Meeting Report (Work Session)

FYI: I hope you will excuse the format and briefness of these reports.  I will try to provide concise and quality information to you as often as I can to recap our meetings in the limited time I have.  That being said:

April Work Session:

(Work Sessions are primarily opportunities for staff to present, explain, and take input on upcoming items for Mayor and Commission consideration)

A. We met with our local delegation of Representatives and Senators.

B. City Hall Streetscape.  As some of you may know,  we recently purchased the Athens First Building next to City Hall.  That means the government owns the entire block.  This enables us to consolidate operations for one.  It also means we can re-envision the entire area of this central downtown area to make it pedestrian and public art friendly.  We were presented with two proposals, both of which greatly expand pedestrian comfort (wider walkways and more shade), and provide for the addition of public art.  We are at stage one right now. Staff and our consultants will take our input and develop a more detailed proposal.

C. Resurfacing Hawthorne, Cedar Shoals, and North Ave. I could talk technical details for pages (and would be happy to for anyone who wants to drop me an email or give me a call), but for now and very briefly, here is what Transportation and Public Works Director David Clark presented to us: 

Hawthorne, the most controversial of these streets due to a prior 3-laning, is in the most dire shape.  It was never really built properly, i.e. with an adequate road bed.  It will be reconstructed, making the painful rush hour there worse for a while.  However, at the end of the day, we will have a safer road with expanded lanes (at least under the proposal in front of us).

Cedar Shoals seems to be a perfect fit for 3-lanes.  As in 3 lanes will not negatively impact traffic flow but will enhance safety.  Commissioner Herod has been working to preserve the ability to beautify the road in the future with a tree and planting lined center median.  I support him in that effort, and this plan will indeed preserve that if and when we can figure out how to pay for it.  

North Ave is not, from a traffic engineering standpoint, a good candidate for 3-lanes so it will likely stay that way. Harry is very upset about that.  (That was sarcasm).

D. Wastewater Treatment Plants.  Um, can I borrow a few bucks, please?  Like, about 200 million of them?  That is our tab for much needed rebuilds of our wastewater treatment plants.  We were presented with some very pretty 3-D plans for these new facilities and Mr. Culpepper, our Finance Director, revealed our game plan for acquiring the necessary debt financing in a very uncertain bond market.  

E. Energy Conservation Plan. Finally, we received an update on our progress with energy conservation.  Central Services Director David Fluck (20% of our government staff and officials are named David).  We (the M&C) set a goal of 15% energy reduction.  We are looking at 4% and improving.  We have been running a % of biodiesel in our buses and some larger vehicles for a while.  We are working on replacing parking deck lights with 40% more efficient LEDs also. Of course, this is a small sampling of our efforts, but you should know we take our carbon footprint seriously.

And that all in just under 4.5 hours.