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Elections and Politics

Democrat Curt Thompson and why he’s Running for Gwinnett County Commission Chair [Podcast]

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Curt Thompson County Commission

In this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, Rico Figliolini meets with Curt Thompson who is currently running for Gwinnett County Commission Chair. Listen in and get an in-depth look at Curt’s views regarding public safety, smart-city technology, affordable housing and much more.

Resources:
Website: CurtForGwinnett.com

“Job one is working on a transit plan and either implementing it and getting it passed. I also think that we need to seriously look at our County planning infrastructure in general. I think if you’re going to have half a million people move here over the next 10 years, you’d better plan well for that. I think that especially in places like West Gwinnett and South Gwinnett, you’re going to have to look at trying to incentivize a lot of mixed use developments that are more vertical where you’ve got the residential above and the retail at street level.”

Curt thompson

Timestamp:

[00:00:30] – Intro
[00:02:04] – About Curt
[00:03:27] – Defining CIDs
[00:07:26] – Public Transit
[00:13:51] – Running a Campaign Amidst COVID-19
[00:20:23] – Affordable Housing
[00:25:45] – County Makeup before and after election
[00:26:53] – Criminal Justice Reform
[00:28:28] – Economics and Supporting Families
[00:30:39] – Technology in Gwinnett County
[00:34:59] – Public Safety
[00:38:08] – Closing

Podcast transcript

Rico: [00:00:30] Hi, this is Rico Figliolini host of Peachtree Corners Life the podcast, one of several that we do here in the city of Peachtree Corners, and I appreciate everyone showing up, either live to this Facebook live stream, or if you’re seeing this on demand on iHeart radio, Spotify, you’re listening to it later, please put a review on the podcast or wherever you are and share it to people that you like. Peachtree Corners Life, Facebook pages, where this originally is streaming from. And I have a guest tonight that’s involved in politics. We’ll get into that in a couple of minutes and I just want to mention our main sponsor, Hargray Fiber. They are a fiber company here in not only in the Southeast and Georgia, and they’ve been working really close here in Peachtree corners as well as Southeast, but this whole Metro area, they’ve come into over the past few months working with companies and they have fiber optics to be able to peak at companies online fast. Provide bandwidth, provide great customer service, a lot different than the cable guy, let’s call it. They’re really involved in the community, and you’ll see them more involved in the community as they grow in this area. So find out a little bit more about them and their, I think it’s 90 day internet free if you sign up with them you can do that at HargrayFiber.com. So now let’s cut to the chase and let’s talk to our guest tonight. Curt Thompson, who’s a Democrat running for Gwinnett County commission chair. Hey Curt, how are you?

Curt: [00:02:03] Good. How are you?

Rico: [00:02:04] Good, thank you. So tell us a little bit about yourself and, and how, you know, how you got into this. What would you expect from doing this?

Curt: [00:02:13] Sure. Well, I’m a lifelong Gwinnett resident. I was born in Decatur, but that’s just where the hospital was. I started at Camp Creek elementary and I graduated from Shiloh high school. So I grew up in sort of in South Gwinnett for the last, well, for 16 years I was in the state legislature representing parts of Gwinnett County. Two of those I was in the general, state house member. 14 of those I was a state Senator. And then starting last February, I announced I was running for Gwinnett County commission chair and of course I’ve been running hard ever since. I am a lawyer by education and trade, went to Georgia state university law school college of law and I have two law offices. One’s in Norcross in the historic district and one is in Duluth, in an office building near Gwinnett mall.

Rico: [00:02:57] Oh wow. Okay. So you’ve been, you’ve been involved in a lot of different things actually being in the legislator session for 16 years, I think it was.

Curt: [00:03:06] That was, yeah 16.

Rico: [00:03:07] As a house rep. You’ve helped pass legislation to deal with CIDs, which. If you want to explain that you were actually head of one in West Gwinnett I think, correct?

Curt: [00:03:17] What’s now called Gateway 85 it was called Gwinnett village when we founded it, and I helped get the statute pass that actually allowed for CIDs to even happen in Gwinnett County.

Rico: [00:03:27] And CIDs are what?

Curt: [00:03:29] A community improvement districts are sort of, it’s a commercial property organization where commercial properties band together, and it’s, I guess either a quasi governmental organization, if you’re trying to be real lawyerly sounding about it. Where they have the power to tax and the power to offer essentially some municipal services, like especially a lot of it goes into planning and streetscaping and traffic planning is one of the primary things as well as clean up. But they can also spend money on security. I know that the Gwinnett village, which I was a part of, or gateway 85 is now, it had paid security cars and things like that going through the district and you’ll see that as a common thing and other community improvement districts as well.

Rico: [00:04:14] So if most people don’t understand that’s actually a self taxing district. So they help themselves.

Curt: [00:04:19] They add money to the millage rate, and then that money gets spent in that district’s area. Similar to the way a township would, but it’s just, or a city would, but it’s just for commercial properties.

Rico: [00:04:30] So being, so being head of that, you actually had to handle similar, some of the similar things that you, that you possibly would, as a County commissioner would?

Curt: [00:04:38] You do, you handle municipal service issues just like you would. I mean, obviously at the County Commission level, it’s a much bigger issue. And it’s a much bigger budget. But it’s similar issues, municipal services, yes. You have to work with the County when you’re doing, when if you’re a CID, just like a city, you have to work with the counties. And if the CID, like the Gwinnett village is partly in the city of Norcross. So you also have to work with that city as well. They get a board member on the, on the board of the community improvement district actually.

Rico: [00:05:11] All right, so you get, you have to deal with different levels of government to, to do what you need to do there. The reason I pointed that out first is because that is a big deal in Gwinnett County when it first came here and because it was the first, because of what Gwinnett Place mall in that whole area was like some years ago. This was, how long has it been now?

Curt: [00:05:34] That CIDs have been in existence? Probably about, I want to say about 12 years. I have to go back and look. But I would say.

Rico: [00:05:43] So, it’s been a while. I mean, and that whole area has changed. In fact, the Gwinnett place mall, I think is all, it’s being sold or there’s some…

Curt: [00:05:51] Gwinnett Place CID is a, is a different CID from Gateway 85. But yeah, that, that property is currently on the market. And obviously that has changed. And that’s probably one of the things that has to be, forgetting CIDs, you know, dealing with the Gwinnett Place mall areas, probably one of the top priorities that at any County commission chair is going to want to address when they’re, when elected. Certainly it’s one of my top priorities.

Rico: [00:06:19] Because the, that’s a huge expansive land right there. That’s not going to remain that way. Right?

Curt: [00:06:26] I would hope not. You know, I, I would hope that being a dead mall is not something that you really want at, in the Gateway to West Gwinnett.

Rico: [00:06:36] Yeah. I mean, I, it’s been talked about as a multi, multi-use development, maybe something similar to the maybe not quite similar, but like the infinity. The way that area in Duluth is being developed with the convention center, hotels, retail and all that.

Curt: [00:06:53] Yeah. There’s been different talk. I mean, over the years you’ve heard everything from a cricket stadium to youth development to building a shopping center area similar to Avalon just over in the Alpharetta area. I think that the, the main thing you need is, is actual leadership in the area to make sure that something actually happens. Otherwise we’ll be talking about it for the next, you know, we’ve talked about it for six years. 10 years, we could be talking about it and another six to 10 years if we’re just right.

Rico: [00:07:26] For sure. And, well part of that too, I would think is the idea, and we’re going to jump a little bit around here a little bit, but the idea of transportation also coming because that was going to be the first footprint of Marta, or if not Marta…

Curt: [00:07:43] Some regional transit, whether that’s, or something…

Rico: [00:07:46] Or maybe Marta Manage, but whatever it is. But it’d be the first entry to Gwinnett County of mass transit of that nature. Which in the vicinity of that would likely make sense, I guess, but that failed twice, I think already.

Curt: [00:08:00] It failed once in 92 I guess it actually, I think. There was some initial failing vote back in the early seventies, like when Marta was created. Then in 92, it went down hard in a vote. I remember, cause that was one of the first elections I voted in. And then, and of course recently just failed in a special election ballot. I think that you know, one of the lessons from that is to not put something like that on a special election ballot.

Rico: [00:08:27] Yeah. It was the only item on the ballot, which really to me, made no sense. I mean, spent money for no reason and it actually could have…

Curt: [00:08:34] Spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it’s one of those things, if you plan to fail, you’ll fail.

Rico: [00:08:38] Yes, and not for anything it probably could have passed maybe if it went to a general election, but.

Curt: [00:08:44] I think if you had had high turnout, it would’ve passed just because of the nature of Gwinnett County voters. If you’d had a full turnout election, not a special election, I sincerely believe it would pass now, hopefully, you know, it’s a blessing in disguise. It’s hard to think of it that way as someone who supports mass transit. But hopefully we will get a better transit plan. And get a better transit plan passed, you know, soon.

Rico: [00:09:08] And, and it may, I mean, I come from New York and, you know, brand it was on the subways and stuff. I can see the use of mass transit makes a lot of sense, although in a suburb area, people don’t look at it that way. They look at it as just more traffic, more money. It’s billion dollars being spent just to put one station somewhere. And I can understand that versus let’s say light rail or other forms of transportation that’s less expensive.

Curt: [00:09:36] But all of that, even when you say light rail I think that, yes, the heavy rail is expensive and I think that we need to seriously look at whether or not, you know, you were mentioning you’re from New York, so you, if you look at the long island rail. Going out, waiting on the suburbs. Cause if you go all the way out to Smithtown on the other end of the Island, which the long island rail does. You know, that that’s a pretty sizable distance. Or if you even look at the Boston area rapid transit or Washington DC’s transit, it goes way out into the suburbs. That doesn’t mean you have the heavy rail always going way out into the suburbs. That’s not how every system is designed. I do think that light rails and bus rapid transit are probably more cost effective, although, you know, when you’re committing to doing that instead of heavy rail, you’re also committing to having transfer stations every time you connect to the Marta system, it would have to be, because you’d be changing rail lines.

Rico: [00:10:26] Right. So transit hubs and, and maybe if the, I mean that’s almost scary to see. Cause if it’s just a transit hub and not development around it as part of that scheme, if you will?

Curt: [00:10:39] Well, I mean, I think it can be built. I think you just have to be very intentional about it. And, and every, every large transit metropolitan transit system has transfer stations. It just means that if you’re going to emphasize bus rapid transit or light rail when you connect to the, to the heavy rail system, those will always be a transfer station.

Rico: [00:11:00] So do you foresee yourself then as a proponent of this as a County commission chair to be able to like be an advocate for mass transit in Gwinnett County?

Curt: [00:11:10] I’ve been an advocate when I was a state Senator, I was an advocate when I was a state rep. Before that, I had been an advocate on the campaign trail. That would be my hope. It’s not my decision. It would be my hope that you know, I say, Lord willing and the Creek don’t rise, that this County commission would decide to put it on the November ballot so that when I’m running for office in November, assuming that, you know, if I win the primary running in November. That it’s on in the ballot and passes. And then it’s my job to do the best job possible of implementing that plan and updating it as soon as things change. And I think that, that, you know, these plans are living, breathing documents and I think that you will have to update them over the 10, 15, 20 years of their life span or whatever the life span of the agreement is. As you actually find the, as you know, the actual reality of the half million people that are going to move here in the next 10 years according to the ARC come in, where, where do they actually move and what are the actual traffic needs? So you’ll see some updating, but it would be my hope that I would be implementing something, if not one of, job one is to get something ready for a ballot initiative. I guess that would be 2022 if you’re trying to put it on the general election ballot, but, but getting something on the ballot. Well, that would be the earliest you could do it. I’ve heard arguments for and against that particular date, but that would be the earliest if you don’t do it this November.

Rico: [00:12:33] Yeah. So being able to do that now, whether, whether it gets on the ballot or not at this point is, is questionable right? I mean, our primary has moved from April to May to June. Hopefully it will happen in June. I mean, at some point they have to hold it, right?

Curt: [00:12:51] At some point they have to decide. I think that legally I think the chairman, the current chair, chairman Nash had wanted the decision made in April. That’s what I recall. I think that legally the lawyers have said you could wait as late as July or August and still get it on the November ballot in terms of meeting all the legal notice requirements. I don’t think, I guess, you know, one of the lessons from the last referendum was, is that it had a very short ramp window to run a campaign, and so I can understand why you wouldn’t want to do that at the last minute. But legal, you know, what is it, what’s legal and what’s advisable are not necessarily the same thing. April is better, especially if you’re trying to launch a significant campaign. Of course, doing something in the middle of a pandemic is, doing anything in the middle of a pandemic always sends a challenge, I would think. There wouldn’t be a lot of a campaign ramped up in April, I think, even if they voted on it at the next meeting.

Rico: [00:13:51] Yeah. So it may be a problem actually. So let’s, let’s segue right into that, because running a campaign is really difficult to begin with. When you have, how many candidates actually?

Curt: [00:14:03] I guess there’s eight total. There are five Democrats, and apologies if I miscounted someone, but five, and then there are three Republicans. Total of eight.

Rico: [00:14:14] Do you guys have a primary?

Curt: [00:14:15] We do. Yeah. It’s a partisan race, so there’ll be the June 9th primary will be the Republican, and it’s the general primary. It’s also the presidential primary on the democratic side.

Rico: [00:14:29] Whoever wins June 9th is the commissioner or the chair?

Curt: [00:14:32] No, whoever wins June 9th goes on, whichever Republican wins June 9th and whichever Democrat wins June 9th, go.

Rico: [00:14:40] Okay, that’s…

Curt: [00:14:41] November ballot, because it’s a partisan race. It’s not like a judgeship that’s said, we do have, you know, Georgia has the 50% plus one rule. So if no Democrat gets 50% plus one, it goes into I want to say it’s a July runoff, July runoff, and the same on the Republican side. They’ve got three candidates. They can…

Rico: [00:15:01] Well, that’d be, that’s easier for three, maybe five is a little bit more difficult to get the plurality. Right. How has it been running a campaign? I mean, what are you doing?

Curt: [00:15:15] You still go to events. There was a, I think there was about a week or two. We’re honestly, nothing was happening and I think most people weren’t. And so everyone was trying to adjust. Now instead of going to the Gwinnett NAACP meeting, you go to the Gwinnett NAACP zoom meeting. It’s a lot of zoom meetings. And so it’s not nearly as impressive to be checking in from your kitchen taking a picture of a computer screen where there’s a screen, you know, a grid of nine people on it or what, or however many people are there. That’s not nearly as impressive as checking in at an actual event with an actual selfie with actual people. But, but it’s a lot of zoom meetings. You can’t really canvas. So things shift to phone banking and you worry about the mail because you know, the postal service has been affected by the pandemic as well. And so you worry about campaign mail and whether that adjust, you have to adjust your schedule for campaign mail and things like that. Other than that, it stays the same. I will say that you also, you know, campaigns are not free. They cost money to run. I tell folks that any campaign, campaigns are not run on love and affection, you know, and so being in the middle of a pandemic with the economy shutdown is not a great time to be what we call dialing for dollars. You know, when you’re, especially because Democrats have a stereotypically, you know, if you look at say, whether that’s Bernie Sanders up to Joe Biden up to anybody. The Democrats are much more dependent on their small dollar donations from individuals because they don’t get, we don’t get as many of the big pack contributions, and those are definitely, it becomes harder to justify that. You know, you can’t go out and ask folks that don’t have a job to give a campaign contribution.

Rico: [00:16:59] No. And the primary is probably, it’s not as much of a problem because the, if you, if you win your primary income, the November election with Biden, likely the one that’s going to be on the ballot.

Curt: [00:17:10] And he is the presumptive nominee on the democratic side, and Trump is obviously going to be, it’s got to be Trump-Biden and…

Rico: [00:17:16] Right. Unless something further happens. I mean, right now.

Curt: [00:17:19] If something bizarre happens and you know, knock on wood, I don’t want to jinx it because we’ve had a lot of bizarre happen this year.

Rico: [00:17:27] Yes, we have. We have absolute power and we have all sorts of things going on.

Curt: [00:17:33] We have people that think they have absolute power. When they want credit for something and then suddenly it’s everybody else’s responsibility.

Rico: [00:17:40] Right? So you have a bit of that going on. Then we have 6 million absentee ballot applications going out for this one. Right. So lots of things going went on. And I know, I forget the percentage. It was a really small percentage of voters that voted absentee, I’d imagine this time around, and maybe way more.

Curt: [00:17:59] A lot higher, I would assume if they’d mailed out applications to everybody. You know, some percentage, it’ll be a much higher than it was now. They also moved the primary, my knowledge, I’ve never moved to primary in the middle of an election and we moved the presidential primary has been moved twice now. Right now, the presidential primary is not even competitive because Bernie Sanders has conceited and endorsed Biden, but that may be a wash on that side. But we’ve moved the general primary that all of us run in for the local races and state legislative and congressional races. But I still think that even with that being moved, there’ll be a lot more vote by mail, just because of what’s going on.

Rico: [00:18:39] Do you think that’s a detriment to Democrats?

Curt: [00:18:44] Well…

Rico: [00:18:45] In the primary, it doesn’t matter.

Curt: [00:18:46] In the primary it doesn’t matter. Because, I suppose if we had, you know, you saw what happened in Wisconsin where it was really about whether or not a conservative right wing judge on the Supreme court there would get reelected or not. And he did lose. For those that don’t know, they’re, he did lose in spite of the Republicans going to court to take, to, to force the election in the middle of the pandemic. But since our election, the general will not. Vote by
mail increase, may increase the turnout in the primary on the Republican and the democratic side, I would assume. You know, it may, you know, we won’t know. We’ve never done it this way, so you don’t know till you get there. But that’s a working assumption, but we don’t know what, you know what we’re going to have in November. If you have a double dip of this pandemic, which there, the scientists are talking about the fact that it could, if it is seasonal. Remember the Spanish flu lasted three years. There wasn’t the 1918 flu that was just in 1918, it was still around for 1920.

Rico: [00:19:49] Well there were no vaccines.

Curt: [00:19:51] If nothing, a vote by mail election in November, you know, or, or a, a significant absentee vote in November. We’ll see. We don’t know yet, but you, the, and I’m not sure in a state as narrowly divided as Georgia who that favors the betting money is that, you know, certainly the Republicans, they get favors the Democrats, by the way they talk about it. I’m not as certain of that, but I also don’t know if we’re going to have that happen in the general we’re, we’re dealing with it in a primary.

Rico: [00:20:23] Right. So let’s talk about as if, as if everything’s going to be fine and normal and we’re going to be just gung ho about this. And we’re gonna, you know, everyone’s going to be doing the right thing down the line. And elections come in November and we do the elections. But, so let’s talk about some of the other issues. We talked about transportation a little bit. We talked a little bit, we touched on development with the CID. Is there anything particularly you want to add to either one of those?

Curt: [00:20:56] Well, I mean, I think that, you know job one is working on a transit plan and either implementing it and getting it passed. I also think that we need to seriously look at our County planning infrastructure in general. I think if you’re going to have half a million people move here over the next 10 years, you’d better plan well for that. I think that especially in places like West Gwinnett and South Gwinnett, you’re going to have to look at trying to incentivize a lot of mixed use developments that are more vertical where you’ve got the residential above and the retail at street level. It doesn’t have to be high rise is like Midtown Atlanta, but at least you know, something that looks more like downtown Decatur or even Bindings areas.

Rico: [00:21:42] Like seven stories, six stories. Eight stories, something like that.

Curt: [00:21:45] Something like that.

Rico: [00:21:46] You also mentioned about affordable, affordable housing there’s some philosophies on that. How do you incentivize that? So then the developer will provide reasonable rental for people that, you know, they’re not on a living wage, but they have to live in the area maybe.

Curt: [00:22:03] Well to have, whether it’s affordable housing or workforce housing or senior housing, I think you do have to incentivize it at some level. Think of what you’re talking about. Some of that may be in speeding up the permitting process. Some of that might be you know, allowing people those height variances. It’s a lot harder to get a height variance in Gwinnett County than it is in Cobb or Dekalb or Fulton in terms of to go vertical. Because the only way you’re going to see the cost of land is only gonna go up. I mean, you may have this. The, the pandemic recession or whatever they’re going to call this is probably gonna flat, you know, flatten out some real estate costs. But in general, real estate’s going. You know, the days of having, if you’re looking for affordable housing, being everybody on a half acre or three quarter acre lot, that’s not going to happen. You’re talking about bringing condos in and tent more counterparts and things in the mixed use development, especially you would want that in the area where they’re going to build the Amazon plant in South Gwinnett because otherwise there’s folks who are just going to work in the Amazon plant and live in Dekalb County where the housing is cheaper and then they get all of the benefits of people living there and shopping there and, and you know, Dekalb gets all the benefits and we’ll just get the traffic in and out.

Rico: [00:23:12] So how do you force developers to do that? How do you?

Curt: [00:23:14] I don’t think you can force it. I think you have to incentivize it. You have to offer either speeding up the permitting process, speeding up rezoning process where necessary. And you probably have to give them, you may have to go to higher density, which means smaller square footage similar to what you have in the city of Atlanta or city of Decatur or some of these townhomes and condominium communities.

Rico: [00:23:38] Okay. All right.

Curt: [00:23:40] To allow for higher density cause once they can have higher density, once they can actually build something with higher density than they can you know, lower the price without necessarily lowering the quality. Cause I don’t necessarily want us to, you know, affordable housing needs to be quality affordable housing and not substandard affordable housing.

Rico: [00:23:58] Right. Because otherwise, I mean, I remember when I was on the planning commission some years back, I mean, you get developers coming in and they would build. High intensity properties, 13 units an acre, maybe, you know, we’re talking about town homes, and then people would just buy it up like 6, 12, 10 of them and then rent them.

Curt: [00:24:16] Rent them and then they bring them up. And that’s not what we’re trying to do, we’re wanting owner occupied stuff or long term renters, not folks that move every six months chasing a $15 rent discount kind of.

Rico: [00:24:28] Yes. And that’s 70…

Curt: [00:24:30] That you really have to look at that.

Rico: [00:24:32] Yeah. All right. So…

Curt: [00:24:35] But it’s really hard to mandate it. I mean, I’m not, there are places that haven’t had mandates like that. I don’t know if that would really work in Georgia’s construction environment. I think you have to look, you know, look at what other folks have done, whether that’s in the city of Atlanta or in Dekalb County or Cobb County.

Rico: [00:24:51] Okay. All right. Listen, it makes sense. And the problem with these things is always, whether you actually mandate it or if you incentivize it, can they get around that? This, there’s always a little give and take there.

Curt: [00:25:04] And you can use things like other areas like Chicago’s use tax increment financing, tax allocation districts. So you can give tax incentives also so that it makes it more affordable for folks to move in because then they have five years. You know, oftentimes it’s done as a, the property taxes phase in over five years so that people have time to essentially grow their income end of the property they’re living.

Rico: [00:25:27] All right. So there are ways to do it and we just need the courage to be able to do that, right?

Curt: [00:25:32] You need courage and leadership and focus. You’ve got to actually be willing to say this is a priority. Make it a priority. Tell your planning commissioners, it’s a priority. Tell your planning department it’s a priority.

Rico: [00:25:45] Do you think the County makeup right now, as far as who’s commissioners right now will be, have the same mindset as you? If you became County chair.

Curt: [00:25:53] You’ve got three seats up for, they’re going to be three new commissioners and every time I think you have an election, like every time you have an appointment to the Supreme court, it changes the makeup of the court entirely. Because it changes how the interpersonal reactions are, so I think that broadly, yes, I would expect there to be more of a focus on affordable quality, affordable housing, and more of a focus on mass transit. You won’t have Tommy Hunter’s leaving, you know, the, I guess, you know, this is the, you know, he’s the NIMBYs NIMBY kind of guy. I mean, there are things I could say, but they’re not sort of, you know, they’re, they’re definitely PG-13, at the very least, you know, but the, but you know, that type of commissioner is going to be gone, you know? That’s not an offense to him necessarily. It’s just saying that no one running for, you know, the current set of seats is going, is of that mindset that I’m aware of.

Rico: [00:26:53] More moderate. As far as justice, criminal justice reform, 287G is, is a big deal with what’s going on now. I know several of the sheriff candidates have said that they, one, they will, they’ll just disregard that because it’s a voluntary thing anyway. What’s your feeling?

Curt: [00:27:14] I think it needs to be abandoned. I think it costs the County money. And you’ll have people say, Oh, well there’s a, you know, the County gets a grant for it but the County is going to get that grant, regardless of whether they, from the federal government, whether they do 287G or not, it’s costing us money that we’re not getting reimbursed for, because that’s an additional expense that that same federal grant could be, could be used for something else. And so, you know I, you know, it’s my hope that whoever’s the next sheriff ends that program because it’s ultimately the Sheriff’s call. If the sheriff doesn’t want to do that I think the County commission needs to look at cutting the sheriff’s, you know, we have the ultimate power of the purse spring, on the purse strings on the County commission side, and they need to take a serious look at either cutting the Sheriff’s department budget or restricting County funds to not be used from that. Make them go get it from Brooke forfeiture money or actually get it from the feds and not get it from the County budget.

Rico: [00:28:13] And from some people that don’t know, 287G is, is the regulation to work with ice detention program right? To that the sheriff actually, his team acts as if they’re ice agents almost.

Curt: [00:28:27] Right.

Rico: [00:28:28] Okay. So as far as economics, supporting families. We’re gonna go through the list real quick, a little bit about middle class, lower middle class, working class. Are there certain policies that come to the forefront for you?

Curt: [00:28:45] I think that the, you know, we talked about, we touched on affordable housing, and that’s one. You know, I’ve, I’ve proposed that the County look at operating or contracting. We’re in some sort of public, private partnership to offer countywide wifi and come forward so that folks don’t have to take their kids to Chick-fil-A or McDonald’s to do their homework. Because nowadays, you know, that’s a real problem is that, you know, not everyone, especially at the lower income strata, can afford. My Comcast bill is 180 a month, and I do not have the premium channels. That’s Internet, TV. And, now granted I have the higher speed internet, but if they’re trying to do it to study, but I don’t have any premium channels. And that’s what it’s costing me. And so that’s the, you know, I can afford that. But that’s serious money for a lot of families. And I think that the County might be able to get a better price for folks and that, and definitely should look at offering that. And I think that we also need to look at our library system. There’s a program in the library system that allows folks to get a high school diploma who aren’t necessarily traditional students, but it’s an actual high school diploma, not a GED. And I think that we need to look at expanding programs like that where possible.

Rico: [00:30:02] Would that be expanded through the Gwinnett school system?

Curt: [00:30:06] No, that that’s through the public library system, which is part of the Gwinnett. The school system is part of the school board that I definitely would love for the school board
and the County commission to coordinate better together. They almost act like they’re on different planets. They don’t talk to each other it seems. At least that’s how it appears. And I wish that there was more cooperation between the two, but ultimately the K-12 stuff is on them, you know. This is just a program that’s offered through the library system, which the Gwinnett County public library is about 80% funded by the County.

Rico: [00:30:39] You were talking about wifi before. What about, 4G networking, there’s a lot of talk about 4G being used. I mean, you know, if you’re talking down the line future, I’m sorry, 5G. The next one will be 6G, but 5G, yes. And that’s what we have in Peachtree Corners on the Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners. It’s one and a half mile track that’s supposed to work. With IOT with, you know, self driving cars and all that.

Curt: [00:31:15] My Rotary club meets over there at the Peachtree Corners City Hall. So I see the track every day or at least once a week.

Rico: [00:31:22] So the, does the, does any, you know, 5G is one thing that’s sort of, let’s call it sexy and stuff, it’s great to have 5G because you need that for self driving cars, IOT. But what, what smart city. Because even counties plan these things out, right? Whether it’s water, whether it’s energy, whether it’s having charging stations for cars, whether it should, using solar, anything. Any ideas that you want to, that you’d like to see planned out over the next decade, let’s say, that would work in that realm?

Curt: [00:31:55] In the technology realm, specifically?

Rico: [00:31:58] Technology, energy.

Curt: [00:32:01] You know, I don’t know if this is where you were going. I mean, I do think that, you know, the countywide wifi that I was talking about would be part of that. I think if we want to ever, you know, we occasionally talk about creating a high tech corridor along 316. It might be nice to actually do more than talk about it and put it as a, you know, a paragraph in a blurb about things we’d like to do but we never actually get around to doing. At least around the Gwinnett Georgia college area. We ought to really look at it and actually trying to implement that. And then you know, I don’t know if this is, you know, what you meant from long range planning, but eventually we’re going to have to address the issue of water, you know, I mean and possibly upgrading the yellow river plant. I mean, the White Hill water treatment plant is sort of worldwide state of the art. There’s not a lot higher you could go with that. But you’ve got the two other, the, the substation down close to where, close to the, to where, Gwinnett, Fulton and Dekab come together. And then you’ve got the yellow river treatment plant that may, you may want to look at upgrading, depending on what the technology available is, you know, and now those are expensive projects that are done through the water department. But, but it took, you know, the reason that things called the Wayne Hill water treatment plan is because Wayne Hill took lead in that area. And I think that someone may have to take you know, in the next 10 to 15 years. And it’s, it’s always cheaper if you can do it sooner than if you do it later. We’re going to
have to address the issue of water and simply asking the courts to let us take more out of the Chattahoochee river is not really a solution because there’s only so much water in the Chattahoochee and eventually that like getting credit for putting water back in the Chattahoochee doesn’t put, it doesn’t put more water actually in the universe. It just gives us more credit for what we’ve done, but it doesn’t put more water in the universe. Or potable water in the universe.

Rico: [00:33:58] Right. But even so, let’s take it a step away for a second. Let’s go back to quickly to development for a second. You were talking about maybe doing six, seven story mid rises to be able to park, you know, the development that’s going to be coming up 85. You know, should they be LED buildings, should they be, you know, you know, should we move towards a more.

Curt: [00:34:23] We’re going to have to move towards a more energy efficient type of construction definitely. And some of that’s going to be market-driven. Some of that’s going to have to be driven by the government. But, it has to happen. I mean, whether you’re looking at it from a global climate change perspective and doing our part to not contribute more to that. To just how do we get the most bang for our buck when it comes to things like water and electricity and land use.

Rico: [00:34:59] Public safety. There’s a lot of security.

Curt: [00:35:03] What the County, you know, that’s the most important thing the County really does, but yes.

Rico: [00:35:07] So do you think that needs to be strengthened a little bit? Where are we with that?

Curt: [00:35:11] You know, the way I’ve usually talked about that is that, you know, we have one of the largest police forces, but we don’t have one of the best response times. And I think that at some point we need to take a look at that and figure out what’s going on. If you just look at it and compare our police force to the only comparable one of it’s size, which is the city of Atlanta. We have a very top heavy police force. We have far fewer people on patrol and a lot more people in headquarters than say the city of Atlanta does, which is the only comparably sized thing. And the only way you’re going to increase response times on calls is if you have more street-level cops. And so I think that we need to look at not just necessarily increasing the size of the force. We have one of the largest forces in the state, but, but how has that force allocated?

Rico: [00:36:08] What about technology? Right now? I know, for example, the city of Peachtree Corners is, is putting out through Georgia Power 15 cameras to, plate recognition cameras and actually to some degree, facial recognition cameras as well within some of the city, the city, a
town center. That recognizes faces and I think they’d be able to count the size of the crowd, if you will. Do you see more technology needs to be rolled out into Gwinnett Police?

Curt: [00:36:39] You know, that runs into a civil liberties issue to be honest. And so you’re always a little bit cautious about that. You know, we had the issue of, first there were traffic light cameras, and then suddenly there weren’t because you couldn’t cross examine a traffic light camera if you wanted to protest your ticket kind of thing. And I think that then it’s, it requires a lot of balancing. I mean, I think that. You know, it’s, it’s wrong for us to say, Oh, well, you can’t do any of that. You know, in a culture where we’re, we always click agree to the terms and conditions without ever reading them, whether it’s Amazon or anything else. We apparently have no problem with sharing our data with corporate America. I think that, that inevitably, some of that’s gonna come. But I don’t know how much of that’s a priority in terms of, you know, and I would have to look at, talk with our police chief, really and see what is really the best, highest, best use of our dollars. I would rather have more street level cops than more cameras taking photographs of people because the idea is to deter crime. All the camera does is catch the criminal, which is, you know, that’s great, but I would like to deter the crime so that it doesn’t happen. And I think that, you do more of that if you have more street-level cops, if you have more patrols, if you even have, depending on the density of the area, you know, foot patrols even.

Rico: [00:38:08] Probably the last question then I’m going to ask you to give, let me know if we’ve missed anything, but just because it’s on your website, it’s last thing on there and I’m wondering how our County commission may be able to help this, and that’s decriminalizing marijuana.

Curt: [00:38:21] Right. So you know, our solicitor’s already decided he’s not going to prosecute it because he says the current hemp statute makes it hard to tell what’s hemp versus marijuana. I think that the city of Atlanta, the city of Atlanta, Clark County. I think city of Clarkston, Dekalb County, several places have decriminalized it to the sense that if you’re a cop for simple possession. Which is, you know, possession of less than an ounce. That they just get, they will issue you a ticket. You don’t go to jail, because to be quite honest, it’s very disparate how this law is enforced. And you know, you, the majority of folks that get arrested and sent to jail, in Gwinnett County on marijuana possession are, the vast majority are people of color. You can’t tell me that, that the vast majority of people smoking marijuana are people of color. It’s just being selectively, like, that’s not how that works. There’s nothing about marijuana that has that, that says a particular race is more likely to use it than other. That’s not how that works.

Rico: [00:39:26] I’m sure if you go to Johns Creek, or other places it’s used a lot.

Curt: [00:39:29] Yeah. So I think that if you gave a, because you know what currently happens could change the moment, either the state legislature changes the hap statute or the, if you ever get a different solicitor that has a different view. And I think that one thing that you should do is just, you know, put that out there, have that be an ordinance so that it can be. Have that be an
ordinance so that they can write a ticket. You still get to have to pay a fine, but you’re not going to go to jail. You’re not going to have to try and figure out what, how to make a thousand dollar bond and it’s not going to disproportionately impact minorities.

Rico: [00:40:02] I think the ticket in city of Atlanta is only 75 or something. It’s a minimal amount.

Curt: [00:40:06] Yeah. I would say something like that. But a lot of cities have gone to that, even in Georgia. And I think that that’s what Gwinnett County should do too, cause it will also save money at the jail, you know. Because to be quite honest, no one who says when they’re a kid, they said, I want to be a cop it’s because they want to go arrest people for smoking weed at fraternity parties. That’s not, what people want to go, that’s not why anyone wanted to become a cop. And then they can focus on human trafficking. They could focus on domestic violence, they could focus on the actual crimes against people, crimes against persons, crimes against property. And so that we actually have violent people in the jails and not folks taking up space in the jail who are there on small drug or small level marijuana offenses.

Rico: [00:40:49] For sure, especially our jails, which I think is somewhat overcrowded as is. All right, so we’ve come.

Curt: [00:40:56] … Bail money and allow the police to focus on more serious crime.

Rico: [00:41:01] Yeah. The violent crime, that makes more sense to me. We’ve come to the end of our time together. So let me ask you, was there anything that we didn’t cover that you’d like to share first?

Curt: [00:41:10] Well just, you know, I got into this race, basically saying, you know, I’m here to ask for your vote, and if you honor me with your vote on election day, if you honor me with your vote on election day. I promise you that I, the one thing I can promise you is that I will fight for you every day in Lawrenceville, just as I fought for you every day in Atlanta in the general assembly. And for those that want to, you know, find out more about the campaign or volunteer for the campaign, they can go to CurtForGwinnett.com.

Rico: [00:41:45] Right, right. Thank you, Curt. I appreciate you coming on the show with me. Everyone, if you need that information, just remember also you should have gotten the mail in ballot application probably a week, week and a half ago,

Curt: [00:42:04] And they should be mailing them out starting the 20th to 24th of April, they should go.

Rico: [00:42:09] Yeah, I know. We got it last week and it’s really easy. There’s three things you have to do on it. Just check the information, sign it, and either mail it back or you literally can take a picture of it and email it from your phone. So it’s, you know, and then you get the ballot. Then you got to fill out the ballot. So don’t forget that.

Curt: [00:42:26] Pick whether you want a Democrat or Republican or a nonpartisan ballot.

Rico: [00:42:29] That’s right. That too. All right, cool. So appreciate you coming on, Curt. Thank you for, you know, sharing the issues of, where you believe in what you, what you want people to know about you. And everyone just remember June 9th is the election day, so pay attention to what’s going out there.

Curt: [00:42:49] If you’re mailing in your ballot. It has to be received by June 9th. Don’t be mailing a ballot on June 9th that won’t.

Rico: [00:42:54] No. Yes, it has to be postmarked or received?

Curt: [00:42:57] Received June 9th. So that means, you know, I wouldn’t be mailing it. Please don’t mail the ballot after June 1st cause we don’t know how slow the. Mail is sometimes quick, mail is sometimes not. I would be mailing it earlier not later.

Rico: [00:43:08] It’s good that you said that, cause most people might think it has to be postmarked that.

Curt: [00:43:11] In some States it is. So if you’ve moved here from somewhere else, postmark governs in places like Arizona and California. It doesn’t govern here.

Rico: [00:43:20] Okay. So make sure you mail it a week ahead at least.

Curt: [00:43:22] Yes.

Rico: [00:43:24] All right, good. Thank you, Curt. I appreciate you. Hang in there with me for a minute and then we’ll just sign off right now. We’re going, you know, if you’re getting this on the feed later, just leave a comment in the box if you’d like. If you’re getting this on podcast, iHeartRadio, Spotify, leave a review, LivingInPeachtreeCorners.com is where you can find more information. Thank you.

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Elections and Politics

The Future of Simpsonwood Park, Housing Changes & Peachtree Corners Elections – A Conversation with Eric Christ

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Eric Christ, Peachtree Corners

Join Rico Figliolini as he sits down with Peachtree Corners City Councilmember Eric Christ for a deep dive into the latest city developments, from parks to elections and housing.

🔹 Simpsonwood Park – What’s next for the 227-acre green space? Eric shares updates on possible improvements, conservation efforts, and the latest community input.
🔹 Jones Bridge Park Concerns – How the city and county are addressing parking, litter, and after-hours issues.
🔹 Housing & Development – The Gwinnett Housing Authority’s new apartment conversion project and its impact on the area.
🔹 Upcoming City Elections – Why voting might finally get easier and how local races could shape Peachtree Corners’ future.

Resource Links:
https://www.facebook.com/votechrist/
https://www.instagram.com/votechrist
Follow this link for other social sites and to signup for Eric Christ’s newsletter https://linktr.ee/votechrist

Podcast Timestamps:

[00:00]Introduction

  • Rico Figliolini introduces the podcast and guest, Councilmember Eric Christ.
  • Shout-out to sponsors EV Remodeling Inc. and Vox Populi.

[04:10]Simpsonwood Park Updates

  • Overview of Simpsonwood Park’s history and transition from a Methodist retreat center to a Gwinnett County park.
  • Discussion on the conservation easement ensuring the park remains a natural space.
  • Planned improvements: meadow restoration, trail enhancements, new restrooms, and additional parking.
  • Dog park and overnight camping were removed from the plans.

[22:30]Jones Bridge Park Concerns & Community Efforts

  • Issues with parking violations, littering, and after-hours activity.
  • Gwinnett PD’s increased enforcement, including license plate tracking and towing.

[35:45]Gwinnett Housing Authority’s New Apartment Project

  • Plans to convert a problematic extended-stay hotel into affordable apartments.
  • Target tenants: young adults aging out of foster care and low-income seniors.
  • Security & management: On-site staff and case manager to assist residents.

[46:00]Upcoming Peachtree Corners Elections (November 2025)

  • City elections for posts 2, 4, and 6.
  • Push for Gwinnett County to merge city and county elections into one location.
  • Challenges with the current voting system requiring two separate polling places.

[59:30]Closing Thoughts & Eric Christ’s Newsletter

  • How residents can stay informed through Eric’s City Council newsletter.

Podcast Transcript:

00:00:01 – Rico Figliolini

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life here in our little smart city just north of Atlanta. And I have a great guest today, Eric Christ, who’s a city council person at large. Hey, Eric. Thanks for joining us.

00:00:08 – Eric Christ

Great to be here, Rico. Thanks for having me.

00:00:20 – Rico Figliolini

Yep. We’re going to be discussing quite a few things. So stick around. But before we get into it, I just want to say thank you to two of our sponsors, EV Remodeling, Inc. that’s owned by Eli and his family. They live here in Peachtree Corners. They do a great job if you’re thinking of doing like design to build, home renovation, bathroom, kitchen. They just bring your world to life in the way you’d like it. So check them out at evremodelinginc.com. Our second sponsor is Vox Pop Uli, a voice of the people, it makes sense. They’re a company here in Peachtree Corners also owned by a family. Andrew’s the father. You have Daniel, the son and wife in there and daughter and everyone else. And employees are considered family as well. And they do anything you can think of that deals with imprinting to anything, whether it’s a car wrap, and they’ve done over, I think over 6,000 cars and trucks that way, to trade show booths, to store displays, to imprinting on almost any object you can think of. Give them a challenge and they’ll come through. So check them out at voxpopuli.com. I’ll link in the show notes as well. So, Eric, it’s been a while since we’ve had an interview here.

00:01:35 – Eric Christ

Yeah, it’s been a little while, Rico, but great to be here. I’m glad to talk about whatever you think is on the mind of folks here in Peachtree Corners.

00:01:42 – Rico Figliolini

You know, there’s so much going on, it’s ridiculous. But, you know, let’s start off with the thing from last night. There was a meeting last night about Simpsonwood Park. There’s been a lot of talk about it. About what should be done with that park. Even though there was a master plan some years ago when it was first bought, that was surveyed and put together, but never executed. But that SPLOST money, I believe, still sits there.

00:02:10 – Eric Christ

Yeah, let’s take a quick step back, just in case people aren’t familiar. So what’s now known as Simpsonwood Park was obviously for many years, since the 70s, owned by the Methodist Conference. And they operated a retreat center there and various different, they had an office building and all sorts of things. And they decided that they didn’t want to be in the retreat center business anymore. And so they sold the property in 2015 to the county as a park. And so, yeah, they went through a master planning exercise to say, hey, here’s the buildings on the property today. Here’s what we envision. Hiking trails, modern bathroom facilities, and other types of park -type features.

00:02:55 – Rico Figliolini

And for people that may not remember, there was literally a resort hotel almost.

00:03:00 – Eric Christ

Oh, yeah. It was quite an operation. 170 hotel rooms. They had a dining hall that could feed 350 people at a pop. They had 20,000 square feet of meeting space. They had a three-story office building, which served as the offices for the north georgia conference of the united methodist church that’s where the the bishop of that conference had his offices, her offices. And 400 parking spaces at one point they had an rv campground they had, they had a ropes course they had there was there was a they permitted overnight camping by like slow scout troops on a lot of different. And while it was their private property they did permit people to you know come onto the property and use it in a sense like a park right so you could walk your dog in there you could come and just stroll through the grounds during you know sunrise to sunset type of hours. But they did that, they didn’t have to do that, they could have had you know a gate at the front and said no this is the Simpsonwood retreat center unless you you’re there to do you know, to stay at the retreat center, attend an event, you know, that type of thing.

00:04:14 – Rico Figliolini

And most of that, if not all of it, has been removed. I mean, all the structures have been removed, the parking space.

00:04:21 – Eric Christ

Pretty much. I mean, the couple things that are still there that the Methodist Conference had built were, one, a chapel. There’s a 75-seat chapel. There was a large pavilion and a volleyball court and a single bathroom facility. Otherwise, pretty much all of the buildings are gone. There’s a maintenance shed that still exists back in the woods that the county uses. And then there is another tenant back there, which is causing a little bit of disruption right now, which is the Department of Water Resources has their Wolf Creek pump station. And they’re in the midst of upgrading the sewer line that runs to that pump station.

00:04:55 – Rico Figliolini

How many acres are there? 

00:05:06 – Eric Christ

227 acres.

00:05:08 – Rico Figliolini

And the chapel is still being used as Gwinnett Park as a rental for weddings?

00:05:18 – Eric Christ

Right. Yeah, I just actually posted that on my Facebook page yesterday. I happened to be on the website looking at it. Gwinnett Park, in addition to, people don’t know, you can rent their pavilions. You can reserve a pavilion for a birthday party or something like that. But they also have what they call premier facilities at some of their parks. Like Pinckneyville Community Center is both under the Gwinnett Park system. So that’s off of, you know, Peachtree Boulevard. And you can rent space there. But yeah, you can rent the chapel for weddings, vow renewals, anything. There’s no, you know, it doesn’t have to be for a wedding or a religious service. So you can rent the chapel, you can rent the grounds, which has a small gazebo if you want to do something outdoors, or you can rent both for a fairly reasonable fee. It’s like $125 an hour. 

00:06:09 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, I was going to say, it’s not expensive in the grand scheme. So let’s…

00:06:15 – Eric Christ

I remember saying, so they did that master planning. It was on the, so we had a SPLOST that we voted on back in 2017. And they put this, the improvements to Simpsonwood on the list but they put it in what they called tier two and what that meant was tier two projects only get funded if they first fund all the tier one projects and they didn’t so they, the amount of money that SPLOST raised or maybe those projects you know got more expensive there wasn’t any funding available for tier two projects. So then in 2023 we had an, or 6 years, yeah, 2023. We had another SPLOST, which are running for the next six years. And so this time Simpsonwood is a tier one project. And they have earmarked $8 million from the current SPLOST, the sales tax towards enhancements to Simpsonwood. And so the county, I think. It was a good move to say, hey, it’s 2024 when this process started. We built that original plan eight years earlier in 2016. Let’s dust it off and go through a planning process again to see if things have changed. Are there things people would like to see in the park? Last time, there were lots of discussion around, should there be a fenced-in dog park-type area inside the park or not? They said, we want to get more input on those types of questions. They’ve embarked on about a year-long planning process. We’re just about halfway through. It’ll wrap up in August of this year with a final plan. Last night was the third of six meetings to look at different plans.

00:08:16 – Rico Figliolini

So a lot of people that make up the committee, I guess, isn’t there?

00:08:23 – Eric Christ

Yeah, what they did was, yeah, so same thing they’d done back in 2016. They got a steering committee together of primarily nearby residents. And so they did the same thing again this time. First, they asked people who had been on the committee in 2016, hey, did you want to do this again? And about half of those folks said, sure. Like one of my neighbors here in Neely Farm, who was on the committee then, said, yeah. They then asked the city of Peachtree Corners, you know, and I volunteered or didn’t step back fast enough.

00:08:59 – Rico Figliolini

Good for you. No, we need a good rep on there. That’s good.

00:09:02 – Eric Christ

And then they solicited and, you know, they said, hey, Simpsonwood Methodist Church, do you want to have somebody on the committee? Local organization representatives. And then they opened it up to the general public. They had a big community meeting at Simpsonwood Methodist Church and took applications from people. You could just apply by email. They took all of those applications and they said, well, one, we can’t have a committee of like 60 people. That’s not practical. And they also said, we want a variety of members, but concentrated here in Peachtree Corners. So of the 31 committee members, 27 are Peachtree Corners residents.

00:09:45 – Rico Figliolini

That’s actually very good, considering it’s a county park, not a city park. Maybe one day it could be a city park, but not now.

00:09:56 – Eric Christ

We do have, in a sense, I don’t think, the Town Green is our city park today, right? And it has many of the same elements. A playground, a lawn, a stage, bathrooms, you know, trash cans that have to be emptied, all those kinds of things. So, yeah. So what they did last night was they, the prior meeting about six weeks ago, they had presented three concept plans, three different maps, and each of them was slightly different. And so based on the feedback that the committee provided last time, they merged all that into a single map and said, hey, what do we think about this? It’s still not, they didn’t even call it a preliminary plan. There’s still two more stages to go. They said, we took all your feedback and we fit it in here. 

00:10:52 – Rico Figliolini

What can you say was left in that map? Or what is the version, the highlights of it?

00:11:01 – Eric Christ

Sure, yeah, a couple things come to mind. The first thing, you know, what I think was big news coming out of last night was, and I sort of prompted this because I pushed him on it, is that commitment by the county to keep the park natural and specifically to stay within the constraints of the conservation easement. So when they bought the park, there wasn’t any, if you will, underline or overarching boundaries or limits on what the park could be, right? So they could have had playing fields with lights and that sort of thing. But the steering committee back in 2016 pushed hard to say, we need to put out what’s called a conservation easement, which an easement is a restriction placed on land. And so in 2020, The board of commissioners voted unanimously to put a conservation easement on the land. And what it says is, one, the land can only ever be used as a park for the general public. So it can’t be developed into houses or used for a commercial property. And then it also limits the types of things that you could do at this park. Like it can’t have active playing fields. You can have a meadow where you run around and toss a frisbee, but it can’t have soccer fields. It can’t have lights, you know, lighted playing fields. So, for example, there’s a volleyball court there today, and that can stay there, but you can’t add lights to it, right?

00:12:37 – Rico Figliolini

That’s in respect to the residential area around it, I guess.

00:12:43 – Eric Christ

Yeah, I think that’s based on feedback. And also, I think the other thing that we pushed them on for that conservation easement was the priorities for the things that are going to happen at Simpsonwood and right at the top of the list last night that they committed to was that it’s about the primary purpose of the park is the natural resources that are there at the park. And so there was a lot of talk last night about investing in the park to do things like to restore the meadows. One of the meadows right now is full of dirt and rock from the sewer project which the department of water resources will remove and then getting that meadow back to what they call the Piedmont Prairie. That’s, I guess, the type of meadows that we have here on the southeastern part of the U.S. So that was big news. And in fact, they used the word in perpetuity, the conservation easement restrictions. And I pushed again, and they even said, well, Eric, we’re going to go even, you know, be more restricted even than what that document says. Like, that document says we could have, you could have theoretically have pickleball courts, right? Without lights, but you could have courts. And they said, no, we’re not doing that. You could have mountain biking trails under a conservation easement. And they said, no, we’re not doing mountain biking trails. And both the head of the park planning process, as well as the director of Gwinnett Parks himself, Chris Miner, was there. And they both publicly said, no, this is our commitment to this park. So that was exciting. The other things they shared, or in this the new plan they had in prior concepts they did have a dog park area like a, you know fenced in two acre area for dogs, that’s not in the plan anymore. There was a small overnight camping area which the church had actually permitted camping and in a section for scout troops right, that’s been pulled out of the plan.

00:14:45 – Rico Figliolini

So wait so there’s no more, no more camping there at all then?

00:14:50 – Eric Christ

Correct. Correct. I don’t know if that’s immediately enforced, but they’re saying the concept plan that they had shared last time had kept these ten little tent sites near the front of the park off to the left. So they’ve taken those out of the plan. In the concept drawings, there were going to be two multi-use trails. And one which would go from the center of the parking area down to the river and back. And then the other one, there would be a loop around the Great Lawn, the big meadow that’s there today. And they’ve taken that second one, the one around the Great Meadow, off the plan. There’s still a path, but it’s not, their definition of multi-use trail is a paved, improved trail that someone in a wheelchair, stroller, a kid on a push bike could use. So there’s now down to one multi-use trail, just the loop that would go down to the river and come back up sort of along the current road. I don’t know if you’ve been in Simpsonwood, you know, past the chapel.

00:16:01 – Rico Figliolini

Are they going to improve? I think there’s a mulch trail or natural trail there or two, at the 1.2 miles or two miles. Are they going to keep or improve those trails? 

00:16:16 – Eric Christ

Yeah, they talked about that a lot. They sort of had three categories of trails. The first one, what they would call multi-use, which is a paved asphalt or potentially concrete with a maximum of 5% grade, right? So that it’s, you know, reasonable for a wheelchair user or something or, you know, pushing a stroller. And then they have what they called accessible trails, which would be wherever possible, natural surface. There might be, if it’s steep or it’s crossing a creek, then there’d have to be a bridge. If it’s steep, they’d have to potentially do asphalt or concrete there because of the erosion, right? As people walk up and down a steep section. And that’s what they call the accessible trails. And then all the rest would do what they call hiking trails would just be natural surface trails. But those trails would still be intentionally laid out, right? So what we have today in the park is you know, the Methodist church, when they operated as a retreat center, they didn’t necessarily plan these trails. So they’re sort of called, you know, green trails, right? People walking said, I want to go that way. And so you have some situations like you have trails like right next to each other in parallel. You have trails that go up a pretty steep section rather than having like a little switchback. And so they would come in and lay out those hiking trails and put signage. You know, you can if you want to, you can go off trail and walk through the leaves. It’s not going to be stopped there. One of the things I asked about, because I’d heard feedback from my constituents in Revington, which is the neighborhood along the north side, is that there is a current amateur design trail or just an organically occurring trail that comes really close to their homes, to their backyards. And so the county committed that, no, no, when we lay out the official trails, there’d be a goal of 100 to 150 foot buffer between the trail and any adjoining residential parcel.

00:18:17 – Rico Figliolini

That would make sense. Still, I would imagine there’s going to be, because the bathrooms are really bad, for even the scouts to be using. They’re going to probably improve that, I would imagine.

00:18:32 – Eric Christ

The current facility is quite old in comparison. Very poorly, I had a chance to take a tour two Saturdays ago with other members of the committee. And we went to some of the current parks and yeah, the restrooms do not meet the Gwinnett standard. And so they would take that one down, replace it. And then they would also add a second one down towards the chapel, actually a little past the chapel. So if you’re down at the river and you need, if you have a young child and have a bathroom emergency, you don’t have to make it all the way up to the front. Or even if you’re, if you’re having an event at the chapel right now, if you’re, it’s quite a little walk. You almost want to get in a golf cart or get your car to go use the restroom.

00:19:12 – Rico Figliolini

I mean, yeah, I agree. And that’s a great idea to think about that. But holding events, that would make sense. And they’re adding also, I would imagine they’re adding some additional parking because there’s never enough parking for even the current use over there.

00:19:29 – Eric Christ

Yeah, so what they talked about is, yeah, so when it was a retreat center, there were over 400 parking spaces between the retreat center and the office building. Right now, there are about 90, depending on how you count, because there’s some gravel, you know, they don’t have areas that don’t have specific, you know, line spots, right? They’ve talked about three paved areas with 30 spaces approximately each. That would be 90, about the same as there’s now. And then down near the chapel-ish area, a overflow parking area, which would be just grassy, like hardened grass.

00:20:06 – Rico Figliolini

Impervious?

00:20:08 – Eric Christ

Right yeah it would still be impervious right. But and it would, if you had an event like the walk through Bethlehem event that the Methodist church does every year, or if you  had I mean, I’m thinking you know it’s a 75 seat chapel and all of your guests come two to a car that’s still 30 cars or 35 cars right and then plus the normal visitors on that day. So anyway so they ended up with about 90 paved spaces and I think it was 60 unpaved.

00:20:39 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. And that sounds reasonable. Are they still?

00:20:43 – Eric Christ

More in total compared to the 400 that were there before.

00:20:45 – Rico Figliolini

Well even the way it’s split up and stuff it makes, it’s not all one big area so that’s better looking and better use of the land, I bet. Outcrops overlooking the river, I think there were two plans. Is that still part of the?

00:20:58 – Eric Christ

Yeah, they still show those. I mean I think what they’ve, I heard this back in 2016 as well, serving on that steering committee, is that the purpose of the overlooks is actually to protect the environment. And so how does it protect the environment to build these overlooks? And the answer is, as humans, as soon as we know there’s water nearby, we want to go see it. If we can, we want to go touch it. We’re just sort of instinctually drawn to do that. So they know that if they don’t provide these overlooks, essentially outlets for that instinctual drive, people will push their way through the undergrowth, they’ll try to climb down the banks, that sort of thing.

00:21:40 – Rico Figliolini

That happened at Jones Bridge Park. I think that’s why they eventually started years back putting outcrops and rocks and the steps leading into the river and stuff.

00:21:51 – Eric Christ

What they’ve had to do at Jones Bridge is they’ve fenced in certain areas to try to let the bank recover. And we actually saw this on our tour, one of the little parking lots we parked in and we were walking this way. And we said, what are these fencing around these trees? And they said, well, we’re trying to let, these are new trees here. And if we didn’t fence them in, just people walk where they, but people always take the shortest route. Not necessarily thinking about what’s happening to the tree roots and that sort of thing.

00:22:22 – Rico Figliolini

Any other, any surprises or anything additional or something different from?

00:22:27 – Eric Christ

No, I think it’s pretty, everything that, yeah, nothing new added to the concept plans and more things, you know, a shift in, what I view as a shift in focus about natural resource management, the restoration of the meadows, better management of the forest. One of the things we had learned was that about 20 years ago, there was a pine bark beetle infestation in the park. And so the church actually clear cut some big sections of trees if you’re going down the center road along your right. And then they didn’t necessarily focus on forest management, so it grew back as sort of dense scrub pines, which actually now makes it more likely to have another pine bark beetle infestation because the trees are so close together. And so the ecologist who’s on consulting with the park system had made some recommendations about, here’s the type of, what a healthy forest looks like and the mix of trees that you have and just a bunch of scrub pines and a dense thicket is not an ideal environment.

00:23:38 – Rico Figliolini

I’ve got to say, Gwinnett Parks has won quite a few National Park Awards. I was on the Park Authority some years ago, but it doesn’t seem to have changed a lot. They do great work, so I have all the respect for them.

00:23:54 – Eric Christ

Yeah, they mentioned last night that they had been up for an award and they lost out to the city of Minneapolis park system. And where they got dinged was that they didn’t have a natural resource plan as part of their planning process, specifically looking at trees and vegetation. Not that they weren’t doing it, but they didn’t have it as a formal part of their planning process. they’re doing that now for Simpsonwood and that they mentioned two other parks, I’ve forgotten the names. 

00:24:32 – Rico Figliolini

So let’s, I mean if that, I think that covered pretty much. 

00:24:36 – Eric Christ

Yeah to wrap it up so what happens now so three more formal meetings of the steering committee between now and August. So they’re just going to keep refining the plan. What we’re supposed to see next time is a more refined version of the single concept plan. Then the next one will see costs, which would then potentially say, here’s how you’re going to have to phase it. Maybe the total plan is $12 million or something to do all the things on the plan. So here’s how they would phase it in. And then the final step, who is approving this? As you mentioned, it’s a county park, not a city park. So this will go to the Gwinnett parks recreation authority. They vote on the plan and then it goes to the board of commissioners for final approval and funding.

00:25:23 – Rico Figliolini

Right and we have two, if it’s the same. We have two appointees from our commissioner that represents us on that. 

00:25:31 – Eric Christ

Right, yeah. From district one yeah. And there are two members, two of them are from the parks authority Eric Thigpen, who’s the current chair. And then, I forgot her name, another woman. She actually lives in Lawrenceville, so she’s presumably not a District 1 representative.

00:25:50 – Rico Figliolini

So let’s segue then into this. So there’s another park here in the city, Jones Bridge Park. I mean, there’s several besides these two. So Jones Bridge Park is another one that has had some issues people are a bit upset with. Things that go on there sometimes on off hours or even during the weekends where garbage is overrunning maybe or, you know, just things that happen. Do you have any insights?

00:26:18 – Eric Christ

Sure. Yeah, I think there’s a group of local residents who’ve formed. I don’t know if they have an official name. We’ll call them the Friends of Jones Bridge Park, right? So they live nearby or they enjoy the park. And they had reached out and gotten in touch with the park system. And so they’ve had a couple meetings, at least two, and I think gotten a very good response from both the park system and also Gwinnett Police, who’s responsible for patrolling the parks, as well as our own city marshals who’ve helped out as well. And so I attended a recent meeting of this Jones Bridge Park community meeting. And so one of the things that I recall was, you know, there had been problems with people parking outside of designated parking spaces, right? And specifically, there is actually a good amount of parking in the park. Because if you go farther into the park, up towards the soccer fields, there’s parking there. But people were just being a little lazy and saying, I don’t want to go to the soccer fields. I want to go to the river. So I’m just going to park on the grass or pull over, you know, pop two of my wheels up on the curb. So Gwinnett police, starting in July, had gotten more aggressive about warning and then towing. So they’ve towed 45 cars since July. Although since October, they’ve only had to tow two. So the message seems to be getting out, you know, find a parking space.

00:27:51 – Rico Figliolini

Well, the weather is getting cooler and come the summer.

00:27:53 – Eric Christ

Yeah, that could be right. Fewer people there. The trash, you know, the county had committed to adding additional trash cans. You know, Rico, when I go to a park or any public space or even our Town Green and I see an overflowing trash can, I don’t see a problem with citizens. I see a problem with the city or the county that we’re not emptying that trash can. What I see is that somebody tried to bring their trash to the trash can, but it was full. Presumably, they didn’t take it to their car, you know, and so they put it next to the trash can. So that says we either need to empty them more often or we need to have more of them. And that’s not to say that as in any park, any public space. No, there certainly was, is trash not near trash cans down along the river or something. And that’s the you know, the yeah, sometimes people treat public spaces differently than they do their personal spaces. The other thing that the county had committed to reacting to the complaints about after-hours activity, all Gwinnett parks close at dusk. And so the county has or is going to put a cutoff timer on the power outlets in the pavilions at Jones Bridge so there won’t be power after 6 p.m. or you know, it literally detects that it’s dusk or anything like that. The other thing that the city had done is we had installed a license plate reader camera on the road that, leading into Jones Bridge park and it’s programmed to if it sees a license sees a car, sees a license plate after hours it sends an alert to Gwinnett PD okay. And if they have, maybe we can talk about that a little bit, if they have an available officer, that officer will respond to that alert. And the major said, West Precinct commander had said that since July, they had been to the park 150 times. So that’s almost once a day. So that seems to be working.

00:30:16 – Rico Figliolini

Were they going to do, I know someone was asking about 24-hour camera surveillance in the park.

00:30:25 – Eric Christ

Yeah, so once again, the city had offered to subsidize, purchase through our Curiosity Lab, we have pretty good connections with vendors, and we don’t mind trialing new technology. So we’d help get cameras inside the park. At this meeting, this might have been a result since that meeting, they were working on improving the internet infrastructure and the power availability. But essentially what you do is you replace like the top of one of the street lights in the park with a new head unit, it’s called, which would have cameras. So the city is still happy to help support that effort.

00:31:04 – Rico Figliolini

Okay. So, you know, these things progress. I mean, we could always talk about at another point, the city taking over those parks and they become city parks. But then again, we’d have to stand up a parks department.

00:31:18 – Eric Christ

Yeah, because right now, you know, our staff of 28, whatever we’re at right now, you know, we do, I think, a pretty good job of managing the Town Green. But yeah, that’s, you know, managing, you know, a 230 acre park like Simpsonwood or Jones Bridge is much smaller, but it has active playing fields with, I think you actually wrote an article about him, in Peachtree Corners Magazine, the Jones Bridge Football Club, I think.

00:31:45 – Rico Figliolini

Right, 50-year anniversary. Yeah, football and soccer. It’s a soccer club, right?

00:31:51 – Eric Christ

And to maybe wrap it up and draw a distinction with Simpsonwood, Jones Bridge is certainly not under a conservation easement. It’s an active, what they call an active park with playing fields, with lights. And sort of a mini version of what we have over at the Pinckneyville Park, right, with softball fields. So a different experience, for sure.

00:32:14 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah. I mean, we have good parks around here. Alright, let’s move away a little bit from the parks, and let’s get into, let’s talk a little bit about what just recently got voted on. There’s this trend of doing office conversions to apartments or hotels to apartments or multifamily. So there’s one that you were telling me just before we started the show, that Gwinnett Housing Authority has taken over and will be managing. And this is in an area by Jimmy Carter and Peachtree Boulevard. I have to stop from saying Peachtree Industrial Boulevard.

00:32:52 – Eric Christ

I introduced the resolution to change the names. I’m glad to see you. You know, after Chamblee and Dorville had changed Peachtree Industrial Boulevard to Peachtree Boulevard. Georgia Department of Transportation changed the signs on 285. And now they just say Peachtree Boulevard. So they said, well, I said, well, we need to update the name as well. But yeah, so a couple of years ago, six years ago, the staff was thinking ahead and they created a new option in our residential code that would permit an extended stay hotel to be converted into apartments through a specific process. You know, normally residential and hotel space, you know, different sections of the code. But we said, as we particularly, unfortunately, our friends to the east in the city of Norcross have had some challenges with extended stay hotels that they essentially go down in quality, go down in safety and security and become a problem. So on Jimmy Carter Boulevard, just when you come off Peachtree Boulevard, there’s a car wash there. There’s the Crown Sports Bar across the street from what I still think of as the old LA Fitness Shopping Center. There were actually two extended-stay hotels just down a short road. And one of those particularly problematic regular visits from the police. And Southern Gwinnett Housing Authority, said we’d be interested in purchasing that property and but we don’t want to run it as an extended stay hotel right? Extended stay hotels are you you rent by the week and it’s a very tough environment for the people living there because because it’s a hotel you don’t have any tenant rates so you can be kicked out without notice because you’re a hotel resident not a lesser right, or a lessee. And it creates this challenging environment. And so they said, we want to convert it into apartments, which will be rented by the month, by the year type of thing. And so they came to staff. Staff worked with them on some conditions for the property, one of which was that the total number of units would stay the same, 73 units, and that they would do refurbishment and investment in it. Ordinance actually says to do this conversion, you have to put a washer and dryer in each unit to make it a true apartment. And they said, these units are pretty small. There’s already a central laundry facility. And could we get a waiver from that one requirement? And the staff recommended approval of that. So they came before city council last Tuesday and they presented. A couple of questions I asked was about who are the target market for these apartments? And they said, as the housing authority, they have specific objectives of what the type of housing they’re trying to provide. And so their target market is a twofold, it’s young adults who’ve aged out of foster care, no longer eligible to be part of the foster care system. So that’s 18 to 24 years old. And then also seniors. So they have low income, fixed income seniors who are struggling to find a safe place to live and that they have some experience both here in in metro Atlanta but in other states that having a mix of young people and seniors creates this great synergy. And so and they also, one of the questions I asked was you know staff on site right? And so they said yep, of the 73 units two of them would be for staff. One would be for a property manager, full-time property manager, who would live on the property. And the second would be for a case manager from the housing authority who would provide social services to both of those constituents or types of residents. And so that request passed unanimously, which sometimes when it comes to housing and the word apartments, we don’t always get unanimous votes on council. But this one, I think everybody agreed. I don’t want to speak for my other council members, but it certainly appeared to me that replacing an increasingly problematic extended stay hotel with apartments that would serve underserved communities would be a good change.

00:37:31 – Rico Figliolini

Interestingly enough, the other day, I forget who I was speaking to, it was someone in the police department, and they were mentioning that that area of Jimmy Carter and Peachtree Boulevard. I keep wanting to say PIB at least instead, or PB. Yeah, so that area, if you take that and work your way out as a circle, that is the higher crime area, if you will, moving out from that circle in this area. And you mentioned that that was obviously an extended stay hotel. And there’s one right next to it, actually, as well. Well, now that there’s one there, that’s one of, what, three? 

00:38:22 – Eric Christ

Yeah, there might be three left in the city after this one. And then there are a couple right on our border, right? People don’t always necessarily know where Peachtree Corner ends and Norcross starts. And, you know, we’re working to support City of Norcross as well as they deal with these challenges. And I certainly don’t want to, you know, blame the residents of the extended stay community. Right before I started, we talked about that the city of Norcross happens to have a housing authority and they had done a study that actually gone and knocked on doors and said, hey, how long have you been in an extended stay? Why are you here? And they found different types of residents. Those that were families, one of the most common reasons they were in an extended stay was not that they didn’t have jobs and couldn’t afford apartment rent. It’s that they didn’t have enough cash reserves to fund the security deposit and the first month’s rent.

00:39:17 – Rico Figliolini

That’s right.

00:39:18 – Eric Christ

Let’s call it two months rent. So getting that. And so like Norcross is looking at creating a, they’ve already done so, a grant program to say, hey, if we can get you into an apartment, you’ve got a job, you’re going to pass the background check at the apartment, that sort of thing. We’ll help, you know, give you the table stakes to get into the apartment.

00:39:38 – Rico Figliolini

And that’s a great idea. And that’s, yeah, that’s really a good idea. It’s like someone, like a business owner, investing in their property to a degree, but their operating, the operating funds could handle the operation, but maybe they can’t pay off the debt. And that’s how that feels like to me. You want to be able to do it. You can pay for it, but it’s getting over that hurdle.Before we get to, I know you have limited time, so I just want to make sure we cover also the next thing, which is the upcoming elections, right? You’re running for re-election in post four as an at-large seat. 

00:40:22 – Eric Christ

No, I’m district two. I’m post two district two. Four is Councilmember Joe Sawyer. And six is Councilmember Bert Ratwick. Yes. Yeah, this November.

00:40:33 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, sorry about that. This November, we have city elections. So we have elections every, you know, there’s seven of us on council, the mayor plus the six council seats. Half of us plus the mayor are elected in one cycle, and then the other three seats are elected two years later. And so we call that sort of our, our big and our small election. Alright, cause one is four, Mayor plus three and one is three. So this year it’s the small election. So posts two, four and six will be up for reelection. The election is like, you know, every election, the first Tuesday in November. So November 4th. And one interesting thing about this year’s election is because our city elections are in the odd years, we don’t normally have other countywide elections happening at the same time, right? Because the presidential election is in the even years, and then the midterms are in between that. That’s an even year, as well as our gubernatorial and our state legislative elections. But every now and then, the county has an election in an odd year, and it could be something like in 2015, there was the most recent Board of Education SPLOST. This year, there actually will be a county-wide election because of a state mandate that it’s finally time to have some elections for the Public Service Commission. There was some litigation over the PSC, and so elections were delayed, but two of the seats on the Public Service Commission will be on the ballot this November. So on November 4th, there will be at least two elections, the PSC and if you live in a city here in Gwinnett, there’ll be city elections. And a personal pet peeve of mine has been the fact that when that happens, that we have to go to two different places to vote. And the reason is that Gwinnett, in contrast to all the other counties in the metro Atlanta area, and in fact, I haven’t been able to identify a single county in Georgia other than Gwinnett who doesn’t offer the cities inside the county the option of combining elections. And this, I’ve been working on this project a long time because when I started this after that, actually back in 2016 when I first ran I was in a special election in an even year, I was in 2016 and so to vote in my election you had to go to two places in May of 2016. So I said this is dumb. And at first I was told, well, the Board of Elections has a policy against providing city elections services. So I went to the Board of Elections and lobbied them and said, this is dumb. And so I got them to rescind that policy. And so now here in 2025, this is the first time since 2013 for the city of Peachtree Corners that on the same day as our city election, there will be a countywide election. And so what we’re asking the county now to do is please just tell us what the cost would be if we were to tag along on the election you already have to have. You already have to open up all 156 polling places. You already have to have your three weeks of early voting. We know it’s an electronic ballot that can, when Rico walks in, it can say, hey, Rico, in addition to the PSC, because you live in Peachtree Corners, I’m going to show you these additional you know, races. And we know they can do it, Rico, because in 2013, 12 years ago, that was still during our two-year transition period with the county when we first became a city. They did this exact thing for us. We had our 2013 council elections, and we even had a referendum about this tax allocation districts that people voted for. So we know they can do it. Just right now have been sort of dragging their feet on telling us what it would cost for us to hire them to manage our election.

00:44:55 – Rico Figliolini

How many precincts are in the city of Peachtree Corners?

00:44:56 – Eric Christ

Yeah, so if you look at the county precincts, because when the lines were drawn, that predates the city existing. So it’s eleven or twelve, of which nine, if I recall correctly, eight or nine are wholly inside the city, right? So every voter at that polling place like the good age building in Jones Bridge Park is a resident in the city of Peachtree Corners and then the other three are split. But which they already know how to do this that they have other precincts where they have some of the people vote in some state house race and some people don’t and the computer system takes care of that it just, I mean you when you log in, or when you log in, when you check in. 

00:45:40 – Rico Figliolini

Yes. I can’t imagine, I mean it costs us what $50,000?

00:45:45 – Eric Christ

We generally budget $50,000. Yeah, Kym Chereck our city clerk does a great job. She comes in below that. But it’s also just the confusion and the inconvenience. Because here’s what’s happened. People are going to, for the PSC, somebody’s upset about their electrical bill. The Public Service Commission regulates Georgia Power and other electrical monopolies. That’s their primary function. So they’re going to go vote early, let’s say, over at Pinckneyville Community Center. And then they’re not going to see the city races on there. And then they’re gonna go, I have to do this again? What? Or they’re going to come to City Hall on Election Day, vote in the city races, because you’re going to have local candidates trying to get their vote out. And then they’re going to vote for the PSC thing. Well, you’re going to have to go to Peachtree  Elementary. You’re going to have to go to PCBC. And they’re going to go, well, I got to go to work. I don’t got time to do that. And, you know.

00:46:43 – Rico Figliolini

No, I agree. I mean, even under $50,000, I mean, how much can it possibly cost the county to add for what we’re talking about when they already have the precincts in place? Everything’s in place. They just have to, really, it’s almost a programming issue.

00:47:00 – Eric Christ

It is. It’s literally just programming to say, if voter you know, reside in Peachtree Corners, then show these races on the ballot. And we know from 2013, Rico, the last time this exact situation happened, they charged us $35,000.

00:47:18 – Rico Figliolini

There you go. Okay.

00:47:20 – Eric Christ

So yeah. But let’s add some inflation in there. So, okay, it’s 50K. Even if it’s more, you know, it’s 60. Even if it’s more than we’ve read it, it’s still, from Eric’s point of view, that’s still the right thing to do for the voters.

00:47:32 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah. I totally agree, and I’m glad that you did that because I always thought that it was stupid to have to do that, to go to two different places. And not just the pain of doing that, if you will, but it’s almost undemocratic because it forces the well-intentioned voter to have to go to two places. And not everyone is like that, right? So you end up disenfranchising quite a few people by forcing them to split up and making choices. Now, granted, there’s early voting, but we don’t have early voting in the city. You vote on that day, right? I mean, there’s absence of people.

00:48:22 – Eric Christ

Now, in the last couple of elections, we have had a smaller period of election voting, but it’s generally because our city clerk, and this is one of the reasons why she’s been able to keep the cost low is that we’re open from like nine to six, right? We’re not open at 7 p.m. You know, when the county does it, and I love what they do there is, you know, they’re open for like 20 straight days, Saturdays included at 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. so you don’t have to remember because everybody knows election day. But also for the cities in Gwinnett, we do have a few cities in Gwinnett who do hire a county to manage their election. But those are cities who cross the boundary. So like the city of Auburn, which is in northern Gwinnett, is partially in Walton County. So they hire Walton County to manage their elections. And Walton is much, much smaller than Gwinnett. But they say, sure, we’re happy to do that. It reminds me, if I recall, back in 2018, we had a city special election to vote on something called the brunch bill. This was about whether restaurants could serve alcohol before noon. And so for us, the first opportunity to do that was in 2018, but our next scheduled election wasn’t until November 2019. But we as a council said, we don’t want to wait because we don’t want our restaurants to be at a disadvantage. If John Streif does it, then people want their mimosa or their Bloody Mary at 11:30 in the morning. So we said, we’re going to go ahead and do the election. So what we had to do, our city clerk had to get the polling place, which, yes, is our community chest room. Hire the poll workers. Advertise the election. All that just to ask the single yes or no question. So she did all that. We held the election. Cost us about $20,000. And we had 4% turnout. Rico. 4% of the people in the city came out. City of Johns Creek did the exact same thing on the same day. But all they had to do, they picked up the phone, they called Fulton County, and they said, run our election. And Fulton County did everything else. They had 64% turnout participation in their brunch bill. And then here, to add insult to injury, Gwinnett County, for the unincorporated parts of Gwinnett, right? So there’s only 20% of it comes inside a city. They also had to hold the brunch bill referendum. They did it on the same day as ours. And they had 55% participation across the county, but they wouldn’t add ours to their ballot back in 2018. So I’m pushing hard on this issue. I got the council unanimously endorsed a resolution that I had drafted that called on the county. All we’re asking for right now is please give us an estimate of the cost. State law already allows us to hand over our election management responsibilities to a county, state law already permits this. But we said for us to decide whether we need to do that, you know like because, I don’t know the county comes back and says it’s three hundred thousand dollars. Well why they would come and, no but let’s just say they did right, we might say whoa no. If they come back anywhere near close to 50,000 then I think there would be you know, I’m certainly gonna argue passionately, I wish that, we should on these elections.

00:51:56 –  Rico Figliolini

I’m totally behind you on that one. Yeah. So I don’t even see that there should be an argument on their part.

00:52:04 – Eric Christ

We’re trying to figure it out. Because as I said, I researched this. Every single county around us, even Little Hall County, it’s not that little anymore to our north, they offer it to the city of Gainesville. Dunwoody, to our west, DeKalb runs the elections.

00:52:20 – Rico Figliolini

How late do they have until. Well, how late do we have until they have to?

00:52:26 – Eric Christ

Yeah, we still have some time. The biggest stumbling block is we have to update your official voting. So right now, if you look at your voter registration card, it says for federal and state elections, you vote at, like for me, I vote at Peachtree Elementary School. But it says for city elections, I vote at city hall. So legally, we have to tell people. Update your voter registration, your polling place. And so, and there’s a postcard that gets mailed out when that happens. So the elections in November 4th, early voting, if we piggyback on the county and they do three weeks of early voting. So, yeah, we need to decide probably within the next, you know, 45 days or so just to get, because what would happen is the county comes back with a cost estimate. We then also have to negotiate an agreement with them. In DeKalb, for their cities, they say, we’ll run your elections for you, but we don’t want to do the candidate qualification piece. That’s where you show up at City Hall, you sign a form, you write a check. And our clerks are like, no, that’s perfectly fine. She already has to do that today, so that’s not a problem at all. And the other thing those agreements say is, if there is a lawsuit over this election, the city has to be the one to bear the burden of that lawsuit. And our answer is, of course, that’s fine. It’s our election. We’re just hiring you to run it. If somebody wants to sue over it, yeah, we’ll take the lawsuit. Yeah, that’s perfectly fine. So get a cost estimate, get a contract. And as it’s been with lots and lots of other counties doing this, there’s lots of examples of how to do that. And then move forward and get it done so that when people show up in November, they can go to one place.

00:54:26 – Rico Figliolini

Excellent. Eric, I appreciate you spending your time with us. Eric Christ, he’s a city councilman post two, right? Running for re-election. You know, ChatGPT just got that information wrong. I was being a little lazy and I used ChatGPT.

00:54:47 – Eric Christ

Yeah. Well, you know, so for city elections, we don’t have primaries, right. So that everything happened for us, the candidates will qualify in August. That’s when you officially become a candidate for reelection.

00:55:03 – Rico Figliolini

Because it’s a nonpartisan race.

00:55:05 – Eric Christ

That’s correct. Yeah. We don’t run with party labels. A few big, big cities like Atlanta have run partisan elections. But of 538 cities in Georgia, the vast majority are nonpartisan elections. 

00:55:21 – Rico Figliolini

Well, we’ve been speaking to Eric Christ. Thank you, Eric. Appreciate you sharing the information on Simpsonwood Park, on the elections and all these things. There’s definitely going to be a lot of stuff to talk about over the next three months, four months that’s going to be coming up. So I’m sure we’ll have you back again at some point to talk a bit about some of these things.

00:55:45 – Eric Christ

Sure. I’m always happy to do it.

00:55:47 – Rico Figliolini

Yeah, I appreciate it. I want to say thank you also to EV Remodeling Inc. and to Vox Pop Uli for being supporters, not just of these podcasts, which includes this, Prime Lunchtime with City Manager, and UrbanEbb, but also Peachtree Corners Magazine and Southwest Gwinnett Magazines. So appreciate them supporting us, our journalism, and the ability to put out this stuff. And just, you know, listen, we’ve been doing this, I’ve been doing this for seven years, and nothing, you know, things just get more complicated as we go and having media out there to be able to bring people like Eric on to explain things is really important to do that. So if you found this podcast, whether it’s video or audio, whether you found it on Spotify or on YouTube, please share it with your friends that live here in the city. Let them know what we’re doing and let them know what’s going on. So thank you again, Eric. Appreciate it. Appreciate you being with me. Let me, one more thing, I guess. If anyone wants to sign on to your really, really good newsletter, I love your newsletter. You give your opinions on things. You share all sorts of stuff going on. Tell them where to find that and how to get subscribed to it.

00:56:56 – Eric Christ

Yeah, the simplest thing to do is, the URL’s a little complicated for the MailChimp sign-up form. If you go to my Christ for City Council Facebook page, it’s a pinned link on that page. It’s probably the easiest way to. You can direct people.

00:57:13 – Rico Figliolini

And they can find that by searching, is it Vote for Christ?

00:57:17 – Eric Christ

Well, yeah, just go in Facebook, Christ for City Council. We’ll take you there.

00:57:24 – Rico Figliolini

Cool. Alright. Hang in there with me for a minute. Everyone else, thank you again. Leave your reviews, your comments. There’ll be links in the show notes as well for most of what we’ve discussed. So check that out.

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City Government

Councilmember Sadd to Host Town Hall Meeting on October 29

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Headshot of a smiling white, male city politician in a suit and tie standing in front of an American flag.

Post 1 Councilmember Phil Sadd is hosting a non-partisan town hall meeting at Winters Chapel United Methodist Church on Tuesday, October 29 at 7 p.m.

The meeting will begin with an update on activities in the City of Peachtree Corners and an overview of plans for future projects.

“The upcoming town hall will not only provide our residents with information and an opportunity to ask questions, but will also allow me to hear directly from them about their concerns and desires for the future of our city,” said Sadd.

Topics to be discussed include:

  • New development/redevelopment
  • Trails and parks
  • Transportation improvement projects
  • November 5 ballot questions
  • Candidates for state and county local seats

An informative public forum

For the upcoming November 5 election, Peachtree Corners voters will have decisions to make on very important local issues. Topics on the ballot include a county-wide transit SPLOST referendum, amendments to the state constitution and the election of local state and county Officials.

 “Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a public forum in Peachtree Corners during this election cycle that covers all these topics,” Sadd stated. “Every voter should have the opportunity to be informed about every item on the ballot, so they fully understand each question they need to answer and each vote they need to make.”

The Town Hall will provide information about these topics, as well as an opportunity to hear from and meet the local state (both senate and house) and county (chairman and commissioner) candidates that are on the ballot.

For more information, visit peachtreecornersga.gov.

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Elections and Politics

Regina Matthews in Run-Off June 18 for Gwinnett Superior Court Judge

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This run-off election decides who will serve on the court.

Magistrate Court Judge Regina Matthews is a candidate for the upcoming June 18th runoff election for Superior Court Judge in Gwinnett County. Regina discusses improving court efficiency by setting deadlines, utilizing magistrates and senior judges, virtual hearings, digitizing processes, and maintaining accurate records. She also discusses challenges like housing insecurity’s impact on crime, accountability courts, and public engagement. The Run-off is Tuesday, June 18th. Host Rico Figliolini.

Resources:
Regina’s Website: 
https://judgematthews.com/

Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Magistrate Judge Regina Matthews on Local Politics
00:01:19 – Importance of Voting in Runoff Elections
00:04:17 – The Varied Responsibilities of Superior Court Judges
00:07:22 – Strategies for Reducing Court Backlogs
00:11:29 – Adapting Court Proceedings to Virtual Platforms
00:14:00 – Addressing Housing Insecurity to Reduce Recidivism
00:17:17 – Housing Scarcity and Mental Health Challenges in the Court System
00:20:19 – Navigating Limited Resources in the Justice System
00:21:59 – Challenges in the Court System: Lack of Resources and Prioritizing Treatment 00:26:32 – Increasing Awareness of Available Services
00:27:51 – Embracing Law Enforcement: Building Community Ties
00:30:20 – Balancing AI Benefits and Risks in the Legal System
00:33:33 – Continuing Accountability Courts and Upholding Judicial Integrity
00:37:09 – Serving with Integrity as a Judge

Podcast Transcript

Transcript:

Rico Figliolini 0:00:01

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life, a podcast that talks about politics, culture and all things going on in Peachtree Corners or that affects Peachtree Corners. So I have a great guest today, Regina Matthews. Hey, Regina, thanks for being with us.

Regina Matthews 0:00:17

Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be here, Rico.

Rico Figliolini 0:00:20

Absolutely. It’s very important, important times here. We just had that primary in May, and you and another candidate are in a runoff June 18.

Regina Matthews 0:00:31

That is correct.

Rico Figliolini 0:00:33

Right. So let me introduce you a little better. Regina’s from Chicago, went to school in South Carolina and ended up here in Georgia going to Emory law school. You’ve been, you live in Lowburn, you have two kids. They both play soccer. You have a dog. You’ve been working actually as a Magistrate judge. And you were appointed by eleven Gwinnett County Superior court judges along with the chief magistrate judge appointed you to this position. I think it was 2020.

Regina Matthews 0:01:02

Correct.

Rico Figliolini 0:01:03

And you’ve been serving in that position ever since. So what I’d like you to do is because most people don’t know what a magistrate judge does, maybe you can tell us a little bit about yourself and what that position actually does. Go ahead.

Regina Matthews 0:01:17

Well, yes, and thank you for that introduction. I am happy to be here. And again, thank you for doing this because I’ll just start off by saying, you know, you mentioned our runoff election, and I know that a lot of people don’t show up to vote in runoff elections historically. So hopefully we will change that. Hopefully people will get out and vote. This is an important election. It is the only county wide election on the ballot. So, you know, if you’re anywhere in Gwinnett, you can vote for this particular race.

Rico Figliolini 0:01:52

Not only that, it’s a nonpartisan race. So what happens here June 18 decides the position does not go to November, does not go into a general election. This is it. If you’re not there to vote for this position between two candidates, you’ve lost your chance to do that. So sorry, I just want to put that out.

Regina Matthews 0:02:12

Thank you for that distinction, because that is an important one. And sometimes people also want to know, like, what ballot do I need to choose in order to vote for judge? It’s on every ballot. Nonpartisan, republican, democratic. But you’re right. If you don’t vote in this runoff, you will miss the opportunity to select who will hold this judicial seat for the next four years. But going back to your question, I do service as a magistrate judge currently in Gwinnett, we have part time magistrates and full time magistrates and there is a distinction in my current role. I was appointed so that I could provide judicial assistance primarily for our superior court judges. But we also, as full time judges, do sometimes sit in our state courts, you know, wherever we’re needed. Juvenile court, probate court, recorders court. We’re sort of the judges that kind of get pulled in different directions. But 95% of my time on the bench is in superior court. So the eleven superior court divisions that I sit for, basically what those judges do, they sign what are called judicial assistance orders. So when a judge meets my assistance, they will issue an order giving me the authority to sit in their courtroom and handle, you know, their caseload. So I hear everything that the elected superior court judges hear. I’ve been designated, I think, at this point two hundred times by our superior court judges. And, you know, we hear primarily family law and felony criminal prosecutions. That comprises about 70% of the caseload in our courts. The other 30% are general civil cases. So it could be anything from an appeal from magistrate court, property tax appeals, unemployment benefit appeals, contract disputes, court actions. I mean, the list is long and extensive, so, you know, but that’s basically what I do every day.

Rico Figliolini 0:04:20

So, basically, it’s fair to say that even though you’re not doing the job of a superior court judge, you’re doing work for them. You’ve been exposed to those cases, you’ve done support work for them, essentially.

Regina Matthews 0:04:36

Correct. That is correct. And what I will say is, you know, it’s an interesting and intense vetting process. When our superior court judges choose, you know, who they want to appoint to these positions, because ideally, you know, they want someone, an attorney who has practiced primarily in the areas that the superior court judges here. So, again, that’s primarily family and criminal. So if you have a background as a practicing attorney in those areas, typically you’re going to be better suited, you know, to serve in superior court. You know, that’s vastly what we do.

Rico Figliolini 0:05:17

And there’s eleven superior court judges in Gwinnett county.

Regina Matthews 0:05:22

That is correct.

Rico Figliolini 0:05:23

And do they handle budgets of the court? Now, do the individual superior court judge handles the budget for their section, if you will, or is it done as consolidated between the eleven?

Regina Matthews 0:05:38

So each of the judges has their own budget, but they are similar budgets, if that makes sense. So it’s not like one judge is going to have a different budget than the other judges. I mean, you have the same amount of money allocated. What happens is, you know, the judges will go to the board of commissioners to make their pitch as to what it is, you know, is needed. So if their budgets need to be increased from year to year, it’s sort of a collective bench decision, or pitch, so to speak, as to establishing what the budget should be. But then the judges have control over the money that’s allocated to them individually.

Rico Figliolini 0:06:20

Okay, so then, so judges are not just sitting on a bench. They’re also doing administrative work. They’re also handling budget requirements and the work through of what needs to be done in a court system, if you will.

Regina Matthews 0:06:37

That is correct. Some of it is administrative, and some of it, you know, I think people tend not to think about this part of the job, but a lot of times, what you’re doing is also, you know, finding out how to effectively manage your cases and, you know, the best and most effective way to handle, you know, disposing of cases in a way that’s responsive, responsible, and responsive to the needs of the people, which is having, you know, efficient resolution of their cases. And so a lot of that, honestly just comes from experience knowing what works and what doesn’t work to kind of move cases along.

Rico Figliolini 0:07:16

Right. So, okay, so we segue into that part of case management, if you will. Not just that, but the backlog, that was exasperated because of COVID I mean, there was backlog before, but it got worse because of COVID So, yeah, so this backlog, case management, how do you handle, what are the strategies that you would use to resolve some of these things? I know from experience, it’s one thing, but what, in effect, would you do to make this better?

Regina Matthews 0:07:47

Right. And I will say, I think that people should know that there are some court divisions that operate without a backlog. People find that hard to believe. And we sort of hear, you know, about this backlog, and it sticks with us, there are some divisions that do have a backlog, but some of them operate without one. I will tell you division five, which is the position or the division that I’m running for. Judge Byers, I will say, and I used to work with her as a staff attorney. So, you know, I know very specifically how she does her case management, but she’s been very effective in scheduling cases. And I always say one of the things you can do as a judge is aggressively schedule cases. And what that means is, you know, when you show up to court and you see a courtroom full of people, that means that judge has probably aggressively scheduled that calendar. So there are some judges who may call in one case or two cases. But if those cases, you know, resolve, and they often do when they come to court, the attorneys talk or the parties talk, and they resolve it right then and there. And then if you’ve only called in one or two cases, for example, then you have the rest of the day gone because you’ve only called in those two cases. So, you know, I think aggressive case calendaring, I think using our mediation services and our courts helps move cases along to resolution so that in many cases, those, you know, lawsuits or disputes don’t even reach us to a trial capacity because they’re resolved earlier on in the litigation. Judges can also issue, particularly in civil cases, case management, or case scheduling orders, which dictate to the attorneys or the parties specific deadlines that they have to meet in order, again, to help move the cases along. Because in some instances, you have cases where motions are filed over and over, and it just prolongs the litigation. But if you give strict deadlines and it makes sure people are, you know, held accountable to those deadlines, again, it keeps the cases moving efficiently. The other thing I think that helps is obviously, courts utilizing, you know, full time magistrates and our senior judges to help manage the cases. There are some judges who use us more than others, but I think anytime you have judges, you know, available who, of course, have been appointed because they have the requisite skills and knowledge to help, you know, hear those cases, I think we need to utilize them. And so those are the things I can think of off the top of my head. And also, I will add, using when you can, technology. We learned, obviously, during COVID that utilizing Zoom video conferencing for some types of hearings can make things move more efficiently as well. Obviously, you can’t do everything on Zoom, but there are some types of hearings that can be handled more efficiently that way.

Rico Figliolini 0:10:51

So let’s stick to the technology for a little bit, because that was a big deal during COVID took a little while to digitize the process, if you will. And now that you have it, you’re right, I can see certain cases itself in court, need to be in court. You need to be able to eye the participants of this. But certain promotions and other things that are administrative motions and stuff can all be done by Zoom, right? Or digital services of a sort.

Regina Matthews 0:11:21

Yeah, I agree. I think when you have, for instance, we hear a lot of motions, particularly in civil cases, where it’s just the attorneys coming to court to argue some issue in the law, and they just want to make a record, you know, to the courts and to argue their position on whatever that legal issue is. And so we’re not hearing evidence. You know, we’re not listening to witnesses. And so those types of hearings, I think, easily could be handled by Zoom or some sort of video conferencing technology. But as you said, other cases, you know, where we are hearing live testimony from witnesses, and we’re receiving a lot of evidence, you know, in the form of documentary evidence, then clearly those are instances in where we need to be.

Rico Figliolini 0:12:08

In person in court, not to get into the weeds. But I just thought about this. When you’re using Zoom like that on these types of things, will it transcribe as well? I mean, do you keep copies like that, even if it’s in a digital form?

Regina Matthews 0:12:25

So what we typically do, and in civil cases, you don’t have to have the case reported, but most oftentimes, the attorneys or the parties want that service. So we have our court reporters available on Zoom as well, so that they can make a record just like they would be able to if they were in court.

Rico Figliolini 0:12:43

Okay.

Regina Matthews 0:12:44

And additionally, you know, lawyers that are really savvy, they’re really, you know, I guess during COVID they became more savvy in how to introduce documents through Zoom, you know, how to share, use the screen sharing function, or how to attach documents as part of the Zoom video conferencing features. So, you know, we’ve worked around it, and I think, again, there are ways we can make it continue to work in order to make sure that our litigants are receiving effective and efficient resolution of their cases, because the last thing we want is for people to wait years unnecessarily to resolve a case.

Rico Figliolini 0:13:27

And I would think it’s easier this way, too, because you’re digitizing everything. You’re keeping files that way. I mean, automatically, I would think. And, in fact, probably within a year’s time, the transcription part can even be done through voice to text versus just having a transcriber there. There’s so much out there. I mean, you all have to, I guess, figure that out all the time. Keeps going. All right, so a couple of the other issues that’s near and dear to you, I think, that, you know, spoken of, obviously, through not just you, but other candidates and stuff. So one of them is housing and security. You mentioned that as a significant issue in Gwinnett county. So how do you propose the court system can address this issue effectively?

Regina Matthews 0:14:14

Yeah, and that’s a tough question. It’s one I struggle with and think about all the time, because I think the issue of housing insecurity sort of leads to other issues that we see in our courts, obviously, you know, people don’t have a safe place to live. It’s going to affect our crime rates. It’s going to affect recidivism. It’s going to affect people just being able to function in our community. So I think it comes down to resources, and that’s really one of the unfortunate practical realities for our courts, is a lot of times we want to, of course, help people. Courts are rehabilitative and to some extent. But when we have individuals who simply don’t have a place to go, for instance, I’m going to step aside a moment and talk about our accountability courts. So we have three in superior court, veterans court, mental health court, and drug courts. And all of those courts, obviously, operate for the purpose of establishing rehabilitative services and treatment services for individuals so that they don’t keep committing crimes, so that they don’t re offend, and so that they can be productive members of society. Those courts can only operate to their full extent if we have the appropriate resources in the communities available. We are limited, and that’s just the reality. So, for instance, when we have individuals who successfully complete one of those treatment programs, and there have been many, I can go on and on about the efficacy of those programs. But what I find is that they sometimes come back not because they’re not taking their medications or they’re not seeing their treatment providers, but it’s because they don’t have housing. So we send them through treatment. They do everything they need to do, but either because of their past or just because of the cost of living, they find themselves back in the courts because they’re on the street. So I don’t know what the solution is, other than really having our communities help us advocate to our legislators, to our commissioners to give us more funding so that we can try to establish appropriate housing in Gwinnett county. There are some places that work with our program that will provide transitional support in housing for people that are in our accountability courts, but it’s only temporary. So once they meet that threshold of time, then they’re sort of left to their own supports and connections to try to find affordable housing. And I know affordable housing is an issue everywhere. It’s not just in Gwinnett county, but for sure, yeah.

Rico Figliolini 0:17:11

I mean, there’s not enough. Everyone wants to go to the higher price tag. Land is becoming scarce, even in Gwinnett county, apparently in certain places. So they want to put as much as they can and still charge as much as they can. So sticking with this, too, because mental health and veterans court as well. Right. Both. Those also are issues that go hand in hand, almost actually, with housing insecurity. Right. And what you’re looking at is support from nonprofits that are helping and doing stuff with federal monies and donations, corporate donations. But it’s a tough track. Right. So how do you, yeah. How do you feel that, you know, with mental health, what is it, 500 prisoners or so in the Gwinnett prison system that probably shouldn’t be there? Many of them they probably should be. They should be treated, obviously. How do you, how does the court system, how can the court system help with that?

Regina Matthews 0:18:14

So again, it’s tough because of, honestly, the truth of the matter is we have limited capacity. And, you know, if you look at places where we send people, for instance, for inpatient treatment, we’re talking about Lakeview, they have about 124 beds. Summit Ridge, they have a little under 100 beds. Peachford, which is all the way out in Atlanta, they have about 250 beds or so. We have way more people that need to be to get inpatient treatment than there are beds. So a lot of times what happens is people sit and wait. So for those people that we know need treatment, and we’re not just going to send them back out in the community without it. We keep them in jail and we try to arrange, there are some treatments that the jail medical staff can assist with while they’re waiting for beds. But a lot of times, honestly, we’re just having people wait for open beds because so many of them, I would say 70% or so, need some type of inpatient treatment. Now, our mental health accountability courts help a lot of people that are sort of not as much of a need of services, if that makes sense. I mean, they’re all in need of services, but to a different degree, because there are outpatient services that our treatment providers offer for those individuals where they can still, you know, live on the outside and work and do those things. But, you know, for those, the vast majority of people who need more intensive help, again, it’s just a matter of having the limited bed space.

Rico Figliolini 0:19:55

Well, not only that, it’s security, too. Right? Secured bed space, because there’s still, they’re still serving time, but they should be serving time in a place that at least will help them get better.

Regina Matthews 0:20:07

That is correct. That is correct. So, and, you know, I don’t know what the answer is. I know, you know, people never want to hear that we’re supposed to have all the answers. But, you know, I sit in court every day and I struggle with that. You know, you want to help people, you know, how important it is for them to get the help they need and to every extent possible, you know, I do that, you know, but when there’s, you know, only a limited number of bed space and the hospitals are saying, we can’t take this person right now, then we just have to do the best we can do. And that is, again, engaging with our medical staff at the jail and with our treatment providers who can come into the jail and offer services while those individuals wait. But, you know, otherwise we’re relying on, you know, what we have.

Rico Figliolini 0:20:58

Right, right. It’s a struggle, I imagine, because it’s almost like the sports industry here in Gwinnett county, right. We can only get certain amount of sporting events that the hotel system can support. Right. And then we have to turn away events because maybe there’s not enough space during that time. Same thing with jails. Right? To a degree, if you want to make that comparison, it’s like, I’m sure that you all have to figure out, well, you know, we have. We hit capacity. You know, where can, you know, can we, you know, put more prisoners into the system when you fix the capacity? You know, and I don’t know if we’ve actually hit that capacity yet or. Not hit the capacity for. To have occupancy in a system like this. You know, do we have enough?

Regina Matthews 0:21:44

I think we have. I mean, I can tell you as someone who not only sits in our superior courts, but who also presides in the absence of the judges who preside over our accountability courts. You know, I sit in those courts as well, and I’m very intimately familiar with how those treatment courts operate. And I can tell you that we are at capacity and we want to take in more people, but the practical reality is we don’t have the resources. And that is the. It’s really, it’s sad for me. It’s one of the most heart wrenching things as a judge to know that someone again needs help and they either have to wait in order to get it or we just have to come up with another solution.

Rico Figliolini 0:22:34

So going to that, I mean, obviously there’s so many challenges. This is one of them or several of them that we’ve just discussed. Are there other challenges you see in the court system that you would like to attend to?

Regina Matthews 0:22:49

I think those, honestly are the biggest challenges. Those are the ones that I’m confronted with every day. People who need assistance and treatment for trauma or substance use disorder or they need housing resources. Again, I don’t really notice a backlog that a lot of people refer to, because I think if you talk to lawyers who practice in other areas outside of Gwinnett, they will tell you Gwinnett handles cases way more efficiently than some of the other jurisdictions. So I think we do a good job of utilizing the resources we have by way of, you know, full time magistrates and our senior judges. I think we do things well. We use our, you know, alternative dispute resolution resources to a great extent. I think that helps us in that regard. So I think overall, we do things well in Gwinnett, in our courts. But again, I do think, you know, we have to prioritize with our money, you know, having more resources available for, you know, people struggling with substance use disorder or mental illness or a combination of both. We have a lot of people who are dual diagnosis. Right. So they have substance use disorder and mental illness, and a lot of times are housing insecure. So they obviously need a lot more resources, and that all falls struggle.

Rico Figliolini 0:24:20

Yeah. How do you see the role of the judiciary system when it comes to educating the public about the legal system? Their rights is all that falls hand in hand with what we just discussed, I think because sometimes the legal system can take the easy way out because it must, because there’s no other way to do. To do it at this point. Right. So what do you think the role is of the judicial system here as far as education, educating the public?

Regina Matthews 0:24:48

I think it’s important. You know, as a judge, I want people in our community to feel like they are knowledgeable about our courts. They sort of know where to go when they need to file a particular type of case. I think we as a judiciary, can do a better job of putting information out there that is available to the public. We have taken a lot of strides in Gwinnett in our courts. I will tell you that there are, particularly for magistrate court, our chief magistrate, Christina Bloom, she keeps brochures in the magistrate court office that is available to people, anyone who walks in. They can get a pamphlet on landlord tenant issues, you know, in those cases and how they’re handled and sort of the issues that come up in those cases, small claims, you know, basically step by step. I don’t want to say instructions because we can’t give legal advice, but we do give people resources. Like, this is where you can go. Our courts also operate a family law clinic. So for individuals who may want to represent themselves or maybe they. They don’t have the money to hire an attorney and maybe they don’t qualify for legal aid, they’re sort of stuck in the middle. There are resources available because of the goodwill of some of our attorneys who volunteer their time to do clinics to help people sort of navigate those processes. So we have information there. I think we can do a better job about making sure people know that the information is out there so that they can utilize it.

Rico Figliolini 0:26:25

That’s interesting. I didn’t know about that.

Regina Matthews 0:26:28

A lot of people don’t.

Rico Figliolini 0:26:29

Yeah, yeah. No, that sounds like another good podcast, actually.

Regina Matthews 0:26:33

So great idea. As a great idea, I wish more people knew about those types of services, and it’s just a matter of figuring out how do we get that message out to people.

Rico Figliolini 0:26:44

Yeah, it’s not easy. And then to get people to listen, actually, too, because they may not need it at that moment. Until they need it, right.

Regina Matthews 0:26:53

Until they need it. Yeah.

Rico Figliolini 0:26:54

Yeah.

Regina Matthews 0:26:54

The other thing I tell people, too, you know, I think people are generally afraid of courts or maybe they’re just apprehensive when it comes to, you know, courts. And so I tell people, don’t always think about it in a negative way. I encourage people to come out and observe court proceedings, you know, when you can. I know most people have full time jobs, so that may not be feasible all the time, but, you know, courts are open forums, so if you want to come and observe a divorce trial or, you know, a criminal trial or whatever type of trial, you know, come to court, observe, see how, you know, things go. And I think that might help prepare people, too, better for, you know, you know, the times that they have to come to court and face that same situation.

Rico Figliolini 0:27:41

It’s funny, I think people think of court system like the IRS. Just stay away and don’t go near it.

Regina Matthews 0:27:47

That’s right. People don’t want to come anywhere close if they don’t have to. I get that. I get that.

Rico Figliolini 0:27:52

Although I got to say, the Gwinnett county police do a great job when they do ride alongs. That, depending on how you do that program, even some of the local small town like Suwannee, I think, in Duluth do similar type of things where you can go with the police and see their normal day, if you will.

Regina Matthews 0:28:08

I love those programs, too, because, you know, our law enforcement, I also think that they sort of get that reputation of, you know, like, we don’t want to deal with law enforcement unless we need them. Right. Like, we stay away, you know, and I think we have to embrace, you know, our law enforcement officers as, you know, our friends. You know, they’re here to help us. They want to protect us and keep us safe. So I’m so glad, you know, so many of our police chiefs have taken the initiative to really be present in the community, you know, for reasons outside of, you know, crime, safety and prevention. But just so that people know, you know, they’re friendly, they’re neighborly, they want to, you know, you know, help us, but also be, make sure that we know that they’re part of the community to help and not just to get the bad guys, for sure.

Rico Figliolini 0:28:59

Right, right. Yeah, true. And a lot of them do a good job that way. We talked about technology before, but I like talking a little bit more specific about artificial intelligence, AI, and what that means in a court system or in preparing court documents or in having to worry about evidence that may be submitted that could have been tainted by AI. So what, you know, what do you think are the potential benefits and drawbacks of using AI in the court system?

Regina Matthews 0:29:35

Yeah, admittedly, you know, it’s a discussion we’re having to have more often. Even some of our continuing judicial education classes are starting to talk about this issue. And candidly, it scares me a bit because I’m just trying to imagine a court system whereby human intelligence is replaced by artificial intelligence. I mean, just the thought of it is a little alarming. I do think that there are ways in which AI can be beneficial. You know, for instance, when you’re an attorney or a judge, you know, or a law clerk who’s working for a judge, and you want to find information about a specific case or a legal topic, you know, doing research could be, AI could be great because it could make you more efficient and getting the answers you need. But I will say, as a caveat, there has to be a human, I think, sort of checking that. So even if you use it for research purposes, it is still artificial intelligence. So I would like to think that we would still need some human to basically double check to make sure of the accuracy of whatever information you’re getting. So I think there could be some benefits for efficiency when it comes to operating in a courtroom setting, though I’m more afraid of AI than I am of welcoming of it, because I foresee issues where we’re presented with evidence, for example, and we have to test the credibility or veracity of that evidence. And again, there’s just no substitute, I don’t think, for human intelligence as opposed to AI. And I think about the floodgates opening up with even court filings and us getting backlogged because of AI and something other than human filing court documents and how that could just really cause a backlog.

Rico Figliolini 0:31:34

You’re worried about more filings happening because it can be generated faster through AI.

Regina Matthews 0:31:39

That is correct. That is correct.

Rico Figliolini 0:31:42

I mean, certainly AI has issues, and I don’t, you know, as fast as it’s moving right now, who knows? In a year or two, probably less than two years, I bet based on what’s been going on in the last two years, we’re going to end up being able to. If you have someone that doesn’t speak the language, that can be translated through the system, Google does that right now. The Google Translate, right. And voice, you can have real time fact checking occurring where you can look at, you know, place it to chat, GPT 7.05.0 when it comes out, where you could check those facts. So there are certainly good side to it, but as fast as that’s moving, the bad side can move just as fast.

Regina Matthews 0:32:29

I can say, yeah, I agree, it’s troublesome. And because I guess we’re not sort of there yet, it’s hard to really appreciate how. How much of an effect it will have on our courts, whether a good, you know, good or bad, because, like you said, it’s happening so quickly, it’s almost hard to grasp. But, yeah, it’s gonna be here, if it’s not already, we’re gonna have to confront it. And. And it does give me some, some. I don’t know, I’m concerned a little bit.

Rico Figliolini 0:32:59

Well, it’s good that you all are getting education on it, right? Continuing education, if you will. So that’s a good part, that it’s being proactive, at least.

Regina Matthews 0:33:07

Yep.

Rico Figliolini 0:33:08

If you were to win the Gwinnett County Superior Court judgeship, what do you think, in brief, would be your long term vision for it?

Regina Matthews 0:33:17

So I will say, first of all, I’m the only candidate in the race who has unequivocally indicated that I will, without question, continue the accountability courts that Judge Byers started. And particularly those accountability courts are veterans treatment court and mental health accountability court. She is the only judge currently sitting on the bench who operates those treatment court programs. So once she resigns her seat at the end of this year, those programs could effectively go away. And so I have made an unequivocal promise to continue on with those programs. Honestly, I can’t imagine our courts not having them. So that is the first thing I will continue her legacy. You know, she started those courts. I think we just celebrated the 11th year, and so I want that to be, you know, a long term program, both of those to be long term programs that Gwinnett can be proud of forever. So I promise that I foresee a court whereby litigants feel that Judge Matthews is fair. She’s even handed, she’s even tempered. She may not always issue a ruling that I agree with, but I will trust that Judge Matthews has followed the law, you know, above all else, and that she treated me with dignity and with respect. You know, I was a practicing lawyer for a long time, and I remember appearing in front of judges who, I don’t know, seem like they would make sport of humiliating litigants or humiliating attorneys. I’m sure. I mean, you probably have seen or at least heard of those types of judges, and it was just troubling to me. And I, you know, said a long time ago, if I ever became a judge, you know, I will never be that type of judge where, you know, someone comes in and they have, you know, an issue that’s important enough to them to either file a case or be involved in whatever the litigation is. But, you know, people deserve to be treated with dignity, no matter what. And I include, you know, people who are charged of criminal offenses. You know, obviously, we don’t condone criminal behavior. I don’t like it. But those people deserve to be treated with dignity at the very least. And so that’s what people will get from me, judge, again, that’s going to be fair. Who’s going to operate independently, who is not going to be swayed, you know, politically. Who’s really just going to follow the laws, as I’m bound to do, the constitution of the state of Georgia, the constitution of the United States, and the laws passed by our legislators.

Rico Figliolini 0:36:03

Okay, well, thank you for sharing that vision. We’ve come pretty much to the end of our talk. But what I’d like you to do is give us, in short, two minutes, maybe ask for the vote, essentially tell everyone why they should be voting for you and ask for that vote.

Regina Matthews 0:36:23

Thank you, Rico. And, you know, I have to tell you lawyers, you probably know this. Lawyers and judges are not good with time limits. So I hope I can do the two minutes. If I started to go over, just stop me, because we’re not good at keeping time out. Yeah, put your hand up or something. But again, thank you for this opportunity. I take being a judge as something that is meaningful. It is difficult work. You know, the decisions that I make, that we make as judges every day, you know, we realize that they impact people in very significant ways. And so what I can tell the voters is that’s not something I will ever take for granted. You should vote for me not only because I have a deep concern and care for the people of this county, not only because I currently serve the county, but also because you need a judge and you deserve a judge who has the experience to do the job and to do it on day one. As I talked about earlier, I currently sit in superior court every day. At this point in my judicial career, I’ve made decisions, probably I want to say hundreds, but it may be even close to thousands of cases. This point I’ve done so diligently. I’m a judge that operates with the utmost integrity, and you don’t have to just take my word for it. I’ve been tried, vetted and tested, so to speak. The eleven superior court judges that you elected and the chief magistrate judge you elected in Gwinnett county have already vetted my qualifications. They wouldn’t designate me to sit for them over 200 times if they didn’t believe that I was suitable to do the job of a superior court judge. And that is what I do every day. I make a commitment to the voters that I will continue to have deep respect for the rule of law, I will always follow and adhere to the rule of law, that I will operate with integrity, and that I will do everything to make sure the court processes run efficiently. Thank you again, and I hope to have your vote. You overwhelmingly supported me in the primary election. I hope I can get you back out to vote for the runoff. You can find more information on my website at judgematthews.com, I’m also on social media Regina Matthews for superior court or judge Regina Matthews. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Instagram. I’m pretty much all the social media platforms. But again, I just hope the voters can remember that, you know, you need and deserve someone who has the experience doing the job. And I’m ready on day one.

Rico Figliolini 0:38:59

Great. By the time people hear this, early voting, I think will have ended. So June 18, Tuesday is the day.

Regina Matthews 0:39:06

Tuesday, June 19. That day you have to go to your assigned voter precinct for early voting. Obviously it’s different, but on June 18, you have to go to your designated polling place, seven to seven.

Rico Figliolini 0:39:22

Thanks for that. So thank you, Regina Matthews. Appreciate you being on with me. Hang in there for a minute, but thank you. Everyone else. If you have questions, certainly put it into the comments. Whether you’re listening to this on Facebook or YouTube, or you have comments that you want to send directly to Regina Matthews, just go to her website, judgematthews.com, and you’ll be able to do that. So thanks again. Appreciate you being with us.

Regina Matthews 0:39:48

Thank you, Rico.

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