4/15/2024 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 three separate videos - workshop, regular session and the return from executive 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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5. Councilman Carn motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for the Great American Cleanup 2024, seconded by Councilwoman Arnold and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
6. Councilwoman McKenzie motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for the 10U Major Boys, seconded by Councilwoman Arnold and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
7. Councilwoman Arnold motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for the 8U Girls, seconded by Councilwoman McKenzie and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
8. Councilwoman Arnold motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for the 8U Boys, seconded by Councilwoman McKenzie and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
9. Councilman Carn motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for the 35+ Basketball, seconded by Councilwoman McKenzie and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
10. Councilman Carn motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for the Georgia Cities Week, seconded by Councilwoman Arnold and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
11. Councilwoman Arnold motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for the Municipal Clerk Week, seconded by Councilwoman McKenzie and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
12. Councilwoman McKenzie motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for the National Cities Month, seconded by Councilwoman Arnold and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
13. Councilman Carn motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for the CSI CPEP Chapter/College Park East Point Chapter, seconded by Councilwoman Arnold and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
14. Councilwoman McKenzie motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for the Youth Council, seconded by Councilwoman Arnold and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
15. Councilman Gay motioned to add Selissa Jefferson to the proclamation list, seconded by Councilman Carn and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
16. Councilman Carn motioned to approve the proclamation presentation for Sellisa Jefferson, seconded by Councilwoman Arnold and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
Ordinance 2024-01, amongst other things, added another layer of bureaucracy to proclamations. Since the passage of this ordinance in January, this is the first time we’ve had proclamations on the agenda for approval so they may be read at the next meeting. We have had several requests for proclamations that we have not been able to accommodate as a governing body because of the time deadlines this ordinance requires.
17. Councilman Gay motioned to extend citizen comments for Keisha Sean Waites, seconded by Councilman Carn and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
As interest in the decisions of the Council has grown over the last few months, we have seen more people attending our meetings to give public comment in person and we have also received additional public comment via e-mail. There have been several instances during the last few meetings in which the time for public comment, currently set at 36 minutes, has elapsed without reaching the e-mailed comments. Council has the ability to extend time for public comment. People who send in public comment via e-mail deserve the opportunity to be heard just as much as the people who appear in person. I believe the rules regarding public comment should be amended to allow for the reading of any e-mails received. Councilmember McKenzie requested the e-mail comments after our meeting on Monday and they were sent to the governing body in accordance with the instructions of the Interim City Manager. You can read them here.
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21. Councilman Carn motioned to approve a professional services agreement with Mercer Health and Benefit Group for the purpose of providing Broker Services for employee health benefits service to authorize the Mayor and Council to execute all documents necessary to facilitate the award and establish a Broker of Record, seconded by Councilman Gay and motion carried. (All Voted Yes)
The three finalists for the broker services were invited to make a presentation during the workshop session. Both MSI Benefits Group and Gelin Benefits Group came. Ms. Christa Gilbert our Employee Payroll & Benefits Administrator, informed the governing body that the representative from Mercer Health and Benefit Group had a death in the family and would not be making a presentation. However, a representative from Mercer did appear at the Regular Meeting and while he did not have a presentation prepared, he answered questions I asked. The other members of the governing body had no questions and unanimously approved the recommendation of staff to select Mercer as the broker of record for health insurance benefits. If you want to learn more about the proposals of the three groups, you can submit an open records request for their responses to the RFP here.
22. Councilwoman Arnold motioned to approve the revised Mayor and Council Departmental Budget Meeting Schedule for Fiscal Year 2024-2025 and move the meeting to the Executive Conference Room adhering to the public meeting guidelines prior to COVID with no live streaming, seconded by Councilman Carn, Councilman Carn and Councilman Gay voted in favor, Councilwoman McKenzie and Councilwoman Arnold abstained and motion carried.
Our first scheduled budget meeting was in council chambers and was streamed by our videographer. While that meeting did not actually move forward and the schedule has been pushed back to May, it is not a good practice to limit public access to one of the most important things this elected body does every year: spend your money. Government operates best in the sunshine. The executive conference room holds about 15 people comfortably. If we have more people who wish to participate in the budget hearings, we will have to move to a larger location. I know one of my colleagues asserted the public may be in favor of saving money by not streaming the budget sessions, but that is not the feedback I have received from people in the community. I don’t have a good explanation why we would not continue with the practice of having budget sessions in the council chambers so we have enough room for anyone who would want to attend and stream them so the public can see what we’re doing no matter where they are.
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Councilwoman McKenzie exited the council chambers at 8:46 pm
27. Councilman Carn motioned to approve the renewal of fiscal year 2024-2025 professional services agreement between the City of College Park and Ignite Resource Center CP, Inc in the amount of $50,000 annually, seconded by Councilwoman Arnold and motion carried by those present.
The current agreement with Ignite does not require any payment from the city. The new agreement, beginning July 1st, will pay the salaries of the executive director and two resource specialists. I asked about call data from the current year and while Ms. Rose Stewart, Executive Director of Ignite, indicated she did not recall the organization keeping records like that in the past, it has been done before. Ignite’s presentation in 2020 had some limited data about the people who were served through the program.
Councilwoman McKenzie re-entered the council chambers at 8:55 pm
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Regarding Shavala Ames:
I have had the privilege of working with Shavala Ames in her role as City Clerk for the past four years. I have found her to be one of the most knowledgeable and professional individuals on our staff. She has worked tirelessly to support, mentor and develop the people within her department. She has taken every opportunity to further her own skills to be the best clerk she could be for our city and its residents. Ms. Ames is talented, dedicated and has been a real asset to the City of College Park. I cannot condone her behavior on Monday night. I also cannot ignore the circumstances that led to it. I have tremendous respect for Ms. Ames and I sincerely hope that Monday night does not overshadow all she has contributed to our community.
Update from the 4/1/2024 Meeting:
As you may recall, Dr. Adediran and I had a conversation at the April 1st meeting regarding documents he’d received about the rezoning of 0 Welcome All Road. That conversation started via e-mail earlier in the day, when it came to my attention from members of the community that there was an updated document from NextEra about the $1.6 million “grant” that had not been shared with me. The document Dr. Adediran attached to his initial response can be found here.
Later that afternoon, Dr. Adediran followed up with another e-mail you can see here. The attachment to that e-mail can be found here.
I circled back with Dr. Adediran and asked to see the correspondence in which he received the newest document. His response was that the document had been hand-delivered to him. I asked him who hand-delivered it, and he declined to tell me.
In looking at the properties of the document, it was not scanned. I doubted Dr. Adediran had received this in the manner he’d said, which is why I made an open records request for all e-mails from Melissa Schroeder from NextEra, because she was the creator of the new “Community Investment Commitment” document Dr. Adediran had shared with me. I also asked Ms. Schroeder directly for the correspondence that contained the document, but she never responded.
This past Friday evening, I received the results of my open records request. In the documents were two e-mails that answered the question about how Dr. Adediran had received the information from Next Era. You can see them here and here. He received it five minutes before he sent it to Mayor and Council.
This project has been the source of great controversy, in part because of the manner in which it has been handled. I had a conversation at our April 15th meeting with the city attorney regarding my concerns about signing Ordinance 2024-07, which Council has not, in my view, formally considered or voted upon. Even after the conversation we had at the meeting, I do not believe I have the authority to sign the ordinance, and I have expressed that I will not sign it at this time. I do not believe we have complied with the state Zoning Procedures Law or our own zoning ordinances in this situation and I cannot in good faith sign a document that purports that we have.
Also, like some of you who may have read the most recent article in the AJC about the city’s response to the Open Meetings Act complaints surrounding this rezoning, I was surprised to learn that the city attorney shared with the State Attorney General’s office that the city “‘had deadlines requiring’ officials to vote on the issues ‘to ensure the city would be able to receive the grant funds.’” I have asked our city attorney for his full response to the Attorney General’s office three times, but as of the date of this post, I have yet to receive a reply. I am not aware of any deadline that prompted the council’s actions on March 18th. Consequently I have followed up with additional open records requests to learn more.
