Why is the city amending its Charter? Plus, opening up for business

In Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager (Brian Johnson), Rico Figliolini discusses why the city is looking to amend its charter, “opening up”, concerts, job fairs, Town Green improvements, trails, hotel conversion to apartment ordinance, and more. There is a lot on the agenda, let’s get to it.

Timestamp:

[00:00:30] – Intro
[00:01:33] – Charter Amendment
[00:16:49] – Concerts and Returning to Normal
[00:22:40] – Mobile Vaccination
[00:23:46] – Job Fair
[00:25:30] – Town Green Expansion
[00:28:31] – Trail System Improvement
[00:32:07] – Hotel Renovation Ordinance
[00:33:47] – Capital Improvement Budget
[00:35:26] – Election Equipment
[00:37:04] – The American Rescue Plan Act
[00:39:49] – Closing

“This is just if in fact there is a problem. But normal business in our normal process of two reads will continue to always be our baseline operation. Unless conditions are such that, you know, really all of us, myself and council, but especially council in the voting capacity have to say, you know what? It is emergent and we’re going to vote.”

Brian johnson

Podcast Transcipt

Rico: [00:00:30] Hi everyone. This is Rico Figliolini host of Peachtree Corners Life  and today’s Prime Lunchtime with the City Manager, Brian Johnson. Before we get to that, I just want to say thank you to everyone that reads our publication, Peachtree Corners Magazine, which is the sponsor of these family of podcasts, that brings this to you on these live streams, simulcast live streams. And if you feel that there are subjects we should be covering, I’d love to hear your feedback. So put them in the comments, email me, call me if you’d like. My number’s available in the magazine and online. And we can get to those topics probably. Especially if they’re important topics that should be covered in our podcasts. So let’s get right to it. We’re going to be discussing quite a few things today. Especially the change in charter, in the charter amendment, to the city charter. That we’re going to be discussing first off, and then we’ll be going into some of the other items on city council’s agenda this past week. And then we’ll cut out and everyone can enjoy the weekend. So let’s bring in Brian. Hey Brian, how are you?

Brian: [00:01:31] Rico. Good. How are you?

Rico: [00:01:33] Good, good. This is always good to get to talk to you and find out a few more things besides finding it out on Next Door or anywhere else.  Especially when we can talk right to you and get good information. So let’s get right into it. I know the city was looking to amend the charter and I know some people may be looking at that particular amendment. Which normally ordinances have to do a first read and consideration. So they come back to the council on second time to be voted on, right? But because of COVID and the things that have happened, the city is looking at this a little different now, because they need to be able to move faster than 60 days to be able to handle something if it needs to be handled. So why didn’t you explain to us why the city is choosing to amend the charter and what exactly that amendment is?

Brian: [00:02:23] Alright, so let me take one step back so that those who don’t know this the charter for the city is kind of like the constitution for the state or the federal government. It’s what lays out how the city is governed, our structure and procedural steps that we need to do to you know, enact laws and enforce laws. And so it’s our, it’s our constitution. And when the city was created, there’s a requirement in there that when ordinances are passed, which ordinances at the local government level are the most formal way to create laws. And so that’s how, you know, the local laws are you know, adopted and that’s the Bible I use in different areas on guiding how I enforce them on behalf of mayor and council or my staff enforces them. And so when our charter was initially created, it had a requirement in there that no ordinance could be adopted at the same city council meeting that it was proposed or had its first reading. And that requirement in and of itself is just fine. It 99.9% of the time does not present a problem at all. There’s a nice fluid you know, flow of legislation, if you will, that comes through the city through that process. You know, we’ll oftentimes some of these require planning commission, some don’t. But then you’ll ultimately have a first reading at a city council meeting. That first reading is the result of advertisement to the community. That there is this item that’s coming before council. And on the first meeting where it’s quote-unquote introduced the first reading is just that. The ordinance, the proposed ordinance is just read into the record. There is no actual public hearing. There’s no debate or anything like that at the first reading, but what it does per our charter, it gets that first introduction into the record. So then the following months, city council meeting council can in fact conduct the public hearing, let the community speak to it. They debate it, they vote on it and it becomes law or not as the case may be. Why that process is probably in the minority of cities, as far as that requirement, most cities do not have the requirement to do that. Some voluntarily do it. But our requirement, anytime you use the word requirement, there might be an instance where sometimes a requirement might need to be tweaked because there could be exigent circumstances, some extenuating circumstance that you need to look at it. And we have had that recently. And some, the most recent example, clearest one was when the city adopted the mask ordinance. Mandating the wearing of masks and social distancing at certain locations in the city public facilities. And then of course supporting the local businesses of enforcing that inside their business as well. Well, local laws are ordinances. And so in the middle of a pandemic, we had this requirement with no mechanism for us to adjust from it, that it was going to take two separate city council meetings. And so it got, you know, us talking about that. There have been other instances in which we have run into a timely situation that we really didn’t want to wait. Oftentimes it involved like code enforcement or law enforcement circumstances where you might have a certain business that has activity that is becoming problematic. Maybe it’s attracting crime. It’s, it’s you know, degrading quality of life. And when we go to enforce or restrict this activity that’s creating problems, we don’t have anything in our code to address it. Or, you know, and so then we would have to wait like 60 days and two meetings to oftentimes amend our code to do things. Or we’ve even had potential permits of businesses wanting to come in and maybe get a permit for a certain use that we don’t really want to have, or is problematic. And we could preemptively do some things to ensure that there’s not such a open-ended issue. And again, we’re constraints. So long way of saying there are exigent circumstances, very infrequently, but every now and then that it might require a change. So the proposal, which is actually very common, is for there to be a mechanism that if the situation was deemed to be emergent enough by mayor and council, that there could be a suspension of that requirement. And the second read the public hearing and the vote is at the same meeting it was introduced. And the mechanism is for council to actually vote. So it’s not like there’s a verbal, but they will actually have to vote on this motion. There would be a motion to suspend that requirement and have the second read and then add a second read in consideration at the same meeting. When that happens, the requirement is that there is unanimous consent for that to happen. So the way it would work is let’s say, you know, Rico, we had some issue that we found timely. We get to a council meeting. I present to council or technically a council member could too, but let’s say I present to council. Something that I feel is timely enough that I don’t feel, I think we would be, you know, maybe more problematic if we waited another 30 days. I present my case. And at that point, council would vote on it. And if any one of them, one or all of them, but it would require all seven of them to say, you know what, he’s right. We should consider it now so that we can do something now. They would vote on that motion. If it passed, then there would be the public hearing right then, or at that meeting maybe later on the agenda. But at that meeting, The, you know, the agenda item would be opened up for public comment and then they would vote on that particular ordinance there. That is what this is about. We, you know, the mask, we were unable to actually put a mask ordinance in place in a timely manner because of this restriction. And so this is merely putting into the charter a mechanism for this to happen should there be that emergence situation. Now last two points would be one, there are certain situations that the state law requires there to be separate, you know, two different actions at two separate council meetings. Zoning are usually cases where there’s a requirement. So this doesn’t supersede that. So there would not be, it’s not like you know, every instance would council do it. In fact, the normal would be business as usual 99.9% of the time. I mean, you know, maybe in our lifetimes a hundred percent of the time, but we don’t even have a mechanism in place if we needed it. And so some of the other state law, we still adhere to that. And then again, this is just if in fact there is a problem, but normal business in our normal process of two reads will continue to always be our baseline operation. Unless conditions are such that, you know, really all of us, myself, and council, but especially council in the voting capacity have to say, you know what? It is emergent and we’re going to vote. Put our deep political DNA on that, so to speak, and raise our hand and then we go from there. So it’s, you know, I don’t think that there’s a lot of risk for abuse when you have that, you know level of protection.

Rico: [00:11:00] Yeah. Interesting. When I first heard of that, I, you know, the first thing I could see someone saying is that, well, that’s not fair because that’s going to cut down the time element of people gathering and getting together for momentum against something let’s say. But the fact is, is that, you know, the publicizing, these types of word nuances, doesn’t change. The same advertising schedule that you guys were going to do. Doesn’t change. You need unanimous vote from city council. So all the city council people have to say fine. We agree with that. That’s a great idea. We need to do this now.

Brian: [00:11:35] And all it takes is one to say I don’t like it and that’s it.

Rico: [00:11:38] That’s right. So, you know, I don’t foresee this, like you said, being used on a regular basis. That makes no sense. In fact, you all ended up having to sort of do a work around when you had to do the mask mandate, I think, right?

Brian: [00:11:53] We did. We had to exercise a different aspect of the charter because in that case we had the governor’s public health declaration to point to. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have had that. And the other thing too is, I forgot to mention is you used a good term for work around, you know. So the charter does require two separate, you know, instances, two separate meetings in which an ordinance is both introduced and they consider. We have in the past had some instances, we’ve had some grant money that we would be eligible for if we had certain regulations in place. And it was timely because we were going to be ineligible for it during that grant cycle, if we didn’t do it. And then we’ve scheduled a special called meeting simply for the purpose of having the first read. And so for those who might be like, well,  you know, two different meetings keeps that, you know, everything from happening. I get it. And that should be the norm, but a special called meeting, which is entirely in keeping with the current chart. Even not the amended one. Is problematic too, because I can’t, you know, I don’t remember what day we did it, but we could have that special called meeting could have been done on a day that somebody couldn’t attend or view. Or they didn’t know about it because it wasn’t, you know, they were out of town or whatever. Whereas here it would always be at a regularly scheduled meeting.

Rico: [00:13:29] Right.

Brian: [00:13:30] So, you know, the work arounds are there, but those we feel are problematic too, because you know, special called meetings not everybody can make. Not everybody knows about. Everybody knows we have a city council meeting the third Tuesday of every month. They can plan on it. You know, they can do it where special called meetings.

Rico: [00:13:48] And there’s no reason for a work around when you can solve the problem. To have a workaround just means people are just not willing to do the effort that that’s necessary to fix it. There’s no reason in government that government should need to do work arounds. And in fact, like, you know, we’ve discussed before, you know, things like that can also almost seem not transparent enough when you have to deal with the work around like that. That people can look at that. This is this way it’s forthright. Everyone understands the rules of the game. And you know, and there’s no question about what is being done. And the fact that all seven, you know, all city council people have to vote in unanimous way without one blackballing the suggestion, what has to be done, is a good protection. Because, you know, we vote the city council people in, and if they’re not representing us and doing what they’re supposed to be doing, you know, there’s a  scorecard on that, right? And then people…

Brian: [00:14:43] There is. And then you would have been able to point to their voting record to say, Hey, you know, you did that. And you know, it’s also important to note that one, having a mechanism is pretty typical for cities. This is not actually uncommon. I didn’t create this mechanism. I mean, clearly it’s being used.

Rico: [00:15:01] Best practices.

Brian: [00:15:02] And the difference is, is oftentimes it’s the consent to do this is either only a majority or super majority. It’s not unanimity.

Rico: [00:15:12] Right. Which is unusual actually.

Brian: [00:15:14] So that one is one and then two, there are a lot of cities, even in our area that don’t have a two vote requirement period that it’s just one. One advertisement, one read, one vote, one meeting.

Rico: [00:15:30] I’m sure there’s smaller…

Brian: [00:15:31] They don’t need a mechanism because they don’t have the two meeting requirement.

Rico: [00:15:35] Right. And I’m sure the smaller counties probably, I mean, I imagine, you know, less of a budget and stuff, to be able to handle things like that, so.

Brian: [00:15:42] Well, but the ones I’m talking about are Metro cities that are our size or bigger. Oh yeah. It’s not uncommon to not have two to, you know, read the requirement. But it’s fine. I mean, look, it’s what would, you know, mayor and council here certainly do not want to change it. I don’t want to change it. I think it’s a good way to keep us operating at a manageable pace and not have things happen too quickly. So I think it should be our baseline, there’s nothing wrong with it. But we also should have a mechanism. Every, you know, you have an emergency relief valve, should you need it. And it’s nice to have one. It can be problematic if you don’t.

Rico: [00:16:21] I mean, especially in the world that we live in right now. I mean, if COVID was worse then it’s been, which you know, can happen again. I mean, you know, I mean, it could happen a year from now. It could happen five years from that. So having these mechanisms in place makes sense to be able to react faster than what you would otherwise be able to do.

Brian: [00:16:41] I hope we don’t have to do another emergency mask ordinance, that’s for  sure. But if we do, again, we can do it quickly.

Rico: [00:16:49] Yeah. Talking about masks, I guess. We’re, you know, where CDC has adjusted again, you know how we wear, whether we wear masks, if we’re double vaccinated, fully vaccinated. So things are shifting and changing, right? So coming up this weekend is the first concert of the season. This is the first one where we’re not doing reservations in spaces, although you still have to reserve your ticket. And we’re sold out right? For this tribute band, Fleetwood Mac tribute band.

Brian: [00:17:19] We are. So prior to this one, you had to reserve individual circles for basically family units. And the maximum you could get in the entire lawn, town green area using that model was about 800. And with the numbers having, you know, improved to the way they have, CDC guidelines, so on and so forth, council felt like this concert was one where we could do away with the individual family unit circle. Keep one big circle, restricting access to the lawn itself and reserving that, but upping the total number that can be within the big circle of the lawn to 2,500. And then, you know, to put it in a perspective. I think it was the Queen tribute band two years ago that we had about 6,000 out there. Now that was a lot, I mean, you know, there were people into the woodline and stuff. But just to put it in perspective, how much 2,500 is to that space. So council felt like like so it’s sold out. And so, you know, but if you do have a ticket if you will, it just allows you to get inside that big circle. At that point, you get to decide where you sit, who you sit with, whether you wear a mask or not, it’s up to the individual.

Rico: [00:18:42] It’s up to you, right. So, and that’s the the actual circle or oval, circle of the town center. So the playground, the restaurants, all the seating away from it, that’s on the deck and stuff. That’s all not part of that.

Brian: [00:18:55] Under the covered part is. You know, the two large cover that is. But the edge of the restaurants there, the playground is going to remain open for those who want to do it. I know that last concert we closed the town green at noon and probably did not do a very good job of you know, notifying the community that was going to take place. The reason it takes, and that became problematic because people showed up to what is 99% of the time, an open public space. They showed up the afternoon of the concert to find out that it was closed off. And, you know, rightly so there were some people who were upset because they could have planned otherwise. Why it was closed off is because at a certain point, we do need to do a little bit of set up. But probably more important is, when that area is restricted and people start to show up it is much easier to tell somebody they can’t go somewhere initially than to let them go somewhere for a while and then tell them they have to leave.

Rico: [00:20:15] Oh, for sure. I can’t imagine evicting people off space if you will.

Brian: [00:20:20] And we had to, we did that last year when we started the circle thing, we realized that we were letting people in there to do stuff a little bit later. And so this time I think we did a better job of reminding everybody that was coming. We’re not going to close it till two. So the lunch crowd could go in there and do their thing. We’re not closing the playground, you know, the playground equipment at the back there at all. So hopefully it’s a little bit better, but that’s why. It wasn’t because any reason. And we don’t need set up as early as 12 or even 2, but if we let people in there and then, you know, around four or so, we really do need to. People don’t like to get evicted.

Rico: [00:21:02] No, they don’t. And there’ll be people just like, shall I say, the ones that would be entering stores without a mask, because that’s what they want do. It’d be the same thing. I don’t want to get off the town center because I own it also. And so yeah, I can see how that could be difficult. So, and just to clarify, because some people may still not get it. The tickets are not for sale. They’re just reserved tickets. No one’s selling anything. No one’s buying a ticket. This is just reservation. That’s been sold out by the way, for this weekend.

Brian: [00:21:36] That’s correct. This is a service to our residents, these are concerts, are all free. The only reason there are tickets is just the ticket to get into the restricted area so that you can, you know, listen and have your chair out and all that kind of stuff. It may be as early as next month’s concert in which there may not be a restricted area at all. And it’s just first come first serve, which is the way we ultimately want to run it all the time.

Rico: [00:22:03] Sure, sure.

Brian: [00:22:04] Council, mayor and council have to make that decision still. They will contemplate that here over the next couple of weeks and then we’ll let everybody, of course the community know if it’s going to be restricted or not. But I like our numbers. Whether it happens or not, I certainly like, you know, the decrease in number of COVID cases and deaths such that, you know, we’re getting closer and closer to that day before COVID where we all were doing our thing.

Rico: [00:22:34] Yeah. No, those numbers are dropping and it’s getting way better and more people need to get vaccinated at that.

Brian: [00:22:40] Oh, by the way, Rico. Yes. I’m glad you brought that up. We are partnering with the Gwinnett county health department. They are going to have a mobile vaccination unit out at our concert. So if anybody wants to get vaccinated, they can get vaccinated right there. And for those who do, they get a drink ticket. A $10 drink ticket for Cinebestro right there if you get vaccinated. Well, based on some comments, doesn’t have to be alcoholic drink. It’s just a drink. So lots of it.

Rico: [00:23:19] But, but also don’t get vaccinated again if you’ve already been vaccinated just to get the tickets. I could see people doing that. By the way, is it the one shot or is it the two shot vaccination? Do  you know?

Brian: [00:23:34] I think it’s the one shot. I think, is it Johnson and Johnson? I don’t know that for sure. But I think it is. Because, you know, the mobile ones where it’s not at the same office, it’s hard to. So that’s one pretty sure it’s a Johnson Johnson one.

Rico: [00:23:46] Right. Okay, good. Drink tickets. Love it. Okay. Peachtree Corners, you know, we’re a little city and yet we are becoming farm country in some ways. So I just want to acknowledge that you know, we have the Corner Greens, but we’ll also getting a second hydroponic farm community starting up called Peachtree Farm. And I think that’s going to be located in technology park. It looks like. So we’re getting more farming in a city environment, urban farming. It’s cool. Things are coming back, right? Hotels are starting to open up. So there’s also going to be a job fair. Is this being sponsored by the city as well, or is this?

Brian: [00:24:24] It is. It’s a partnership between us and I think Explore Gwinnett is involved, and some others. But you know, the hospitality industry. Well, the restaurant industry, I mean, there are some industries that have been hammered even more than most. And as they’re coming back, you know, in addition to all the other challenges they have, they’re having a hard time finding enough staff.

Rico: [00:24:49] Right. That’s the biggest problem.

Brian: [00:24:51] It is. And now we, you know, those of us who live here, we don’t necessarily frequent these hotels per se, to know this but you know, some of our hotels are having, are only opening a certain percentage of their rooms because they don’t have enough staff to service all the rooms. Just like some of our local restaurants that, I know you know this, that their hours are abbreviated because they don’t have enough staff to, you know. Like some of these are not opening till four, can’t even eat lunch there because they don’t have enough staff. So we’re going to try and do what we can to help the hotels get the staff they need to get up to a hundred percent.

Rico: [00:25:30] Right. And it seems that, that’s happening June 9th, by the way, for those people that would like to go. June ninth at the Atlanta Marriott. Also check the city website, I think and when are they going to, what the hours are actually. The other thing too, not to bounce around too much, but there is going to be an expansion, I guess. So we have the health fitness trail, right? And then sort of next to it, I guess, and off the green, there’s going to be, there’s a plan, another fitness area for youth fitness it seems. But do I have that right? I saw one of the city council newsletters that came out recently and they were talking about it.

Brian: [00:26:06] Yeah, okay. So what you’re talking about, Councilman Wright. You know, most of the council members have some sort of communication with their constituents. Newsletters or email lists, but he was mentioning the decision by council to expand some of the playground equipment out along the town green. And if you’ve been out there, you know, that one end of it, you got, you know, so on one end you have the stage and the opposite of the stage, you have some playground equipment. And then if you start, you know, going around the circle if you’re facing, if you’re standing on the stage facing the, you know, the other end. To your left, you’ve got all the restaurants. And then as you go around to the back, you’ve got playground equipment, then you keep going around to the right and you hit the veterans monument. And then you hit kind of the woodline there and there’s nothing right along the outer sidewalk area of the lawn itself. We are going to expand around to that side and put a version of what you currently see when it comes to playground equipment on that other side. And by that, I mean some additional playground equipment. Because if you go out there at certain times it is slammed with kids. And it’s a great place to let them run around and everything. But we know that there’s, we have some pretty cool playground equipment coming. So we’re going to put it around on the right side of the town green along the woodline. And we’re going to put, we are cognizant of the fact that a lot of the kids that use it are ones that have adult supervision with them. And those adults would just as soon not stand in the hot sun or stand the whole time or in the hot sun. So we are putting, we are going to improve it over there to have formal seating areas. Tables and even some covering over it out there. So parents can sit there close to their kids and they have a bunch of, so we’re, we’re just activating it more based on the activity. And the activity right now is we see a lot of kids and these are going to be maybe a little bit more advanced, maybe into elementary school. Like early elementary school age versus like toddler and some of the other ones, you know, tend to be, but yeah.

Rico: [00:28:31] Good. I mean, I remember when the town center first started, the talk was, you know, we’re not using all the land yet. We want to see how it’s being used and then, and then we’ll figure out what’s necessary to meet the demand. You know, because you can never tell what the future holds, right? So, and now you’re seeing the things that are happening. So for people that have also seen some excavation or clearing of some trees, along Peachtree Corners Circle by town center, that part is being expanded or improved for the trail system, correct?

Brian: [00:29:06] That’s correct. So, you know, we talk about it quite a bit, but we have a master plan of 11 and a half mile of multi-use trail system. That will ultimately be our system within the city. And, you know, we’re constructing parts of this trail all the time. And one section of the trail is linking up one end of the bridge, the pedestrian bridge, and going along that wooded area, that separates kind of the you know, the Lazy Dog from where H and W or the former Black Walnut was. That area, and you look there and you got that, you know, long linear wooded area. Well, that’s a creek down there. And so we are extending the trail system from the bridge because the bridge is part of the 11 and a half mile trail system. We’re going to extend it along that wooded area. In, at two elevations. There’s going to be one that’s going to be up above on you know, on stilts, if you will. And including one that’ll swing out over the Creek, kind of an observation.

Rico: [00:30:16] I have one, we have a rendering on the website of that.

Brian: [00:30:19] Okay. Alright. And so one will be up at grade, you know, there at the same level as Lazy Dog and the bottom floor of the parking deck of that. And one will go down into the Creek. And there will be a path that will allow you to walk down into the Creek and there’ll be a stream restoration project to make the stream, to improve the way it looks down there, how it will be an amenity and to dam it up at a certain point in a way that there’s continual water flowing in it. Because right now it can go dry at some points. But anyway, that will go from the pedestrian bridge all the way up and then it will get up to Peachtree Corner Circle. And so it links up there. And that’s what you have seen if you’re on Peachtree Corner Circle. You see this kind of notch cut out of the woods, that’s just merely the, what we needed to be able to pave the path coming up.

Rico: [00:31:19] Will that be finished up for, I know that the rendering, I know there’s still part, the two path level probably won’t be. But come September, the Peachtree Corners Festival is back. And back bigger than ever, hopefully. And also they’re trying to figure out how to actually fit and work that within the town sense of space,  instead of Crooked Creek, where in Parkway where they were you know, for years now, I guess. But they’re going to be opening September 18th, I think and 19 that weekend.

Brian: [00:31:50] Yep. No it will probably not be done by then. I mean, this is construction and there’s just so many variables against it. But you know, some of it might. But you know, I know that the festival committee is not planning on that being you know, part of it. It’ll be a nice to have amenity if it’s in.

Rico: [00:32:07] But that area will be closed off that road for the festival. And the festivals will also be out on the town green and other expanded parts of the town center, I guess. Alright, cool. So that’s coming September for everyone. The hotel apartments with the apartment hotels or that ordinance that we discussed the last meeting, just to let people know that was approved now. So hotels that are looking, if they are, to renovate and become apartments, this new ordinance will cover that. And that’s been approved, right? In this past meeting?

Brian: [00:32:40] Now, yeah, without getting in the details, I mean, this is to protect against a hotel that might be you know, struggling so bad that they start doing things like doing extended stay and you start attracting a quality of resident that you don’t want. There are some, there are some processes that some other cities have done kind of late with the pandemic in which there could be with a whole host of conditions. I mean, a lot of conditions, but they could be converted into apartments. And so that’s what this does. And you know, you can go to the website and see, but it’s a difficult process. But we do feel like if somebody is willing to do that, that’s going to be better than them just decreasing the room rates and doing extended stay and such though it becomes a crime problem or something like that. So we don’t want, so we just wanted to make sure again, there’s a mechanism in place for that conversion to happen. Should that be the best option versus the alternative.

Rico: [00:33:47] Now the city also approved capital improvement budget. I believe the normal annual budget, anything surprising or not surprising obviously, but anything special in there?

Brian: [00:33:58] No. I mean, not really that. Well, I mean, you know, there, we are looking to partner with the river lands project, which is the project to bring a trail system from lake Linear along the Chattahoochee all the way down into south Metro Atlanta. And of course we have a section of it here. So there is money there that we’re looking to maybe partner with somebody to try to get our section of that in place. That’s not all, it’s not always along the Chattahoochee itself. But it’s close enough that it’s, you know. And this would be potentially along East Jones bridge off of Peachtree Parkway going towards Jones Bridge Park. And we also have some capacity improvements on Peachtree Parkway. From really the bridge going, you know, into Johns Creek South, till you get to about Peachtree Corner Circle and you know, some capacity improvements converting. What are deceleration lanes into travel lanes. So, you know, again, trying to move cars that are not here to be around the town center, the forum or whatever, move them through efficiently. So that those of us who are local are not sitting at lights for long periods of time.

Rico: [00:35:26] Yes, that’s for sure. So we’re getting close to the end here, but I just did want to touch on something. I just that you all, you know, we’ve discussed this a few times, I guess. And that’s the election equipment and whether the county would run, you know. Is the city still planning to continue to run its own elections? Or is there an opportunity to partner and instead of having two separate voting places to have one common voting place.

Brian: [00:35:57] We don’t have, we don’t have a choice Rico. My understanding  is Gwinnett county is the last remaining county that does not offer cities an opportunity to pay, but to utilize the county board of elections to run their elections. So we don’t have a choice. If we did not run it, Gwinnett county will not run it.

Rico: [00:36:21] That’s amazing. They won’t even?

Brian: [00:36:24] Even if we pay them to run it, they, it’s not even an option.

Rico: [00:36:28] Wow. Amazing. So everyone has to keep going to two separate voting places. City elections and the rest of the elections.

Brian: [00:36:36] Talk to your county representatives.

Rico: [00:36:39] Right. County commissioner, I guess, would be the one to talk to actually. Well, maybe that’ll change in a few years. I think, you know, the county should be running it. There’s no reason why the individual cities have to be doing that. And its citizens being, having to deal with going to two separate voting places. But anyway. Cool. Anything, Brian that we haven’t touched upon that you’d like to share?

Brian: [00:37:04] No, I mean, I think we touched on the things that I think were important of late. I mean one last thing I would throw out is, so the American Rescue Plan Act. You know, so the city is going to be the recipient, it’ll probably hit actually, I think it just hit our bank account. Well, maybe not. Any day, it’s going to hit our bank account, money from the feds as part of this legislation. We are currently kind of creating that process and the structure in which that money will go out. And by that, I mean, we’re having to make the decision who, what areas, are we going to appropriate and, you know, distribute money within. And within those areas, how much do each of those areas get and what requirements, prerequisites are there to get it? So you have everything from non-profits, that’s one area and what are the nonprofits? What would they use? What would we want them to use it for? Remember, it’s all about, you know, helping businesses and people recover from, or deal with the pandemic. And so that would be an area. Another area might be you know, the hospitality industry or the restaurant industry, or just small business. And, you know, do we, you know, do we give it to a company that can show they lost revenue with no strings attached? Do we attach strings? How, why do we open it? We’re trying to figure that out and  it’s, you know, it’s a big deal. There’s a lot of money and there’s a lot of it. And we’re trying to make sure that we feed the most mouths out there that need feeding without diluting it, such that. Nobody really gets a substantial help because. So, you know, you can only imagine how complicated and hard that is. You know, Santa Claus has it easier because he doesn’t ever have to say no, he just can keep making more. We end up at the end of this in which we’re going to have to tell somebody no, and that’s the part that we hate. But so we’re probably 60 days from us publishing the application process for these areas. And then businesses will apply. And you know, there’s some requirements of being able to maybe show us documentation of certain things for them to be eligible and they’ll get the money and we’ve got, we’re going to get half of it now. And half of it one year from now.

Rico: [00:39:49] Interesting, what you said about not diluting the effects of what well, the impact of what the money can have. In the next issue of Peachtree Corners magazine, we have a major, major feature story, covering five businesses that got the CARES grant act through the city. That range anywhere from, I think it was anywhere from a thousand or $2,000 to $50,000 to a business. And one of the businesses is a restaurant that we profiled. You know, and it’s interesting, the comment he made that it was definitely impactful for him, but think about it. If you’re a restaurant in a retail place and that money, even though that might be the high range of the money, given out only covered one months of rent two utility bills and maybe one other thing. Good impact still, but that’s such a minor thing to businesses that are being challenged. So I can appreciate not wanting to dilute the impact of that money, seeing where it makes more sense. So you know, listeners check out Peachtree Corners magazine. I’m actually putting it to the printer today. So check out this next issue. We talked to five different companies about how that money impacted them during COVID. We also have a little bit more about the Rescue plan and check our website for up-to-date information as we get it from the city. And also there’s other features in there. Where are Peachtree Corners residents traveling to this summer. Summer book recommendations that a lot of your community neighbors and friends and school people have recommended not only to young people, but for adult reading. And a lot of other stories in there about individuals in our community and what they’re doing and what they’re up to. So check that out. Brian, I appreciate you being with me. I love to do this and get to have a good time  doing this every month.

Brian: [00:41:35] Always a pleasure Rico. I appreciate it.

Rico: [00:41:38] Take care.