with growth. So rather than widen the streets, what if we brought our destinations closer to where we live and closer to where we work? That's the future land-use approach that we're trying to put forward as we think about the next 20 years. And so there's a series of three bullet points there that reinforce that notion of minimizing the amount of time we spend in a car. Fourth, we want to look at incremental growth everywhere. We're already seeing the market interested in every part of our community. There's a lot to love. The in-town areas have a draw. Our sort of suburban character areas have a draw. And our rural areas have a draw as well. And so we want to recognize the fact that the market has an interest in where we are, but let's do it in a way that's responsible which leads us to the fifth point which is trying to grow sustainably. Not just environmental sustainability, but fiscal sustainability as well. Right now we are working with an RFP, a request for proposals to hire a consultant to really help us dig into the notion of fiscal sustainability. We know a lot about our environmental issues. What we haven't really studied from a land-use standpoint is the cost, the cost of development and where things make sense and maybe where we've taken a loss. Sometimes taking a loss is okay because it represents community value, but we should know about it and how we're making decisions. So, real quickly, those five principles we used to create a growth concept map. And it's kind of a large, fuzzy view of the places we want to grow. And if anybody's interested in looking at that map, it's on our department's website. So accgov.com slash planning. And off on the right, there's a link not just to the map, but to a presentation we made to the Mayor and Commission at a recent work session on the 9th of this month. And I think that will answer a lot of your questions if we don't get to them tonight. So what are our next steps? Finishing up this month, we will try to have that consultant on board to start February. In February, we're going to have two things happening. One, we're going to have that infrastructure analysis, that cost-benefit analysis of growth. We're also going to have a new way of a public input and we want it to be really creative and interactive and something that folks can do online. Or they can come into our office and do it with us in our office where they can talk to us and have some questions answered. We're going to have a period of talking about how we want to grow physically. Let's talk about design. Let's talk about where things should be. And we're going to compile all of that to create a new future land use map that's also informed by the cost-benefit analysis that we're going to finish up in the spring. Our goal, our promise, is to have a future land use map that's to the County Commission by summertime and engage with them in that approval process. Because the very next thing we're going to do once it's approved is start the implementation of the things that are on that map. It's one thing to put your wishes on a list. It's another thing to go shopping for them. And so that's what we want to do is start that process of putting the tools in the toolbox to actually realize the benefits and the growth patterns that we want to see. Six minutes. We're going to try to do short-term rental in four minutes because I have a feeling we'll have questions. Okay. All right. So about 18 months ago, Mayor Gertz asked the Government Operations Committee of the County Commission to look into short-term rentals to do some research. And that group did. And they dug in very deeply and did a lot of legal analysis in conjunction with our attorney's office and looked at a lot of examples around the state. And coming out of that process they developed a recommendation in November of 2022 that we should have some rules on the books for short-term rentals because prior to that we really didn't. And the notion was to make them comparable to how we regulate that in breakfast uses. Some places, those are okay. Other places, they're okay within limitations. And then other places, they're not okay. So using that as a starting point, staff, planning department staff working with the attorney's office began drafting some language recently during the fall. And that was brought to the Planning Commission in December for discussion and ultimately to a recommendation with the Planning Commission in January. And some of you were there, some familiar faces. Those items have recently been presented to the Mayor and Commission in their work session format and it is scheduled for a vote at their February 6th voting session. But what's in there? So the regulations do a few things. One, they define what a short-term rental is. You've got to start with the definition. You've got to understand what it is. How is it different from a hotel? How is it different from a bed and breakfast? And then we looked at the way our zoning code is set up and we set up where it can happen either as a home occupation which requires an owner-occupant or at least a long-term resident a permanent resident to be in place for commercial use. Which would mean it would come through our normal permitting process for other commercial development. It would get reviewed for all kinds of code compliance both zoning-wise but also structurally. So there's two paths that we're proposing for a short-term rental. The question that comes up during this moratorium period is what about those short-term rentals that we're operating up to a legal but non-conforming designation for those folks that may have had that kind of use going on but are not meeting the precise letter of this new text amendment when it's adopted. So that process is where we had as a staff proposed a time period where if it changes ownership you would be required to come into compliance. And the Planning Commission and their deliberation were proposing to say yeah, that's true, if the ownership changes you'll have to be brought into compliance. But we're also going to introduce a two-year sunset from the time that the list is created, this legal non-conforming list that identifies folks that were operating prior to the start of the moratorium. You'll have two years from the time that list is done before you need to come into compliance and pull together the paperwork that you need to be able to continue to operate if you can. That's in a nutshell what's in front of the commissioners right now. This meeting tonight is a great opportunity to follow up and I'm happy to answer any questions that I can. If I can't answer it, if the folks up here can't answer it, we'll be writing it down and making sure we get an answer back to you. You need a good mic? I better get the mic. Bruce with the mic. Just to telegraph a little bit. So that was the recommendation Bruce, thanks for basically reporting that. So what you'll hear just so you're not confused conceptually is that there are some legal concerns about a two-year sunset. The reason being is that if somebody, an investor had bought property and put a lot of money into it, you know, when you go changing laws all of a sudden, you've got to give people time to recoup their investment. And I understand, I understand the hot topic I live in this community as well. You know, some other communities nobody else in Georgia has got two years. So that's a new thing. Five years, you know, so you're going to hear that conversation and I don't know where it's going to go. But that is a legal concern right now that the commissioners will have to wrestle with. So I hope that's fair, but that's part of the decision. Okay. Sure. Are you ready for me? Is your fork on? Well, thank you all for being here tonight. It certainly was nice of you to take time out to come and hear what's going on in your community and for us to be able to answer questions from you. I would like to take a moment to introduce another commissioner who has served with us and it's Bexar Fisher who is sitting in the back and also we've got two planning commissioners here tonight. Sarah Beresford has mentioned earlier and Alex Samp's in the back as well. And if y'all don't mind, I'm going to also introduce somebody else tonight. And 54 years ago in Atlanta, my mom who's here tonight was bringing me into this world on this day. And so they'll just know who to blame. So my mom had been very interested. Her, my dad moved to Atlanta to happen about a year ago now and she watches all of her meetings on YouTube and I know she wanted to come tonight to meet the chief and to blame and also she asked me, she goes, you know, it looks like there's a lot of concerns about these STDs and said, oh, STRs. Yes, there's a lot of that here. So anyway, we'll be glad to open the floor up to anybody that has any questions. Tim, Cheat, Bruce, and Blaine, I'll do a good job and we think they're here to answer some questions as well. Tim's been with us for over 40 years and he knows his traffic stuff. So whoever would like to start us off, I'll be glad to call. I think Carlos has got a mic here if you need that. I see Carlos here. They don't somebody's over there. You're good. Sue? I think this is a good one. Can you use a little example of the requirements to be to come from in two-year physical things? How to come into code? During that time period? Sure. Can everybody hear me? I'm going to project. It depends on the property and your zoning and whether or not you're doing it as a home occupation or whether you're doing it as a commercial use. I'll try to answer it as a home occupation because I think many people will have that path to follow. The way that the language is set up, the home occupation permit is a very simple thing. It's a counter permit in the planning department. It takes a few minutes to fill out and it takes a maximum of a day for us to process. Ideally we process it right there with you while you wait. The information that we're going to be looking for to process that is what do you zone? If you're a zone single family and if you aren't the owner-occupant, if you are a tenant if you're a long-term resident of that property we need permission from the owner-occupant to process the paperwork and there's a little box for that to be filled in. Then basically what we're asking for are the circumstances of the property. If it's a single family residence you would check the box for that. If it's a single family residence and the short-term rental is going to be in a structure outside of it, we would have some information that designates which unit it is because you can have one area, either inside the house or in a separate building with a short-term rental. It's not much more rigorous than that honestly. Right, so for the review and then you finish up by going and getting your business tax certificate that gets you in the system. There is the hotel motel excise tax that's applicable to short-term rentals and once you're in their system and that process is moving forward you are now in compliance with the code as a home occupation. If it's a commercial use meaning it's in a zone where it's either zone commercially or perhaps zone multifamily you don't have the owner occupancy requirement or the long-term resident requirement but you are going to be reviewed as a commercial property which means building code, life safety code those types of things will come into play that's on par with how we would review commercial property. There's a process for that and the initial turnaround is a week and there's some standards to show that you have adequate parking there's a notification bit of language that you have to provide to your tenants and kind of a handbook a little bit of instruction about what to do and who to contact if there's an issue but it's not meant to be overly rigorous in that regard it's meant to help honestly give some form and structure to what these are and where they can go. Does that help? Thanks. 21 fatalities on Athens roads last year chief and traffic engineer Griffith and I keep seeing the same roads again and again Danielsville Road Nowhere Road Lexington Road Atlanta Highway Broad Street about every 10 months intersection of Alps and Atlanta Highway that tries to cross and dies I know a lot of these corridors are controlled by GDOT some of these major arterials and some of us might have noticed GDOT recently repaid Millage Avenue and now we don't have curb on a lot of Millage Avenue anymore they put so much asphalt that there's no more curb so I guess I'm just curious to hear the perspective of the city leaders of what are y'all doing to advocate for safety from GDOT and how are we going to fix the curbs on Millage? Because it's kind of like we're moving in the wrong direction All great questions, thank you we have communicated and are in active communication with GDOT regarding the curbs on Millage they have we're not sure exactly how that's going to unfold that is a very good question another one of the one that you didn't mention concerned to me is Harvey Mattis Road and Highway 29 we've had several fatalities at that intercession that is a GDOT intercession I've had active conversations with GDOT the ball is in their lap at this current time they agreed that something needs to be done they're discussing what they're going to recommend there at that intersection I don't know exactly what they'll come up with but either we agree with them and allow them to proceed with whatever their recommendations are we can come up with a funding if we so desire and do something different but certainly there are a number of streets and roads in Athens Clark County that need some things done to them that's one of the reasons I went ahead and shared the new MUTCD with you some of these intersections that we could not do anything prior to the new manual our hands were tied now we'll be able to do something with those intersections there are two in mind I won't share those with you tonight because these things we have to write them up we have to get our agenda item on mayor commission have to put eyes on them first so I respect to them I'm not going to share those intersections tonight that belong to Athens Clark County but we are actively seeking solutions to these things you know it's never my desire to have a fatality on a road in Athens Clark County those things hurt the ones that they truly hurt are their family members that there's a fatality there I've gone to quite a few in the last number of years and I don't like going to any of them there they're horrible to even witness after the fact so it's not something that we want we are we're doing everything that we feel like we can do in our power to make these things better of course here in Athens I don't think funding would be an issue on these roadways we can come up with something that we can do that will make the situation better that FHWA or GDOT or whomever it might be would put their seal of approval on then I think we could make that happen and I don't know if I answered your question in its entirety or not excuse me sir so you are correct we have 21 fatalities in Athens Clark County last year we normally have about 10 to 15 in 2022 we had 11 fatalities and in 2021 we actually had 25 fatalities in each one of these instances and life is lost and so we're blessed to have our own traffic reconstruction group our traffic officers reconstruct those we look at every single accident to look at what was the cause and what can we do to try to stop that I can tell you that speed and distracted driving and drug overdoses was the main factors in what caused that increase some of them one election road gentleman just drove off in the ditch and bumped a tree but he died and it was from a fentanyl overdose and therefore it's a fatality we had someone else that was in a motorcycle wreck and got skin up and left the hospital and went to Texas and then he got septic and passed so that counts against our numbers we've had several pedestrian fatalities unfortunately and we look at those and some of those could be suicides and so we're constantly looking I can tell you one of the biggest things is distracted driving and speed last year alone from pulling the information from the vehicle the vehicles were going over 100 miles an hour at the time of crash and outside of being there when that was happening I don't know how you prevent that but certainly I think education, awareness we're constantly looking at our hotspots where these risks are happening and putting enforcement on those areas I just wanted to follow up on something Tim taught me as well we can invest on state roadways but we have our own set of priorities as well so for instance hard math as you told me it could use a signal and that's several hundred thousand dollars can we do it with their permission? yes but there's other signals that you would recommend first before that one because of other crashes as an example of this community doing more than just what the state allows us I think there is a SPLOS project where sidewalks are going in on Lexington Road which is traditionally a GDI but we're not waiting on math and this is a SPLOS project sure and I'll say also to Blaine there's been several instances where we've put in sidewalks and walked by my highway and also another issue that we did address a couple of years ago was over on Tennessee Road where traffic engineers helped us lower the speed on that on Tennessee Road Carl Jordan was very instrumental in helping with that and chief I've seen the folks out with distracted driving over on Cloverhurst and Milwich addressing that issue but also and correct me if I'm wrong on this plan I know y'all have been working with GDI on making sure that the milling has done a little bit better on millage especially at Cloverhurst and millage where you sometimes see the water pulling pulling pulling pulling so anyway trying to work on that some as well so it's always a challenge you know trying to work with state organizations and local governments but I think we've got some folks here who are aware of the situation and are aware of what questions need to be asked and what we can do to help Blaine in that effort Carl, do you have any questions? Blaine nighttime lighting is out of control in this town is there anybody on this state who cares enough to do something about it we've had an ordinance for 15 years it's been 20 years since I first promoted an ordinance and it gets worse practically all lighting including not a city hall man, that place not like like an operating room it's all LED it was all conformed there's no grandfathering of it some of it comes through plan review Stilani looks at those plans but then a certificate of occupancy is approved and miraculously the lighting doesn't conform anymore I asked this question does anybody on this state care enough to do something about something that is not conforming out of control Carl, I think we all care about it do something about it care enough to do something about it and the books that do the plan review they have to follow the ordinance that we have on the books so certainly looking at the lighting ordinance maybe an option that we didn't look at I know you'd like for us to do that we've talked about that several times so you can do it now you make some good points Carl so thank you Allison Amy, go ahead I was just wondering how you all handle 9-1-1 calls involving mental health emergencies and do you have staff to accompany those calls yeah absolutely so 2-1-1 we're very blessed to have our co-responders which is our officers that are paired with the licensed clinical social workers we currently have three teams right now as I understand advantages in the process prior to the 4th we have officers available in ready and the amount of calls that we receive as it relates to mental health is really just it's bad and so we've adopted several things 100% of our officers to include just things are fully trained in mental health response and what that looks like we use VR goggles stuff like that to put them this is the mind of someone who gets ready to help them understand what the people are going through and our focus is on health because it's mental health it's not to put them in jail but try to get them to help they need and so our relationship with Advantage and things of that nature is working well we need more teams to continue to see those issues and how we respond to them and also a few years back we had several officer involved shootings that's traumatic for the families of those who lost loved ones but please don't forget it's very traumatic for our officers who never wanted to do that and the amount of counseling they need for that and so we instituted ICAP training which is slowing the response down trying to save lives so sometimes it may take more resources and more time but it's better than rushing into a situation have to have our officers force for the dead in a forced situation there's a lot of things we're doing on all fronts if I could so another thing that the past commission and this commission has been tracking very closely is behavioral health so if you didn't know as part of the 2020 SPLOS there was funds that you approved to partner with Advantage Behavioral to build a new facility that might be an alternative to the jail so there's a another place we can take folks and that was not enough money to do much so this commission approved ARPA funds for behavioral health to go to Advantage and supplement that too so in addition to the ongoing enforcement there's some investment in infrastructure that should be able to help folks and I think it's going to have an additional 60 minutes so that's right they're having to phase it because of all the construction escalation but those things are happening right now Steve we have Hank over here Hank used to be on our planning commission as well I think he served on number four thank you very much one comment I'd like to say thank you to the mayor of the commission and the traffic department to move forward to the neighborhood the traffic plan that's being moved forward because I can explain a lot about Springtree Road which is cut through it has no shoulders it has no sidewalks and it has kids right there I think it's down that street it's a neighborhood street and there's a lot of neighbors but a lot of cut through traffic there's a lot of people on your list secondly I am a 15 year short term rental owner in 5.0 never gotten a grade less than 5 stars for our property there and my main concern we know our neighbors were concerned about it a few bad apples it was all a little bad and my concern for the future is I understand that the two years sunset I want to make sure that a non-occupied short term rental can also apply for the use of commercial use and again I just want to emphasize that it's really important to note that not all of these short term rentals will cause some problems and we certainly don't want to move forward thank you okay soon oh I'm sorry the quick answer is yes there's a path for that property to take a look like I mentioned before it does depend on the zoning if it is in an R.S. zone which a lot of the properties in town are it would be that home occupation route but happy to take a look at it with you I'm a high quality my name is Tom by the way for the residential traffic program could that also possibly coordinate with the future of land use development I mean I guess committee because in terms of overall long term solutions to reducing traffic as well as fatalities because that's going to continue to grow longer term solutions in my opinion involve more transit availability and denser housing is that something that's being looked at as possible solutions for long term traffic decreasing well that's a great question that you asked these roadways that we're looking at they will be adjacent to residential zoning for the ACC ordinance I don't know if that answers directly your question or not I'm sorry I don't hear that well not feedback but something fuzzy going on there Bruce I'll let him address it thank you you probably heard it better than I did Bruce it's a great question and as we're developing the future land use plan we are talking to every other development adjacent department of the government to try to sync up with their programming and their planning as well so we recognize that as we're talking about density and we're talking about community design that also relates to roadway design if the goal that we've heard is to minimize trips and to manage traffic we're already working with Tim's team and we've had a couple really good meetings to sit down and talk about these targeted locations where we would like to see and where it makes sense for density to come we're going to have to slow traffic down we're going to have to provide further forms of transportation we're going to have to make our transit system respond to that development growth as well and make sense out of it we've got side work networks that need to be completed and filled out but we also recognize we still have to plan for vehicles so how to do that appropriately is the challenge particularly in these in-town locations but yes, those conversations are going on together for sure first of all, I apologize because I was going to try real hard but I can't control myself so I'd like to have a few minutes to talk about my experience with B.B.R.O.'s Airbnb's and what I call the issue of small hotels in five points as I've heard called small hotels there are now at least 35 XOT owners that we know of in five points for these hotels and I was told there's over 900 in Athens Park Town I don't know if that's accurate I have to read this or I'll forget things we don't have any problems with homeowners who want to rent out a room or two to pay their taxes or whatever and live on the site that's not the issue but we do have concerns with out of city, out of state or maybe even out of country homeowners who buy these homes rental condominants and business ventures or tax layoffs which allow them on I am 89 years old and I've lived in five points for 50 years or more I first lived on Bluefield Street and then on Hope Avenue for graduate school and then I went home over on Village Terrace and now I am witherspoon road which is the corner of the witherspoon court and that's in Glenwood in five points this is on a formerly quiet six-house little cul-de-sac down on the hill I lived in northeast Georgia for 25 years at the mental health clinic now called Advantage and I look forward to a quiet retirement in a quiet neighborhood about two years ago the house was sold this was Chester Sosby's house he was the pharmacist of houses and they sold the house to a couple from Texas and they remodeled and about a year later the house was sold or flipped by older folks, older men from Texas who purchased it for a VBRO that's a vacation rental property I was told at the time that 20 people could live in it I think that's been reduced I hope very quickly huge huge equipment was brought in very quickly they cut all the trees, all the greenery, all the shrubs put in a pool a pool house and it looks like a couple condos on top of each other in the back they look like they exceeded the city limits to height we're not sure my neighbor can look from her dining room right under this mess and I can see an electronic blue light day and night the next thing was a big gravel truck came in and dumped about a ton of gravel on an unauthorized area that was used to provide runoff for the water that came from the back of this property the water now becomes a small river and waterfall that runs through my backyard particularly during heavy rage which we did have recently and I had a river I do have pictures of this on my cell phone and the city did come and take pictures and I do appreciate that this water could take out my driveway wall the dump truck of gravel was so large to get in this tiny area they dumped about a fourth of the gravel into the street and then it ran down into about two or four sewers, gutters and the city had to come out and pick out the sewers and then the gravel ran down my street to get to my mailbox I had to drive my car I had to drive my car get to the mailbox mail my bills and so forth okay the city did come out and make the hotel owners clean up this mess but the problem is not solved last of all my question is why are these hotels allowed in single family neighborhoods do homeowners have any rights to the peace they should come that should come with a home home ownership and five points what is the agenda of the city to allow this that's what I really like to know there's something behind it how do I solve a serious water problem it was largely solved before this hotel moved in due to the ditch that was covered with the gravel why are there no serious consequences to anything that seems to happen have we forgotten okay one more thing have we forgotten the young minority team who was shot and killed and there are B and B where the old local house was and this will happen we don't know who's coming in the last question is do I need a lawyer maybe there's one here thank you for your comments and certainly I know Blaine and our cancer are very well aware of the situation going on at your house so I solved that cancer this morning and the government operations committee insures me that he's working to get that gravel out from your yard and under that magnolia tree here so hopefully you'll see something happen here so we'll address your concerns and make sure that some silk fence up by now I'm not sure we'll see I'll stay in touch with you to make sure that we stay on top of this so thank you now there's one okay so my question relates to traffic safety parking rails, future planning and transportation so we're all tied together as you know we're at college now and my question relates to what are the measures within the future planning and also the transportation issues how are you working with the University of Georgia in planning for transportation currently the students are using our speed as a parking lot they park in the morning get out of the cars with their backpacks and a lot of them park it overnight and not coming back to the cars sometimes for days later so I don't think that we can as a college now can legitimately just do our own planning and ignore the relationship with the University of Georgia because I think all of it goes hand in hand what are the measures that are in place or what are the plans to work with the University as you go forward that's a great question, thank you I mentioned at the beginning that's my number two complaint they're parking on my street and it's no surprise to you all that it's not you parking on someone else's street it is students they're looking for a free place to park here at one time myself I get it, completed back then in the late 70's there was almost adequate parking I guess you could say for students we are an active conversation with UGA on many projects we have a monthly meeting with some of their staff and we have a quarterly meeting on a larger scale with their staff I don't guess it's a surprise to some of you but the University of Georgia is proposing two parking ride lots and one of them I believe is Middleage Avenue the other one is College Station Road and they're wanting to put some parking there in those areas in the mediums where the on ramp or off ramps converge there with the Loop 10 so that's something that we feel like would take a load off that's in the planning stages right now I know the University of Georgia is also planning a parking deck out off of College Station Road over near Barnett Shoals Road they're proposing a large deck there as well we've had quite a bit of conversation with them regarding the traffic signal that location certainly if they build there that signal would need some modifications so we're in an active conversation as I said with that that's as far as me being able to elaborate beyond that I really can Blaine might be able to share a little bit more with you on those lines so I'd echo what Tim is saying we have a great relationship with the University and they have a meeting with their peers and I have a meeting with our peers at the University monthly and we discuss all these things if you didn't know it some of the traffic signals and some of the streets in and around the University are the universities to have not ours now we do have an agreement where we maintain those signals for them but for instance you may have noticed where it's all bubbling so that came out and they're looking at that whole corridor which has a couple of our oldest traffic lights in Athens-Clarke County and so we're planning on how to do that and do we put back some pedestrian throughway there where the bridge used to be so we have conversations like that on a routine basis so we're coordinating well and also I believe Chief Corrigan if I'm wrong with this but we are increasing in the 5 points area and I think you have hired somebody to help us to understand we had a recent employee of 30 years retire wanted to come back part time we said he was very interested in the parking details these are there's a lot of calls and we stayed back up on calls we're fortunate you know in Atlanta or metro areas you gotta wait 2-3 hours to get a response from an officer there we're pretty good at answering calls parking we get a lot of complaints probably one of the major issues is parking and so we've hired this officer what he's doing is his full-time job is to be hitting these hot spots and towing cars I think they code 6 today over by Parkview I mean it's just daily they're constant and so he's doing a lot of that enforcement trying to address them and parking on sidewalks I think you have a question exactly that's one of my things first I'd like to thank you all for being here this is all I've read I appreciate you guys taking the time but the chief self presents a question I have because we live on the same street I can attest that parking is always a problem it's a daily problem whether it be parking on the sidewalks parking on the yellow curb blocking fire hydrants blocking driveways so people can't get in and out and the times I've called to talk to officers about it they say I've been told numerous times that they will not enforce parking on my street one officer said this because parking on your street sucks another one said this is an officer's question we don't have to do it and I explained that I think it's very dangerous you know since my boys were a bearer we had to go out into the street in the middle of Jaffa New because UTS FedEx was on the sidewalk playing that talk to you about this and you were going to get back to me that never heard from you about it well I'm going to address that he captured it on our street many many times and never gotten a call back so I'm wondering why do officers say they will not enforce parking on our street why are we being denied that well I'll turn over chief since you called me out directly so part of the problem is that you have these landscaping services and stuff they'll pull up on the side of the road or it's a university and by the time officers get there they're gone so a lot of times it's something that bugs the heck out of you but we can't do much about because we're not right there and the chief had taken the extraordinary step and he's somebody who's dedicated to that and we hope that that's going to help the responsiveness sure and I'll make sure that he's available we usually have this number so y'all can work together he loves right parking tickets so huge game but I will say this that is a huge challenge because it's no parking over there where you're at there are kids playing the sidewalks but I think a lot of the challenges in my college landscape they were parking on the side well now we went directly to that company in their management and said look they helped us and they've agreed not to park over there so I think that's been resolved but then a new Amazon driver drives up and parks to run and drop a package off and then by the time we're getting there gone and some officers you're right they do have they can cite or not cite that the law gives them that benefit and that discretion and so I've been pretty clear I wanted them cited over there and I thought it got better and then again I thought back up but I'll make sure you have officer warden on I've been told many times still that they will not be that last time cars were blocking driveways I was told that they'll call them but they're not even a ticket car so they'll call me and just ask them to move it and then they'll serve left and the cars are still there if I might address one of your concerns you mentioned couldn't get out of your driveway if you'll call me in traffic engineering the commission allows us yellow ten feet either side of your driveway if it's not yellow we'll be glad to do that a lot of times that does help the situation it actually stops it we had one intersection a couple of weeks ago that we went out and had to yellow it because it was unsafe there was no way an emergency vehicle could get through if they did would have probably resulted in a head on we yellowed that intersection fifty feet all the way around the commission gives us the administrative authority to do that we can also yellow the curve in a fire hydrant so anyone here if you have those issues please call us we'll do it now we wait until we have enough to keep our crew busy for a full day before we send the striking route it takes them about three hours to clean that machine up so that it won't set up and ruin so we'd like obviously we want a full day's work before we have to clean it we see the advantage of that I appreciate it they're very thoughtful and responsive we'll certainly do that so we appreciate what you've done and if you'll see me I'll take care of it I want to add in that a project that Mike and I have been working on would be with the county manager and it's complicated that this lump in the form of our streets I think and the village is G.Dot is to designate some loading zones so that looking for the key spot in the left turning lanes maybe where some of those balusters are in the picture in front of 5 and 10 if we can designate the place for them to park so that they're not pulling up and that's a project that we need to get move forward on and learn how we can get that designation if I might I'm sorry Mike but there's also another remedy for you and that's our residential parking permit program which Commissioner Wright has one coming through now so with the petition you can for certain streets petition that is residential parking by permit only now that solves some problems create others you know we have guests come over so that's something to consider but there are other remedies out there we've got two hands back here and then our new officer up front has played impatiently because I forgot when I was at the room that she mentioned this is just a specific question for Bruce regarding the short-term rental on Witterspoon's courts and it comes to our knowledge that the owners have been faking owner occupancy since last year with the Texas registered car with flat tires in the driveway nobody lives there but they're cleared to take 16 renters is that grandfather again to be faking residents I'll say this enforcement of the ordinance in whatever form that it ultimately has adopted is being taken very seriously and some of the revenue from the excise tax that will be collected for the short-term rentals will be used to hire a staff person that's going to focus on the administration of the program so that these types of issues to the best of our ability we can look into and do the research and be able to bring first through an education process but if that fails then we'll have compliance measures that we'll use these types of stories where there's a lot of creativity in our community to manage permitting after the fact we know that happens and we've seen a lot of things we aren't easily fooled the challenge for us is gathering the evidence and it is staff intensive but it is something we're very serious about and if it's on the books we're going to enforce it well and Bruce you cannot prohibit people that live out of state from owning the property there's a constitutional law maximum that attorney just recently told me I can't remember presently we have no definition at all so there's no law on the books that prevents that there's nothing for us to enforce it hasn't been adopted yet it's up for vote it's up for vote everywhere he says okay I need to touch base here because when Dylan was talking she had asked for a question it was part of the comment you can make a comment I think is watching the clause just very quickly I wanted to touch base on trade I'm 22 years old moved from south Florida came here after Georgia I was not going to talk but I love talking you can stand up I just wanted to say the new officer base of course that rain right now has been very effective you mentioned mental health and that ICAP program chief's office was talking about it has opened my eyes I knew about mental health but it definitely opened my eyes and we've done scenario based training we do death by PowerPoint but it's worth it just overall I just wanted to say that because I've heard a lot of people talking about officers and I can't speak for those officers but it's been very good I don't start deal training until three weeks later so but just more so I just wanted to mention that training is very effective and I'm learning so much I'm a very very new officer and I hope that I can be an advantage to you guys thank you I'm good let's say Mary, then Hillary, then Michael then we're approaching we're approaching the rich which is spent time well thank you this kind of covers the five points intersection traffic and enforcement so it's great to enhance the five points intersection and I know we're all grateful to that but it has the consequences as many things like that do of increasing cut through traffic through the neighborhoods very close to a big cut through intersection and so my question has to do with a couple of things that have to do with stop signs and I'm also excited to hear about the neighborhood of traffic plan stop signs I live in the neighborhood of Parkway Greenwood, Carlton Terrace Village Heights and just to give an example there's a two way stop at Parkway and Greenwood that's through one Parkway there's a two way stop at the next intersection at Village Heights that's a through on Village Heights and then the next intersection is a four way stop and I could go to the next corner and do the same thing in reverse it's very confusing you have to stop and think is cross traffic coming through which direction do I is a four way stop so I travel these streets all the time and it's still confusing to me sometimes I have to really pay attention to the stop signs so my question is is there any way to make those more consistent so when you're going through a neighborhood you know every intersection is going to be a four way stop or this street is going to be through all the way through so that's the first question then the second question is you know people are going to say well so what nobody stops at stop signs anyway I see that if one of the intersections just two houses down from my house nobody ever stops there and it's a cut through between Village and Lumpkin and so I don't know if there's technology, if you thought about installing cameras I feel like people kind of stop at stop signs they are suggestion and maybe if there was some real enforcement where people were getting tickets in the mail they might if might help they might start not cutting through our neighborhood all great questions all great concerns I understand those concerns I would like to well first of all the consistency aspect those stop signs in that neighborhood that you're referring to they all accept two of those I believe predate me so they've been there for many many years now I mentioned that manual on uniform traffic control devices earlier that's what we are bound to live by it requires a great deal of traffic to get across street to stop I don't have those exact figures in my head to share with you tonight but it's a good number of those for an 8 hour period out of the day most likely if I went and did a study at those intersections to look at those stop situations if it's an all-way stop we probably have to pull two of those stop signs out you realize that they do slow traffic even if it is a slow and go situation which I don't advocate not certainly not sitting next to the cheese I wouldn't eat anyway that's a pet peeve of mine won't tell him alive for getting stopped the other day for rolling through one but she knows better so thankfully she didn't get a ticket it wasn't in Clark County anyway but I will say this one of the reasons that we're not allowed to go to the station where they're not warranted is the fact that it breeds contempt for the traffic control device we had a meeting over on Sunset Avenue where anyone here a couple of years ago where we had a meeting there on traffic on the neighborhood traffic management program well as we were standing there for the hour we had the meeting out in the yard there was a stop sign right adjacent to us and at the end of the meeting they said have you noticed everyone ran to stop sign I said yes not only have I noticed because many years ago Mayor and commission decided that they knew better than traffic engineering and they voted to install those stop signs they didn't meet warrants and they breed contempt for those devices people know that 99 times out of 100 they'll pull up to that stop sign and no one will be there and they'll just blow on through human nature right I don't know if I've answered your questions if you're requesting us to do a study some of those may change that is certainly something that we could do I will say that we have two people in our studies division and it's a constant challenge we cannot keep up with a request for traffic studies that we have so we have to hire consultants to do some of those we just hired something hire a consultant the other day to do one simple study as you mentioned here and it costs us $9,500 just to do that study of course money is an issue there one thing we've done this a little bit in this area is to put up the through traffic does not stop sometimes and we base those upon crashes typically if we have crashes at an intersection we're going to put those cross traffic does not stop signs up and if that's something you'd like I'd be happy to look at that for you I think you've done it over here on the way in this morning you learn how to drive there because you can't stop you know this person is right here and you can see they're about to go and you've just kind of got to roll through there you've got to still try to come through but what I thought I heard you say to answer her question directly is the new MUTCD manual may have the flexibility to be able to get these all four-way stops at certain the cross streets it's much more lenient than the old manual thank you Mary this question is for Mr. Williamson Mr. Romani I'm sorry about the short-term rentals I'm kind of specific about the sunset deliberations I guess and it would seem to me that the situation that they're describing on River Spoon wouldn't be legal not conforming like that doesn't seem like that would be the right term for something that would have 16 people in a single family neighborhood and I know that working for Alton Specton you would want to prioritize the people who are living here and paying taxes going to work out of county out of state out of country owners so that I am doing some research it seems that I saw some number six months not five years, two years two years seems very very generous and I guess that of course none of us want to pay the big people but is it it just seems overly generous given the difficulty that some people are living with crime well I'm no attorney and the one that I saw in the background left I think Calculate but my understanding is that case law has shown that a longer sunset period if you will allows people time to recoup it now from a policy perspective we're not advocating either way so when you come to February 6 meeting and you hear this and say anything about that you can still do it it's just that you could be open to challenge all that so that's the other thing is 16 people in your house you may have your family over for Thanksgiving and have 16 people in your house and right now as Bruce said we just don't have anything on the books that prevents that from happening on the short term rental side of things and that's what the commission is trying to remedy is at least get something going so let me just say this too y'all part of this is and so you mentioned this too we're not sure how many we've got by one software company we've got 750 by another we've got 1200 so the software has been bought we're advocating for a position the person is going to do this full time and then the commission is going to get something on the books and we're going to go for it but that's not the end of the story we start getting people in here we find out what the problems are we got the enforcement going on then they can always amend it, strengthen it whatever it calls for so this first step is not the end of the road but we have to start somewhere and I appreciate you Bruce saying well you've got to have a definition first so that has to get done we've got to get something on the books we've got to start registering these things and get somebody hired and then we can do better thank you all for being here I think it's good to have face to face with public officials and I think it provides a measure of accountability I have three quick things I want to mention one is five points you know when I hear $1.5 million that sounds like a lot but it's really not a lot of money that's a very complicated intersection and you start going back 100 yards from that intersection it gets more complicated so 1.5 is just a drop in the budget and second of all it doesn't address the totality of the problem of getting to five points particularly up Lumpkin Street this starts at the bottom of Lumpkin Street and Old Lincoln Highway and Tim and I have talked about this at length and it doesn't address the blind intersection at Westlake so I think you really need to go back and reevaluate that whole corridor and what the totality of the need is right there at the bottom of that five points intersection the same thing is back to the SDR and I've sent the commission some comments and one of the things is the moratorium a moratorium is not any good unless you enforce it and we have heard some comments at the last commission meeting that there are SDRs that have come online since the moratorium was put in effect so my question is what are you going to do about it and if you don't do something about it why should any developer real estate agent owner expect that you're going to enforce anything that's in a new ordinance so we would like to understand what you're planning to do about people who are in violation of the ordinance and the third thing is the growth plan you know Athens Clark County is the smallest geographical county in the state of Georgia and it has its own template which is telling us something so everything you talk about translates into higher density and so one of the questions I'd like to hear addressed publicly at some point in this debate about growth is how much is enough there's only so much you can shoehorn into the smallest geographical county in the state of Georgia and preserve quality of life thank you thank you Mark okay Rich Rich take it home here Rich yeah this is sort of the follow up to Sue's comment on short term rentals and many of us have seen the article in the plaque called the op-ed by the MPList regarding the situation that exists across from Penn where a six bedroom house is accommodating up to 30 people per weekend events and I guess my question is with respect to the proposed regulations for short term rentals if that's passed on February 6 how is that going to impact Sue's situation where 12 people to 16 people are occupying a six bedroom house with that and what's happening overall on River Bend yeah those are good questions Rich and I would say this you know certainly we are looking at the language that the plan has sent to us in the tax amendment but I'll also say this too once we get that software and once we get the short term rental person on board then we can go and look at the other ordinances that we have on the books that help address the noise ordinance and such that I hope it's all rich or not kind of but I think also in this first phase there needs to be some teeth included meaning if someone is in violation there's a home occupation the first offense you get a pass the second offense just as you see as someone who goes to the Airbnb sometimes it says there's a noise complaint you're going to be assessed a $600 fee well I think the others of an Airbnb should maybe get a pass the first time a fine of let's say $750 the second time there's a nuisance complaint that they don't address the third or fourth time they just need to lose their license don't disagree with what you're saying I think if you're a nuisance in a single family neighborhood that needs to be addressed in new homes it certainly does in the first two years to do an already existing you're non-interoccupied unless you violate some other ordinance there's nothing you can actually do that's what's in the text amendment right now you made that yeah they're saying repeat I said that's what's in the text amendment that's before us right now that you have currently operating a two-year sunset that's being recommended to the American Commission so after that two years if it's not your primary residence then you need to find a way to make it your primary residence and I'm going to use this term illegal non-conforming part of it the point is that in those two years if you are one of the if you are over-occupied and the situation is a witherspoon or what Rich was saying you don't violate some other ordinance parking ordinance or a noise ordinance or something like that or you aren't caught doing that or you can't do it there's nothing the county can do until those two years are up and for two years you're going to have to live with it basically unless and I'm not trying to point fingers I'm just saying I think it's important for people to understand that what we hear is legal non-conforming right? so one of the things that there we go one of the things we have to identify is were you in existence in a way that was legally recognized prior to the start of the moratorium so and that's why we're hiring this vendor to put together the software to help develop the list of those places that we're operating in a way that we can deem legal neighborhood what's legal and what's not prior to the moratorium well prior to the moratorium that's part of the challenge is we had no definition for short term realm so now we'll have that definition but those folks have to come forward we have to have identified that they were operating in a way that we can recognize and if they can't substantiate that then they don't make it onto the legal non-conforming list if they don't make it onto the legal non-conforming list they're in violation of the code and we can move to enforcement procedure what makes it not because you're saying there was no definition so what makes it not legal they had to be recognized as operating in a way whether it's through an online third party source that we can identify that the vendor is going to identify for us or if they come forward and provide documentation that supports the fact that they were functioning as a short term realm if it, for lack of a better term for bootleg operation that doesn't meet any of those definitions they are not legal and they would still just be non-conforming and then we can have enforcement proceedings to deal with them now that particular instance that particular instance I think we've got to dig into we've got two baskets of enforcement issues we've got use people being in there but then we've got the problems that have come from gravel and noise and trash and parking that are another basket of enforcement issues so I think I'm maybe skirting your issue it looks like from the look on your face but still, if you didn't have a definition of short term rental until you passed this then how would somebody I mean I get it if they violated some residential, some building code in the rest where they are that's a whole different thing but what is it that makes them you didn't have a definition for short term rental so how could they be non-conforming through a definition you didn't have I don't understand well the moratorium was anybody that had before now had done it had done it before there was nothing we can't enforce the moratorium that's the answer I just wanted to make sure I'm not arguing I'm just trying to be clear I know there's questions about it but we can enforce the moratorium without the software we just can't okay Sarah this is actually not a short term rental we've got traffic just circling back around to some comments that were made earlier I think we just asked for law enforcement, traffic engineering to keep in mind that where we live in particular I think this is how a lot of local Athens but five points in particular being adjacent to the university that a lot of the normal ways of thinking about traffic don't apply like we have I don't even know how many thousand so last year's freshman class at UGA was 6,018 year olds let's just say that two thirds of them are driving so every year in the fall we get 4,000-ish 18 year old drivers driving in our neighborhood so if you when you respond to concerns about intersection safety with these kind of be really careful well a lot of those people coming and driving through especially in this area that Mary Ann is talking about I live there too this intersection of Parkway and Carl and Terrace is just a disaster waiting to happen and so many people are cutting through there and they haven't been through before or they're I mean I was driving in front of a person today and I looked in my rear-view mirror and she was taking a selfie of herself while she stopped it was actually so cliche it was amazing but I would just ask to kind of consider that I do think that five points has a unique in its sort of proximity to the university and the way that people are trying to cut through to avoid the intersection I think we just need to think about it a little bit differently and understand that makes that that's kind of unique and five points even more so that we have these young drivers that will do the town thank you sir appreciate that so that's a wrap for tonight and if you have any more comments we would certainly like to take them up for email before we leave I just want to recognize Kathy Hort over to Mr. and over to Mr. Carl thank you very much