3/18/2024 Meeting Recap
For your information, state law requires our city clerk to post the action items from the meeting within two business days of the adjournment of a meeting. O.C.G.A. 50-14-1(e)(2)(a). Action items are the issues upon which the Council has decided to take some sort of action via a vote.
A full list of the action items from the meeting can be found here. You can see the recordings of the meeting here. The meeting is in two separate videos - workshop and regular session.
While you can see the documentation all of the action items via the above link, I wanted to highlight and discuss in detail some of the motions that were and were not considered.
If you have feedback for Mayor and Council directly, you can e-mail us.
REGULAR SESSION
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17. Councilman Gay motion to renew the motion to approve the rezoning of property at 0 Welcome All Road from Business Park (BP) to Light Industrial (M1), seconded by Councilwoman McKenzie, Councilman Carn opposed, and motion carried.
This was added to the agenda at the start of the meeting. Our Interim City Manager, Dr. Emmanuel Adediran, had one sheet of paper that showed this and the following agenda item. You can see it here. I was not aware these items would be added before the meeting began.
This matter has been before the Council on two other occasions: October 18, 2021 and August 7, 2023. NextEra Energy applied to rezone the property, approximately 61.86 acres, to construct a lithium battery storage facility on the site. The facility would "tap into" the adjacent Georgia Integrated Transmission System, store excess energy during mid-day in individual battery cells in self-contained metal boxes, and release it back into the system during peak times. The property is surrounded on three sides by the City of South Fulton.
At both prior public hearings, residents from the City of South Fulton attended and expressed their concerns about the project. While rare, there have been instances of fires at these facilities. Because of the nature of lithium ion fires, the recommended course of action is to let the fires burn themselves out, but this can take several days. Our public safety personnel also expressed concerns about the project. The people living near the proposed facility were unanimous in their opposition and several residents of College Park spoke up against the project as well.
In 2021, I was the tiebreaking vote against the rezoning. In 2023, Councilmember Gay was not present at the time of the vote and Councilmember Carn and former Councilmember Ken Allen voted against the project while former Councilmember Ambrose Clay was in favor. As a result, the rezoning failed a second time.
One of the reasons Councilmember Clay was in favor was because there were a number of design and construction safeguards he negotiated with NextEra that he felt made the facility safe enough to operate. They included:
Industrial uses on the site shall be limited to storage of electric energy in batteries and a utility substation. Under no circumstances shall the use include freight trucks or similar other heavy equipment operations, except for material delivery during the construction phase. All uses listed under BP are allowed.
The minimum distance from any storage containers or structure to a residential property shall be 100 feet.
The site shall maintain a 10 foot evergreen buffer around the entire periphery to provide a visual screen.
Areas within 10 feet of storage containers shall be cleared of combustible vegetation and other combustible growth.
Access to the southern portion of site shall be restricted to Welcome All Road and access to the northern portion shall be restricted to one entrance on Delano Road.
FAA approval of height of transmission towers shall be submitted to Building Official prior to issuance of land disturbance permit.
Training. Prior to operations, Applicant shall provide training to public safety personnel for emergency response. Training shall occur annually. Training shall be provided to both City of South Fulton and City of College Park personnel.
Emergency Operations Plan. Applicant shall prepare and provide a copy of an Emergency Operations Plan to the College Park fire department and local fire code officials. A permanent copy shall also be accessible to facility personnel, fire code officials, and emergency responders. The emergency operations plan shall include the following information:
Procedures for safe shutdown, de-energizing, or isolation of equipment and systems under emergency conditions to reduce the risk of fire, electric shock, and personal injuries, and for safe start-up following cessation of emergency conditions.
Procedures for inspection and testing of associated alarms, interlocks, and controls.
Procedures to be followed in response to notifications from the Battery Energy Storage Management System, when provided, that could signify potentially dangerous conditions, including shutting down equipment, summoning service and repair personnel, and providing agreed upon notification to fire department personnel for potentially hazardous conditions in the event of a system failure.
Emergency procedures to be followed in case of fire, explosion, release of liquids or vapors, damage to critical moving parts, or other potentially dangerous conditions. Procedures may include sounding the alarm, notifying the fire department, evacuating personnel, de-energizing equipment. and controlling and extinguishing the fire.
Procedures for dealing with battery energy storage system equipment damaged in a fire or other emergency event, including maintaining contact information for personnel qualified to safely remove damaged battery energy storage system equipment from the facility.
Procedures and schedules for conducting drills of these procedures and for training local first responders on the contents of the plan and appropriate response procedures.
It is not clear any of those conditions were included in the rezoning approved Monday night. They were not specifically stated within the motion and there was no supporting documentation provided with the agenda item.
The power of zoning is granted to municipalities from the State of Georgia and there are strict guidelines that have to be followed for a rezoning, including having a public hearing and posting notice of that hearing. You can take a look at some of the requirements under state law here. Our ordinances also set out requirements for rezoning requests that are available for review here.
I do not believe the process on Monday night complied with either state law or our own ordinances. I have reached out to the State Attorney General’s office regarding my concerns and I await their response.
18. Councilman Gay motioned to accept a $1.6 million economic development grant from Southwest Atlanta Battery Storage, LLC to be allocated equally among College Park’s City Council wards pursuant to the award letter, seconded by Councilman Carn and motion carried. (All voted yes)
On the heels of the rezoning decision, the council voted unanimously to approve a grant with no documentation for $1.6 million. You can see the discussion I had with Dr. Adediran here. On Tuesday morning, I followed up and asked for the documentation. Here is the e-mail from NextEra and you can find the initial grant information here. Southwest Atlanta Battery Storage appears to be an entity NextEra has set up specifically for the purposes of this project. Late today, we received an updated document that you can see here.
I am deeply uncomfortable with the optics of this decision. The argument could be made that in exchange for a rezoning approval, the city will receive $1.6 million. This is not a good look, especially considering neither of these items was on the posted agenda. They were instead added at the start of the meeting basically giving the public no notice. Transparency is one of our core values and I do not believe we operated with transparency in this instance.
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22. Councilwoman McKenzie motioned to approve the installation of a sidewalk from Oxford Walk subdivision on Fairway to Washington Road, seconded by Councilman Carn and motion carried. (All voted yes)
Because this was not a budgeted item and it was added to the agenda at the start of the meeting, I followed up on Tuesday morning to ask about the plan for funding this project. You can see the breakdown here.
