Mr. Moore, I'm gonna be here till five o'clock. Here. Here. Here. And I think Mr. Mayor Benjamin is is traveling back and hopefully the weather will cooperate and he should be here shortly. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. If you all would like to start with the invocation. Lord, in the midst of this busy day, in the midst of all the things that we will need to talk about today, we ask that thou will give us a sense of sensitivity to each issue and each topic that will be discussed, such as in varied and sundered ways, allow us to spear your nearness, amen. Good afternoon, Madam Mayor Pro Tem and council members. We will start the work session with a financial report if needed. You all should have received that already and as we normally do, if you have any questions in the interest of time, Ms. Alonzo is here to answer those for you. Already done. Have any questions? Done? Good. Very efficient. Any involvement? Okay. Thank you, Ms. Alonzo. Wonderful reporting as always. We appreciate that. So I'm going to try to move you all along as expeditiously as possible, as we do have a lot to get to today. The Jervais Street Bridge beautification project is our first item. This is an item that you know I've mentioned that council members as far as being for information state only at this point and I believe we have several people here to present. I know Presley Hogue with the Columbia Tree and Appearance Commission is one person. Any, would you all mind coming to the mic and introducing yourselves? Thank you so much. They want me just to do a very brief introduction. I'm Jack McKenzie. I'm chairman of the Tree and Appearance Commission. This is an idea that's been kicking around for over a decade now is to redo this this bridge. And it's what I would like to stress y'all is the timeliness of it now. We have raised nearly $100,000 so far of independent money to get this done. And in order to get through to a railroad, I mean it takes a year and a half of talking to people and meeting roadblock and going around the roadblocks. And Ms. Hogue has done that. I mean it is she has done the Lord's work. It is the bird dog this thing like you would not believe. So it is very timely and some of the money is timely. So it really needs something we need to push through now. We think that this could be a huge return on investment for the city. I know that may be a little bit counterintuitive, but if you look at Gervais Street, it really is the connector between North Main Main Street, the Vista, five points all the way over the Millwood. I mean all these places that are we think in the next 20, 30 years are going to continue to boom and be an economic driver for the city. The city invested $10 million roughly in Main Street, the streetscape 1200 to 1600 blocks. They have had since then over $500 million invested in those blocks. The city was wise and spent about $20 million on the Vista and doing that. Since then they have had over $1.5 billion invested in those areas and we think that a small investment here could have a similar impact of starting to spread all of this money and bringing this to a center thing, but it's an awful eyesore and it needs to be fixed. I'm Andy Whitfield. Jack is the chairman of Treant Appearance Commission. I'm a former chairman. As as councilman Rickam said earlier, this thing's been kicking around for a decade. He remembers allocating money to the Treant Appearance Commission from Forestry, you know, 10 years ago to work up a process. We just got we got roadblock by Norfolk Southern. So Prestonley has made contact. They're willing to work with us. I want to talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of the project and what we're asking council for today. So here's the bridge. What you've got, as Jack mentioned, it's really the connector or in this case, you know, an eyesore roadblock between all these areas of the city that we have spent money on as taxpayers over the last 10 or 15 years. And as growth, economic growth continues, you know, Jervais Street is the logical connector between Five Points, Main Street, Vista, the Waverly community. And so what you've got right now is you've got an ugly eyesore that 30,000 city and Midlands residents pass under every day. And we've got lead paint peeling off of this bridge falling into our stormwater. You've got dark places, places for crime. In this picture, you've actually got people using it as a dumping area. They've dumped trash down there next to the column supporting the bridge. So some of the communities that we think would benefit from this improvement, this beautification would be the Waverly community. Those folks use that sidewalk every day, traveling underneath it back and forth to downtown. You've got Five Points. If you've been to a concert up at the township, you know, if you want to go down after and have a good time, the logical route is down Jervais Street under the bridge, down Hardin Street to Five Points. All the university area connected to the project, the Vista, you know, again, we talk about, you know, so many times through the years connecting communities, this is a logical connecting of the Five Points to the Vista and to Main Street. So some of the possibilities we haven't gone this far is coming up with what the bridge would look like at the end, but we've got some schemes and we've borrowed some pictures from some other projects around, really from around the world. I mean, it's not unique. So here's a photo where they actually made it look like part of the background to try to disappear into the landscape around the bridge. Another one where they turned it into some kind of Lego-looking project, lights. There's all kinds of schemes to make this bridge look more attractive and more pleasing to the community. So it's not unique. I think the unique challenge to us is that the owner of the bridge is not willing to participate financially. It's really up to the citizens of Columbia to get this thing done. This would a little bit comical, but here they've turned it into a shark where the trucks have crashed into it through the years. I'm sure that spawned that art project. So why are we doing it now? Again, we've talked about this thing. We've kicked it around for a decade. We've got lead paint peeling into stormwater. Stormwater is on everybody's mind right now. That's happening. You can see the flakes. Those flakes of paint have lead in them. We've got community partners. There is, you know, with a better economy, there's just, you know, folks are more willing to participate and we've gotten a hundred thousand dollars that's at Keep the Midlands Beautiful. It's the nonprofit that's basically housing that money right now. And we want to get that money and get it going and get it used. And quite frankly, the city and the county coffers are a little bit deeper with the better economy. So it's a $300,000 project. We've vetted that. We think very closely. Richland County has already committed $30,000 from hospitality money. We got a grant from connected communities for $50,000. We've had $5,000 in just individual private donations and the station located adjacent to this project has already ponied up $5,000. We're continuing to seek out more community partners, but some of those grant, the grant money that we've gotten does have a ticking clock. So we need to get movement and get spending. Yeah. So USC has dedicated $10,000 or committed $10,000 to fund all the landscaping, which would include any kind of lighting that we wanted to do down there. So with that 10 with USC, that brings in $100? Yes, ma'am. And which one of those has the exploration? The Richland County money and the connected community money could potentially expire. So we're working with Richland County to get that extended. We're trying to talk them into another 30, but we're not there yet. Let's qualify for the penny. There's no penny money in that. No, sir. It's hospitality funds. So that's the eyesore we're looking at. And so what we need from the city is we need you guys to be the municipal champion. So we've got this sign of contract with Norfolk Southern and basically their engineer, STV, has to vet the project. And so what we need from you guys is a project manager and to be the municipal leader behind this project. So that's the number one thing we're asking for. The project is basically dead unless we can sign the contract with Norfolk Southern to begin to let STV vet the project. And they estimate that's about $12,000, which is in our budget. And we have that money in the bank ready to spend. And then the second thing we want is money. We want you guys to look at it. Ideally, we would ask for $200,000 and this thing would be ready to, you know, let's get it done this year. But anything that you guys can, you know, ideas you can come up with. Can y'all tell us why Norfolk Southern? I mean, we've battled them before and it was budgeting this and that railroad currently. They are making more money than they've ever made before. Their transportation is up. I bought some crazy amount. You know, their bridge is peeling lead paint out. They have a responsibility. Do we have any idea why or what we can do because they should share in this cost. This should not be a community driven because it's not just Jervay Street. It's the North Main Bridge. It's the other five points bridge on Blossom Street. Well, I don't disagree with you. I think short of some sort of, you know, very public campaign, you know, to shame them into it, you're not going to get any traction. Well, they have more rights than anybody, but this is an environmental issue. And it's not just a beautification. It's environmental. We are exploring that. Boyd Brown, who's a lobbyist in the legislature. I think maybe we as a city should further the cause on. At the same time, I think it'd be good for us to have the mayor and council write a letter to the president, Norfolk Southern, tell them that, you know, they're a community partner. They have responsibilities. And this is a problem. I think Teresa, we should have our legal crowd look into what their responsibility is there.  I mean, it's just it's just that's because there's way too many of these. And this is affecting everybody.  And then in between, let's figure out, because right now I'll be honest with the budget where we are, we don't have 200,000 extra dollars. I'm just being honest. Now, as we go through the processes, there are other ways that we can kind of leverage and work together. I think we did. But I do think that the railroad ought to be participating in this. It's actually they should be doing a period. I don't disagree. I guess it comes up to, you know, how much longer do we want to keep looking at it? Because it's they're very unwilling. And certainly until we move forward with the design phase, you know, I don't think that they're going to be very interested. I agree with Councilman Rickman. As you said, this is an environmental hazard. Lead paint flakes and turns into dust. I don't understand why we would repair the railroad's property. And they are aware of that particular health hazard to a municipality. One, two, we have folks in the State House and in Washington who should be advocating for us when it comes to the railroad. And unless you know, the city is willing to do this one, North Main and the others. I don't see how we can afford it. Just doing one does not solve the problem. And I think that is also all to go to the representatives in Washington and in the State House. And I agree with Mr. Rickman again, budgetary wise. I don't see us doing that this year. City of Casey, this is not unique to us. And I certainly understand your position. This is a unique thing in the sense that we've already got the parties involved. And, you know, you certainly don't want to be perfectionist to any of the good. I mean, it still would be, this is a different spot. If we don't do anything, then all this money goes away, all the work goes away. I think you've got to do the next step, which is the $12,000 to get the ball rolling. But in between, we don't need to be taking the foot off the gas. Yeah. Listen, I'm not saying that don't look into those things. I'm just letting you know the concerns of why are they doing stuff is a common issue that's raised all across the nation. We've researched it and they just, they won the table. I'm just letting you know that that's what we have found. And no one would be happier than us if they would come and fix it. I'm just letting you know that this is not unique. They always say that they've got the longest time. Well, I think you're right. But I think primarily what Mr. Rickerman suggests is that at least because of where we are financially, at least we start this ball rolling with, perhaps, they're not going to negotiate. It just seems to me that they aren't going to negotiate. And if they aren't going to negotiate, then we at least ought not to put on the accelerator, but at least to put on the accelerator. And a part of putting on the accelerator, of course, is to do what Daniel is suggesting that we do. And if we did that, we did it locally, nationally, in Washington. There are some contacts there that is able to tighten the screw up a little bit to make something palatable that will not only do this bridge, but to do the one there in and on North Maine. So I think it's in our best interest because we got some financial issue that we start this ball rolling by doing exactly what Councilman Rickerman So if we, sorry, Helen, this project has been pending for 20 years. I was Chairman of the Supreme Commission before these young men were, and I know that it was a hot topic when I was with them for nine years. I know that this bridge has more traffic than any other bridge that we've talked about. It is the gateway to our city. It needs to be done. I think that we probably could apply some pressure to Norfolk Southern through our legislative delegation, but they have always taken the decision that they will not touch any bridge because if they touch any bridge, they'll have to touch Albury. So they don't want to do that. Andy, have we gotten the memorandum of agreement signed? Are we set up to do the next $12,000 with a... We are not with the city, so we need the city's commitment. I was going to ask that, who does Norfolk Southern want to sign the MOA? No, with the municipality. So that's why we're talking to you. They won't sign it with us. Yeah, so we need you guys to tell staff to do it. We've got the contract and we're ready to put it in front of your legal team to look at and review, and we're ready to give you guys the money to start that process. What's the process? Well, I think we should look at taking that part on, hold the hundred, let us take the 12 to get that ball rolling since it's going to be our name. And at that point, what did they say from a timeframe to do the study and get us the hard numbers? So what happens is they, Norfolk Southern doesn't touch it. They have a consultant called STV, and they assign STV to review the project. What their timeline is, we don't know that yet. And then from that point, they'll give us... They'll say either, no, you can't touch our bridge, or okay, your idea is fine. You have permission to move forward to the next step. They would want to vet the contractor, understand the abatement of the lead, and we've researched all of that. There's actually a company in Chester that that's their industrial painters, and this is what they do. We've looked at the traffic control costs. You actually have to pay Norfolk Southern to put a flag man up on the railroad while work's going on and pay them. So all of that is baked into the 300,000. Andy, what exactly does the 12,000 pay for? The 12,000 pays STV's engineers to review the project. That's for the 12,000. That's the first checkpoint. And a question, and so is that... It's a per project amount? That's correct. Okay. Because I would just also... I think we should. No, I think we should be... I mean, well, Southern wouldn't take anybody else other than us, but I think we should take that on. I was just also going to be suggesting the same thing once you open this up and not committing ourselves to any money or anything else, but we have also had requests about the North Main Street, Trussell, and if there were... I was just going to say, if we were in a contract to review a project at 12,000, would there be any value at... Getting them to look at all the other ones? Yeah, look at that project as well. We pay that part, not committing ourselves to do any money on any of these projects, but at least if you already got them at the table, which, personally, I commend you because it's been hard to get to that point. If you've already got them at the table and you're going to have an engineer look at it, why not look at the other ones? And I think that would allow us to have the time to look at where possible resources, how we could maybe hodgepodge together, and if there's other ways that we can maybe put something together. And it might be that we get down the road on this one and more folks Southern sees that we're real, because I think a lot of this is just... They want to know, you willing to spend the money on it? They want to know, you're real. So is there... Well, we're in work session, so we can't make no sense. But it sounds like there's a consensus to direct the city manager to work with the consultant for the 12,000 to look at it. So we'll bring that forward. Get the agreement signed. At another meeting. I mean, if you want to put that in the form of a motion, you can do it tonight. Yeah, we could do that. But we would need the contract to Theresa K as soon as possible, so she could look at it because there might be some other concerns that we need to be aware of. The funding, the $12,000. Well, the two, they're not all north. I think it's a consultant that sees that as chosen. I mean, neither one on the railroads. Right now, and then I think we use that to springboard to the others. It's north or southern, right? It's north or southern and you don't get a choice. That's who they sign to the project. Your contract is what... As long as we're not paying for it, we don't care about not having a choice. But if we're paying for it, we have procurement regulations. Right. So your contract is with Norfolk Southern and they assign STV to that work is how it looks to me. That would be called... The $12,000 is coming from here. And then we also need a memorandum of understanding with Keep the Midlands Beautiful because they're the ones actually housing the money. Well, you know, we could do... Madam Managers, we could just grant the money to Keep the Midlands Beautiful, if necessary, because the study and the agreement could be done separately. We could be the agreement, but we could let Midlands be the conduit for the... For it, if that's something we need to do. So I think y'all can probably figure out the best route, but they're going to direct us who to use so we don't have a choice. Let's just get the contract to Theresa K. Let her look at it and then we'll evaluate it and then we can discuss it at that point. Just let them put there. And then we, you know... The commitment's here to get this part done, so we're going to get this done and then in between we need to figure out what our options are and look at it. I don't want to be false and say that we've got an extra $200,000 right now because we don't, but it doesn't mean that there may be some other leverage points and things that we can bring to the table, but I do want... I do think we ought to take the time to personally send a letter to Norfolk Southern. Do you want these photos or different? Something like that. We can send to the congressman in Norfolk Southern. Absolutely. The only thing that we would just want, the reason why we're here and we have push for this meeting is, again, the timeliness and we will get y'all something right and let y'all know what the timeliness is. And we're glad to write a letter to the county and say, guys, you know... We just don't want anything... We need your help. We don't want to lose ground, obviously. Well, I think, Jeff, there still ought to be some concerted efforts to find resources other than local taxpayers to fix railroad property.  We agree 100%. If we hadn't been Stonewall, if we thought Norfolk Southern would give us a nickel, we would already be whacking them over the head. I'm trying to bring myself to a yes position on this. I'm just not there. I would say is, you know, it is a third... Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Y'all just get that contract to Theresa. Do y'all already have a copy of it? We do. Yes, ma'am. Y'all just get that too.  We'll probably wait and tidy all that up and bring it back to council at the next meeting. So we'll have identified the funding and review the agreement. All right. Thank you very much. Our next item for discussion, Madam Mayor Pro Tem, is a Columbia Water Update. Mr. Clint Shealy, Assistant City Manager for Columbia Water and the whole team is here. So, Mr. Clint will have some assistance. Good afternoon. Thank y'all for the time this morning. This afternoon we appreciate it. As Ms. Wilson said, we do have the team with us and I wanted the team to give this presentation to be a part of it because they've been doing the heavy lifting and the hard work to help improve our organization. Today we're going to present a little bit of information that's going to talk about how Columbia Water is aligning with Envision, Columbia, your vision statement to provide high quality municipal services efficiently, effectively and responsibly. And as we go through our slides today, I want you to focus on one central theme and that is our customers. Now everything that we're doing, we're trying to draw back on how we're serving our customers better, whether they're a water and sewer customer, a citizen that's affected by stormwater, someone that's enjoying the environment and how we are doing everything we can to make sure that we don't pollute the environment. So being transparent in our operations and rebuilding trust with our citizens is really important. We're going to highlight some successes and highlight a path forward in our initiatives for each area of our organization, customer care, utility operations, clean water 2020, which is really our compliance piece, our capital investments. We were asked about a 10-year CIP during the last council meeting. We're going to show you a level of investment for years one through five and then when a projection is for years six through ten and then stormwater and we'll wrap it up and talk about a few awards. But I'm going to ask our staff to come up and kind of share with you what our journey is to become best in class in terms of utility operations. So Angie Adams is going to, our excellent customer care administrator is going to start us all. Angie. Good afternoon. We'd like to highlight some customer care successes. Figure out how to work. We have some new service benchmarks that were established to meet our customer expectations and improve customer service. The benchmarks are service order completion standards that's established to better meet our customer expectations and needs. The completion standards were assigned to our move in move out service orders, reconnect after non-pay disconnect service orders, meet a recheck, the meter inspection and testing, all of that was designed to improve customer relations so that our customers know that they can depend on a quick response for much so response time was our focus. The customer advocate program helped to improve the customer dispute resolution process. Advocates are dispatched to resolve difficult issues. A review of the captured data just compiling some of our complaint information. We were seeing a noticeable downward trend in complaint volume. I know that many of you have gotten complaints and hopefully you're seeing a decrease and we're hoping that most of those complaints are being handled on the staff level. The effort was for the team to compile some processes that indicated we were best in class or at least working toward being best in class in the utility. The quarterly drop-ins, we continue to have those that continue to be scheduled. We've had good reception from our citizens to those so we will continue to try and provide a lot of information to educate our citizens. They have an opportunity to come in and talk to staff and that's worked relatively well so we will continue to schedule those meetings. The customer care path going forward, the mobile application, the team is looking forward. Yes sir. For instance if you receive the citizen concern and they didn't feel like they got the assistance they needed from staff, if you were to contact us we'd make sure that the applicant could schedule an appointment with that particular person to go out and to give them some more one-on-one time and information, educate them about the meter, educate them about our processes, try to teach them water conservation, how to check for a leak, and that's how that process works. They do have the knowledge to explain to our citizens what is available once that is determined at the citizen. And if that, if that phase is an update provided to the citizen. Yes sir an update is provided enough. You're welcome. Okay, I want to follow up on that. Mr. Devall, I just, how do you get from your initial phone call into customer care and you've got an hour eight customer that calls the customer care people and my water bill is four times higher than it normally is. How does that hour eight customer get assigned to an advocate? We've tried to train the CSRs to recognize when they cannot resolve the issue with the information they have as a first-line person answering the phone so we depend on them to recognize when that needs to be in escalated contact. Does it work a hundred percent not yet but we are working toward it but we recognize that they're being trained to recognize I may not be able to help this particular customer based on the stuff. What can we do to help you have those advocates have more discretion because one of the things that we struggle with it's it really is not each customer has different needs and it seems like you know we have a dashboard where they can go answer a question we gotta go through this process but that doesn't work for everybody. What can we do to help you guys be able to answer questions or make decisions and some of it's just you know common I use the word but common sense decisions on how to fix something that relieves some of the tension that's felt when you know people get that bill I mean they the blood pressure goes goes up and I know that some of it stems at this council level that we've got to make some decisions and some changes and as we go in this new fiscal year I hope we can get them done with that so I'm asking you as a pointed question please and I know you don't have all the answers David I hope you can get it to us so we can make changes to allow your team to better serve the customer. You saw Ms. Wilson grab her pen a little tighter she's like don't answer that question she will probably give you an answer don't do that but we certainly are evaluating how we empower our first line CSRs and your right it takes to support of the council to put some things in writing to support the decisions that they can make the authority levels that they have so we are dependent on all of you to support that yes well just know that we want to do that because we do think it's very important to to give some autonomy to folks to make decisions because it's just really every case seems to be so different at least from all the folks who've contacted me over the years it just seems there's not a standard answer or or resolution. I think I wanted to have one point that is our advocates that we've only got two staff members and they've been doing this for six or seven months and we're going to grow that team that's part of our request for this year but a lot of these issues will cross the divisional or departmental lines in Columbia Water and it's going to take a little while to get them trained up to look at things in totality but hiring that capacity and I think the two that we have have the capacity to be able to do that to think outside of just field service or meter reading or whatever and that's going to take a little time but that will help recognize these unusual circumstances and and then we can give them some flexibility to make that and I'm through after I think the first I think it's very important the first the first step to resolution has to be with that person and of course some of my some of what has been given to me well CSR was not that I don't understand everybody I understand that and I understand that folks get real passionate about an issue particularly about their water um where there's a a bill that is in dispute I think that there's that has to be a sense of community with that person on the other hand to be able to recognize that this person is about to explode with the telephone and what can I do to bring some um that's an issue that I give everyone to that CSR person Reverend the doubt I might too um second issue you're doing a great job one of the things that um is really important to me throughout the city and you can't always um you know know that people have these soft skills that's what I think you're talking about and so um Hamptonist Benjamin and I talked a lot about through some of the other training opportunities that we've been looking at across the city particularly with Angie Groot and some things we've already you know tried to resource to Angie with some additional um trainings that she's had is that focused on you know some of sometimes people come from a different field you know they don't necessarily have to be you know have some training in water and sewer necessarily they might I know we have a lot of folks in this city because of the hospital system you know they are very much so um respected with customer care and how they handle patients and all of the halls they get so what we try to do is look at and help Angie also let those look at other people who may be applying for jobs in the city if you want to be affirm related the field of customer care may not be a water sewer background but they may bring that in the field they may bring that those soft that's something I want us to focus a little bit more on I think you're out of your exact advice can't always assume people know that thank you any other questions no thank you let's talk about our path going forward we're excited about the mobile application Ms. Wilson has been supportive of getting us where we did so we are close to our launch and we just want you guys to have as much excitement and anticipation for that launch so it's coming soon um our field service uh representatives do their actual water customer stuff as well as Erica the stuff we talked about the reporting other things or is this just just on the water is everything yes other things okay all right um field service personnel will have tablets this is going to be instrumental we'll be able to have real-time information for our customer care staff so they'll be able to provide customers real-time information and we're hoping that these changes will improve customer relations so if a customer has a problem they get updated most of the city works the customer care call center and field services again Ms. Wilson thank you for spearheading that in clinton we'll be moving moving to a new facility so we're extremely excited about that just to have a new environment that can bring us all together make a follow-up in that field during my leave i think council got that word right okay well i'll take that back then thank you councillor okay i was wondering oh no i don't think i'll take that back i'm happy for you to announce it but we might need to remind them let me explain the um that is the mezzanine area of 1401 main street that um that we are leasing and so it's going to allow angie spiel customer staff of literally standing shoulder to shoulder when they report in in the morning and then when they make their report in the afternoon and um this is going to give them a place a home along with relocating the call center it has a generator so if we have a power outage we'll still be able to build our customers and there's more to come on all of that but that's the first it's a time frame for that it's expected that we'll have the move in august or late august and the last one is transition to the new phone system we've made some changes to the interactive voice response system we're hoping that that's going to be better for the customers they'll be able to accomplish some things without waiting in what we call q for an actual person to answer one of the other things we're doing also with the mobile app and some changes to our online portal is to allow our customers or ask them to go more to the web opposed to the telephone if anyone's ever held on hold two minutes seem like 20 minutes like we were driving yes yes and we want to give them an opportunity to have any media communication via the web and angie i like um thank you guys for everything y'all and pr are doing to push out that people can pay their water bills at first citizens let's keep that going because uh more and more people are starting to know that they can do that um and then hopefully with the app and other things that'll make it easier but now the other thing is if you go to first citizens you've got to know your account number and uh people don't know that and they will be able to they'll be able to any other questions thank you very much and i'm gonna pass it off to joey jay me too now i do that one were we able to fix the issue when uh on the account numbers when you got the uh the billing when people would take that to go call and they couldn't pay it we have that on the agenda council we recommend that it's going to be our next focus we are going to fix that it's just one digit it is but we're going to fix that thank you you're welcome thank you thank you all right i'm gonna all right i'm gonna talk about some of the successes and paths forward based on the successes we've had in utility operations um angie mentioned the the tablets uh we in wastewater maintenance we've got a tablet program now we've had city works for several years uh or a number of years now that we've been using but we with our tablet program in wastewater maintenance we've been able to roll it out where we have city works mobile in the field and that doesn't sound like a lot but it's really huge for us to be able to receive a service request a work order in the field be able to complete it fill everything out in the field and it instantly go back and communicate with our customer service rep so they can communicate to our customers what's going on in the field it sounds like a lot something that that should not have taken the time it did but it has and it's a huge success for us in wastewater maintenance so we're going to roll that once we've successfully completed wastewater maintenance our next move is to roll it out for water distribution as well so again customer focus trying to make sure that our customers get the most appropriate and up-to-date information yes sir i just wanted to tell the council i took a tour of the much efficiency to every job just on that tablet for them and what it what it can do with using city work yes sir we'll be glad to come back and present the success we've had it was wastewater maintenance and how we plan to roll that out on the water as well some other successes uh everyone's aware of our award-winning lead gold certified water and wastewater facility um our award-winning knowledge on tap program there's some handouts today clint will be talking about that a little bit more later also improving our business processes we're we've got better tracking now on our meter eating for instance where we can better track the skips the misses and we're seeing the accountability being rolled out and we've seen that number come down so just some successes with the business process and how we're moving forward um the successes we've had on the on the wastewater maintenance on the wastewater side we're also rolling over to the water side for instance our mapping program we've been very aggressive on mapping and getting all of the assets up to date in our gis on the wastewater side we're now doing that on the water side as well building off of what we did on the wastewater side and what with all these asset improvements in our asset major our asset data management database it improves how we keep track of things in city works it improves how we keep track of our assets and moving forward how we prioritize maintenance but all this comes together again for for focusing on our our customer service our customers and how we can communicate with our customers well believe it or not there is that it's not impossible but um we we're not going to be doing that level of effort on the water side we on the water side we've been actually through the years we've been very aggressive on doing what's called cleaning and lining trenchless technology to be able to rehab our water lines rather than replace and we can do it on the wastewater side as well but investigating the live water lines a little different than investigating a live sewer line so Joey so we're not going to use no sir we are on the wastewater side we use cameras every day but on the water side that's not common to put a camera in the water line and a wastewater camera we wouldn't we wouldn't use that for that purpose yes sir yeah a lot of what we do we collect a lot of information a lot of data and in doing that we've been able to start developing what we're calling dashboards which is a innovative and creative flexible way of us having data from different resources like city works and other other sources but it all comes together and we're able to create these dashboards where we can look at our key performance indicators to look at our performance so we've been developing that over the past year so to better keep track of how we do things another success is our major pipeline assessment we've investigated over the past few years over 115 miles of our large sewer lines and that that includes some innovative technologies on camera sonar all different ways of looking at the the condition of those sewer mains and with that all of that rolls into our rehabilitation program but we having all this information collected all this information we can better prioritize what we need to rehab what we need to replace and make data-driven decisions so having these dashboards and these different programs helps helps us to make better decisions using the data we have we're we're up to date on all of our deliverables to EPA our next big deliverable is our infrastructure rehabilitation program and that's really the meat of our consent decree because that's where all the projects are that that aren't specifically called out but we tell EPA this is how we're going to look at our it's how we're going to evaluate our sewer system and as a result of what we find these are the projects we're going to develop that's what this infrastructure rehabilitation program what we refer to it as the IRR program so that is a huge program that will be that we're preparing to deliver to EPA soon yes sir one question on the uh I guess corrosion or just maintenance um I got a request last night about as an example groundwater on an entire street and my question was oh didn't call me have you called in answered the response was no I see the guy sometimes when they go and flush an area from a corner but is that routine we flush or do we tend to go into an area based on on the request we have routine flushing every day every day during the week and we also respond to brownwater calls or discolored water calls but we are we flush every day and we flush on the weekends based on the calls and it's to make sure that we're having water circulating through the system properly to help control areas where we have we know we have discolored water which is the brown water so as a result of that we have certain areas that we flush routinely whether it's monthly some of it's quarterly some of it's um you know bi-annually so it's it every water system has a flushing program and ours is fairly aggressive on the areas that we need to flush to make sure that we have that we have what we call sweet water just make sure the water's fresh I would add the importance of the customer if they notice discolored water the calling the 3,300 number because that's a way that we map those we track those and that helps us populate the areas that we move forward over the next few years of replacing aging water we may know about it them calling even if it's a routine flushing area them calling helps us track that side by side with that the um notification in an area when um we have a pipe that's kind of similar to the last one you and I communicated on yes sir we have we tweaked and fixed that process of notification when we're in an area some folks say well it's 12 o'clock I don't watch 12 o'clock news or they don't watch maybe five o'clock news so it's a question of how do we get notification to folks that not a nice question television it's because it's hard to reach everybody it if it's a if it's a small area I think it's less than 25 customers we do door hangers we go door to door to say hey we're doing work in the area your water's going to be out if it is a large area we have to rely on news outlets we have to rely on social media to contact folks just because we can't get we can't notify everybody if it is and that's usually when we have a break or if we have a planned outage we still put notifications out even through the bullwater advisories we use we utilize the same process for notifying customers or if it's a traffic advisory if it's an outage or if it is indeed a bullwater but it is a struggle because some some folks don't watch tv some people don't use social media some people don't have a phone anymore so it's it's difficult to reach everybody but we use all means that we have available to us through nixle nixle actually communicates with social media but we have our reverse 911 notification as well so and if you have to sign up that's a great point um in order to get all those notifications that's and all of that's on our website um well we've had good things it was just simply cleaning out the drink cleaning out the pipes yes um it was not anything to be uh at least when a resident has flooded on the property owned and buried in various and certain ways I think the first thing you all did was just to look at the pipes to see whether or not the drain and once we did that yes sir and uh water did not uh invade the property and I think that's something I mean we didn't need a camera to figure that out I mean I don't know if we did or not I just thought we could just snag it and clean it out but it's not that simple yeah uh but that was that was a tremendous help now I'm not getting a whole lot of calls like that I am getting calls with just colored water yes in various parts of the city and and Clint made a great point they may contact you but they need to contact customer care because we get complaints all the time saying I have discolored water all the time and but they don't call customer care so we don't have record of it so sometimes that's how we know where we need to be addressing things we need that record of them calling customer care puts it on the radar for us to go address it the same thing applies to low water pressure yes sir yes sir but uh continuing on talking about our successes talking about the sewer rehabilitation I mentioned the infrastructure rehab report that we're going to be submitting to EPA um is important to note that once we do that those are documented projects that we have a schedule to complete so there is compliance on us to make sure that we complete those projects so but we we had we're continuing to make sewer rehab we've we've done a lot of sewer rehabilitation um we're running some numbers before this meeting councils approved over 86 million dollars just in rehab numbers just in rehab and sewer pipes SSES work where we're going and investigating and and the result of that is we rehab over 66 miles that's what we've done something to the pipe over 66 miles of our system that's that's pretty big not a lot of systems can say they've done that through the years but we've also in the inspection we've inspected through contract or over 400 miles of pipe and even with our staff recent through the years we've recent years we've inspected over 400 miles of pipe so we're doing a lot of effort towards rehab right now and that's going to continue as we move forward as we look at the cip moving forward um some big projects that we've got underway are soon to be completed um the Columbia Canal Clearwell replacement high service pump station we're replacing early 1900s construction the today's standard looking at replacing um high service pumping with more efficient more reliable pumps um the digester project that's huge for us we we've got three of the five digesters uh that were the first phase um this can be operational this summer and what that does is that opens up a more efficient digestion process but also opens up the possibility of doing something to have a reusable uh sustainable product with our biosolids so those are some real big successes we've had with some cip projects that we've recently completed crane creek the work we've done in crane creek um we have significantly reduced our sso significantly reduced the volume and because of that we've been able to further evaluate our system and we have deferred one of our major um cip projects the crane creek storage project and in doing that we're able to bring some other projects forward i'll talk about but this is this this graph right here really shows the success of some of our recent cip projects this is a bar chart showing the volume of sso through the years yes sir we had to flood in 15 so that kind of skewed that number a little bit but just you know last year and even where we are to date this year i mean this this really says a lot on the success of our projects that we're doing today we're really cutting down on the the amount of volume that we that we're putting out when we have an sso so if anything points to success of our program just right here it's almost six months and if i look at this graph that's six months in it's almost nothing there it's about 76 000 gallons all right yes sir crane creek was a major contribution to that because that was where our largest volume sso's occurred in crane creek and i want to say this but knock on wood we haven't had any sso's and crane creeks as we complete that project so and joe it's still the the major cause of the sso's we have the water i mean weather related yes ma'am it's weather related it's collapse pipe it's roots it's grease but usually the high volume is weather related and joe our reporting requirements i mean we go above and we wait well advance we report everything right there aren't many systems in the state that report everything gallon if you look at our sso reports that report every year you'll see some of them there are one gallon but there aren't i don't know that i could name another utility that reports a gallon spilled so when you look at the total number our number is going to be high our number is going to be skewed high because we reported so moving forward talking about the crane creek storage because we've had such a success in crane creek we've been able to defer this large storage project but what that's allowed us to do is meet move in our cip three projects three capacity projects forward to make sure that we have the capacity we need in the crane creek and really in the downtown area on the water side and talking about customer service our am i project we can't do it fast enough so it's that that is how we are going to efficiently and effectively read our meters real-time data communicate with our customers how they use their water so that that alone will really solve a lot of these customer service issues that we have so an update on that we've done the rfq we've selected several firms to that are qualified to submit the rfp for them to submit their proposals as out as out now the pre-proposal is is this week by october we will be coming to you hopefully before october with a recommendation on on moving forward they am i a contractor to move forward and of course the water quality the projects uh urlwood book of washington heights those projects will start construction this summer and our next design is to move into the rosewood and shandon areas where we're doing a water quality improvements there so this is a cip exhibit for our sewer this is this year's and next year's sewer so you have a handout because it's really difficult to see but when you look at the wastewater and it's there is a lot of projects that are either current or going to be beginning in the next in the next two years so this is that's what this real this exhibit really shows and you can see there's a lot of green on this map where we're rehabbing where we're investigating we're doing sses work it's a lot of pipeline and improvements that we're making it's really a lot in progress with our current and you also have a handout showing the water if we were to put the am i project on here this entire map would be blue so that's why you don't see as much blue on the water but besides the am i we're focusing a lot on water quality improvements in areas that we know we need to address water quality and capacity we haven't prioritized the areas yet uh the intent is okay we actually we're going to put yours in first um no we might need to recheck his meter we the the intent would we need to get the vendor online and coordinate that effort because they're going to have how they would preference on how they roll it out as well but our intent is to look at areas looking at all council districts and see if we can't scatter it to where we're not just concentrating one area we can just kind of we're going to have a number of i think our estimated installs per month is right at about 6000 installs per month which is which is a lot of meters going in the ground so we're going to have a number of contractors helping us do that so last council meeting we talked about a 10 year program and this what this bar chart really shows is our effort in years one through five and our efforts in years six to ten we're holding pretty close at around 120 million but the first year one through five we're really concentrating on our clean water 2020 program so we're spending that's that's why we have an 80 40 split where we have 80 million invested in wastewater 40 invested in water as we move forward from six to ten we still have the continued effort of making wastewater improvements that we have to do so that's why we still have a significant amount of the cip going towards wastewater but in these first five years we've had to pull back a little bit on the water side so we need to continue to invest in our water system our water plan so that's why you'll see in six through ten you're going to have some larger water projects that will be invested in all right so then it's going to come up now and talk about storm water good afternoon so i wanted to give you an update on the storm water successes we have hired a program manager will pert we have already got them on board had our kickoff meeting whenever all the things we want them to help us with we're working on scopes for all the projects and talking about mapping all our assets we've got positions in place thanks to missy kaufman helping us get that in our budget this year our mlk construction projects started back in april after the st patrick's day celebration and we expect that to be wrapped up in end of september that's a boardwalk and education opportunity for the community but it's also water quality as well as some detention for five points the storm water design services rfq we have ten selected firms and those letters should be going out this week that was decided yesterday monday was when we got the email from procurement so once those are released from procurement we'll be able to announce those but we've already started working on the scopes for the projects in our bond walla street began back in february we expect that to be done in at the end of december of this year that's a 60 inch storm drainage pipe to help out cotton town with their flooding issues and the harlem heights project is completed and permitted for design we are just going through and working on 31 easements right now working with the neighborhood and they're very excited yes sir oh after the mlk projects don are we looking to do the similar project in maxi greg yes sir that's exactly what one of our projects is we're looking at both above greg and gervais above constant carwash and as it goes through five points and then through maxi greg through on the rocky branch and then continuing down to waley and main so that's kind of all interconnect and they're going to take a look at that entire hydraulic and hydrology study and see where we where our pinch points are what needs to be done so we'll have the ability possibly to add three more yes sir points right and the greg and gervais project actually had several areas for detention above gervais street but then also we needed uh there's a pinch point at picking street so maxi greg is definitely an option if council once we get to that point with our consultant with the different options we'll bring those forward yeah we we should have done it eight years ago when the park was getting redone but right it needs to be because that gives a relief and it takes the pressure off okay as well so we should give two continuous good points and then help push that water on down absolutely that's a great opportunity independent absolutely yeah so the above gervais street above constant maxi greg and then further down the pipe the path forward the tier one projects have been identified that's where the 10 consultant firms will be assisting us we'll be looking at opportunities for green infrastructure as evaluated in our watershed plans we have been looking at non-traditional ways to serve our customers by looking at design build public private partnerships to see what could be the best and quickest way to alleviate some of these stormwater issues our investment plan this year we expect to spend about eight million dollars and most of that is in construction that already had the design completed but next year a lot of our design will be in place with the consultants coming on board within the next couple weeks and we expect to spend about 21 million and then our third year is where we believe will be starting construction so we we have estimated around 63 million encumbered and with that i will any questions hand it over to i promise we're almost done a couple of things we wanted to just celebrate some awards that we've gotten that we've won aia which is architectural awards for the belt line facility we're really proud of that our knowledge on tap you've got the book that's jennifer saturday is passing those out we've won several communication awards based on that knowledge on tap program series of videos and education for our customers and we're really proud of that i've seen victoria framer and jennifer present at one state conference they presented at another state conference and are going to be presenting at the national public works conference and what i witnessed was a lot of other utilities approaching columbia and saying how did you do that how'd you go about doing that and that's what leadership's about i'm really proud of what y'all have done so also at our environmental conference in march you know 1500 people all the utilities from throughout the state come and they witnessed our waterworks team win the competition number one quiz bowl team in the state they're going to represent us in a national competition so really proud of that we had an all ladies operations challenge team on the wastewater side which is a really an industry first and we did that last year and did it again so excited about that and the face that columbia is putting forward within the utility sector i also want to say thank you to dana angie and joey and the rest of our staff because i they are really doing a good job for us and i for one really appreciate what they're doing the hard work they're putting in to to make sure we're serving our customers properly and the difficult decisions and the long hours and and i appreciate you really do i hope you've been able to see the focus on us about 30 yes ma'am would typically start at six o'clock six o'clock to eight o'clock but as we as we continue to invest and and be transparent in how we operate one of the things we want to do is be sure and educate our customers y'all know that we have proposed a 9.76 percent across the board water and sewer rate increase there's also a modest stormwater increase proposed as well that was as i carry on from last year we want to make sure we're intentional in communicating that to our customers if approved so um we we have set up some dates throughout obviously the budget meetings are june 5th and june 19th and that'll be our readings and i wanted to get your your thoughts on going ahead and getting ahead of that and and communicating to our customers a proposed rate increase to to see if if you felt like that would be appropriate or not we can certainly dial that back until after june 5th we don't want to be presumptuous but we do want to get information in our customers hands as soon as we can and where they will have the opportunity to come and voice therapy yes sir i've pretty much fallen the schedules of the drop-ins how are we doing across as we say across the bridge and then going out that's not here which is a huge area have we haven't been out there yet no sir i would i would openly admit that we have have uh have not had a drop-in in that area and we can certainly look to do that i think um we might want to want to consider it so that they don't kind of feel left out yes sir and that that is a it is a huge population we could add my rubber yeah thank you that that that i think that would help us from the pr stand okay yes sir yeah and that's a lot of a lot of people out there who we really don't hear from so it'd be nice to do that um Clint and i'm not sure other people's opinions i mean we think missy correct me wrong we'll advertise this friday so you know whether we approve it or not if the rate increase will be included in what we advertise so i would agree that we need to get out there sooner rather than later so i don't have a problem with putting that on there anybody have any comments on that i can read one of the wording going back to it that's when we had um two weeks ago we sort of um there's an implication that we had sort of put the taxpayers on notice that the rates would become so i think the language probably needs to kind of reflect a reminder uh wrote it's better than expected but i don't know that that will be i think but it is kind of a a little tag reminder that we sort of indicated it was coming it's not surprised yes sir we'll have some graphics and we'll be communicating at these at these meetings we want to communicate a lot of the information we've communicated to you you know what we've done with what we've been fortunate enough to to expend so far and what we plan to do moving forward and demonstrate some of that to them look at so i was hoping that if counseling yes i think that would be helpful to them there's great information here i'm always pushing user friendly information and this is it right here about a leak a consumption yeah it's 800 gallons 800 gallons well yeah that's a lot of us talking about a hundred cubic feet well that doesn't mean anything to the average person on me but 800 gallon it's one unit of consumption there's a so you would make me do math up you know thank y'all i'm sorry we ran a long one last thing because i think this will be the last opportunity i know the council knows that are sweet that vittoria kramer's leaving us i know she had her hands on this publication so her legacy will be here with us and i know her team will continue we'll miss her dearly thank y'all very much good job this school year 2018 2019 proposed budget this missy copham budget and program management director we um you know have taught with you all and this is a very brief discussion we're really just looking for some guidance since we're about to advertise i think we have all the guidance we really need to do that but then we want to of course bring back a full review of all the funds at the appropriate time and um you know have that public discussion for you all this is thank you miss wilson um just real brief today again just reiterating um some of what's already been discussed here now is that we will be advertising the budget this week included will be the general fund budget which has no property tax or other rating reasons however by law we are required to advertise that budget going forward of course water and sewer budget um as discussed it does include proposed nine point seven six percent rating free um it also includes the that would that would help to fund the hundred and twenty million in capital improvement program stormwater um the ordinance that actually city council adopted last year incorporated the rates for the next five years so there's no additional public hearing on that however the budget will include um the advertised stormwater budget of 13.4 million that rate increases about six percent which is about 74 cents a month less than a dollar a month on a standard on a residential that c.i.p. as Dan has already gone over with you for this year will be 10 10 million in terms of funding um which is all in terms of the previous presentation how that escalates over the next couple um over the next over the next year or two parking fund no rate or proposed increases there is proposed at 8.6 million hospitality tax is 12 million and the accommodations tax will be right at 2.5 2.6 million um so we'll advertise those budgets going forward later this week any questions about what we are advertising uh what is the um increase there in hospitality there's no increase in hospitality or that's just you're just right just i'm just that's just what that's the amount of the proposed budget no rate increases no which obviously we wouldn't be able to do any increases but no rate increases there's nothing nothing has changed from those budgets since we last presented it i think he's asked you are anticipating an increase revenue yes that does incorporate a um increase i'm sorry over current year projections i believe the budget is about a three percent increase over current year budget then just the next thing is just discussions about the possibility of an additional budget workshop council wants to review the budget again before we advertise the budget i mean before we have the budget public hearing the budget public hearing is and first reading are scheduled for June the 5th and the second reading is June 19th and of course i think it'd be good to be able to look at it and have a work session prior to the 5th that that Tuesday which i think is the Tuesday after memorial day i think would make the most sense to me because it'll allow us to have all the information fresh and a lot of the questions and be prepared for the public hearing even though very few people will show up to it because they're more interested in zoning issues than how we spend our money but i would like to be prepared is June usually for the best day i'm sorry Tuesday or Tuesday still the best day but you also have a third Tuesday and that's the 26th the 29th i'm sorry i'm wrong day 29th i mean at third Tuesday and may right so we have the 22nd and the 29th if you want a Tuesday 29 i mean to me the 29th because it's closer to the day that the hearing makes more sense no the 29th is actually the day after memorial day that's what i'm saying right for us to meet oh to meet so to do a work session that way we'd be we'd have it fresh in our tuesday and may oh that's may 29th which is my if that works for you would you well i mean i mean i would whatever i would be opposed to do it in the morning so that we're doing it and i want to get it over you have a morning so afternoon is better two o'clock i think it's our last chance to review the budget changes discussions details kind of your last a lot of the decision points that you know y'all been talking about we want to have that opportunity to give y'all some time to go through some of the and i know there's y'all we're looking to do because next week would be pretty tight for y'all to be ready to have a discussion i think i know there was some that works for him so there was also some discussion and we can make sure we do that as well because we do know as i've shared with you all this budget is going to reflect you know some decisions regarding health care and op-ed well retirees will be impacted at this will be impacted we want to make sure we're really communicating that and what we're looking to do so if there's an interest also i mean it's a public meeting but if there's some specific boats you want us to reach out to be here i think you know i think probably by then you should be prepared to have everything done yeah we can disseminate the information out which will give people time to ask questions to the public here okay so we'll have it ready for that day so like you're saying we'll make sure we get that word out it's a lot of a lot of moving parts to try to get it done before then i'm not sure it's awesome okay thank you so just so we're clear too make sure what we're hearing when we say all budget we're talking about all funds general fund water so we're talking about water we want to back in some just all right let's go even typically yeah we'll have that thank you missy any yeah any other questions i want you to make sure i am clear i am clear i have what i need to do to march forward thank you missy thank y'all the fifth discussion item is columbia construction jobs fraud by 11 percent the honorable daniel jay recommend yeah i just i actually put this on it was really for i probably should have put it on more for uh moving it to a committee but i think we ought to to get with the economic development committee and look at what we're doing as a city we're one of the few cities in the southeast that doesn't have a crane in the sky we've got construction jobs going down we are not having the growth in the investment and some of it has to do with some of the hindrances that we're seeing in our process and some of us have had sidebar discussions of you know looking at the way our zoning the way our permit process or the ddrc all those types of things i think are on the table for discussion and you know to when you read an article like that and you're seeing growth i mean you know somebody asked me other day when's the when's the last time we had a tower built in columbia and i couldn't tell older which was what five years ago was over five years ago and you go to any other city atlanta there 61 projects under construction right now nashville there are 22 cranes down and i can say that because i just was there so i counted 22 cranes in the sky investment everywhere from workforce housing to businesses growing up and you know i took a went over to the capital city club and looked out the window i mean if you look out on window we have a landscape that has tons of opportunities for vertical growth and everything it doesn't impact us tremendously because the infrastructure is already there so i don't know what we have to do but i think we need to as we're going into this budget we need to reevaluate where our economic development dollars are going and who those partners are and what we want is end results i think we need to you know get with the everybody from the home builders to you know the developers and figure out why aren't we getting the same investment here have we created an atmosphere that it's too tough to make it work i mean as y'all see most of the projects that are coming to us all one incentive how do we get for people invest in here because it's a good place to invest in and i think we've got to really have some deep deep hearted discussions about that that article just really hit me because you know you think with construction even the things we don't see would be continued but we're seeing it drop i mean that to me is concerning um i i think you know i think all of us have expressed an interest in how we're doing how we might be looking economically i i think too though in addition to that my my concerns when i'm talking about is what is uh whether it's cringe going up or whether we're lateral if it's systemic then we ought to look at it because i'm more or less concerned about the impact the offshoots all of that more jobs in the city better wages more people buying single family housing and some quality um apartment community so that's the measurement and and if if this effort's systemic and yeah we could fix it or i'll see how we could tweak it but i'm uh looking at one or two road trips to see what some communities are doing to spark some growth uh in the various uh and how you sometimes maybe turn a particular area of a city around ads to the to the it adds to the tax base growth and you get a lot of those other things like new people moving in people living in there now getting better wages and quality of life all around well not necessarily i think we just have to continue to make sure that we don't have two cities well you know where you have a perception of more progress than the other you know i think the discussion reverend mcdowell and i had earlier about you know the gateways like two nights you know it's it's very interesting when you ride around our town and have it done in a while this is that that's right we've got parts of the city and well i mean even just the the sense of pride i mean the the trash the the leaves and the the stuff that's all over the place ride down to your bay street all the way through trinam and look at the sidewalks and the growth and the stuff and you know it's just i think it's become a culture and not you know unfortunately not to say that you know i don't think these discussions of of things that have happened if our points is developed into pushing developers away i mean i've been chasing a capital group to put a hotel down there they're like well everybody who wants to go down there gets run out i mean why why would we want to invest there i mean it's those type of things we've got to create a campaign we have a wonderful city but we got to put a sense of pride and we got a push to grow and find out why why aren't these people looking at us you know we are a college town we know that so we need to embrace that we don't need to try to become the center of technology or you know or manufacturing and maybe it is technology tied into the university of growth but you know we don't need to be looking to hunt and manufacturing jobs because they're not coming here we don't have the ability to give them what they need but we obviously can't hospitality retail you know if it's other businesses that are support businesses that can fit into our space but you know somebody said well you know office space is is filled up well that's because we took the largest office building off the market and turned it into student housing which has really helped main street but it just solidifies that we're you know we're tied is a government in in university town so how do we take that asset and make it positive and attract more investment i think um another thing we need to take stock of is how will some of our partners help us i'm not very good we don't need to call any name but you know we we're adding to certain pots in this in this area but when i look at what i see as the returns then again on where where the returns are going is effective um we have um in a couple of areas a lot of vacant warehouse space just sitting um maybe manufacturing or it doesn't necessarily have to be manufactured but the square footage is there so who are making recommendations and referrals who else is out there really in the hunt to bring businesses to this city well in order for that to happen there has to be a conscientious clean city is a safe city and if we don't maintain we talk about a bridge three hundred thousand dollars i want to put into this because i live in wait but i also know that there's a there's a corridor one of the main corridors to this city of ours do not road that is in terrible shape terrible shape how do we how do we move and there are there are 80 houses we need to demolish in columbia you don't have to find the answers i think we got 40 thousand dollars in holding is that right that's right 40 thousand dollars and there's no way but in order for this city to be beautiful and safe we've got to be very intentional about identifying areas that are overly cold pieces of property pieces of our city that is being corralled into areas where hope just doesn't see anything happen you've got to be i'm uh i'm just saying and believe it or not now he's not screaming saying believe it or not those 80 houses that needs to come down are in two particular districts in this city your district and my district that's what i'm saying we have to be careful about the impressions of two cities oh you're absolutely right now and we've got to be intentional though you've got to be intentional about whether or not we're going to be whether or not we want to prioritize and make this city one columbia are just two cities with a delineated line growing down the center and i'm trying to expel the seamless city all i'm saying is um there's some creativity that can go into trying to to help solve the problem well we have houses that need to be torn down um some cities somehow turn it into an incentive if you you know if we've got control we don't need to demolish it that's a house that can go to a to somebody that wants to fix it up and cold has done a good job they've done a good job in using the monies that we've given them for demolition and they're doing that but the average cause of a home to be demolished somewhere between 35 to 65 and you got 80 of those so going back to dano's point um you want to this afternoon just refer that to the economic yes i think that's the perfect place for it yes i'd like to refer that this evening and i think as we go into the budget that i hope that we want to expend dollars on economic partnerships until we've had that discussion because i do think that this is a critical path that we need to redirect our dollars to to grow the city in all aspects of it i don't care if it's you know north main this is downtown we just we need to look at it we need to and i'm not sure where we refer maybe we referred ddrc would that go to administration ddrc and zone where we're we're we're economic development you could yeah i would think leave it all together because i think those things go together um and we're gonna have to understand that i think the approach that daniel is is recommending it's a holistic approach which means um you know we have to understand that decisions that we make in the way things happen affect long term so you know and i'm not necessarily saying you know no to higher buildings but you know this council years ago did a policy where there was a limit high limit so you know does that you know impact the development that daniel was talking about um when you you know so we need to look at our like you mentioned we need to look at our policies and look at whether not those you know inhibit inhibit or they encourage the growth and development we want to see and then we also need to look at our our bodies the ddrc both even our decisions and what that says developers coming in with balance and balance that against what we want as far as you know development and growth in our neighborhoods as well so we we've got to have that big bigger discussion yeah and i think the discussion amongst us has to resonate and to uh the message of council in terms of where we want to see the city grow and the way where we want to see the city grow people who we put in place to make certain decisions key decisions have to embrace that other than that decision being made that just don't don't cut it with some folks especially if you get the appearance that you're not pro-visit but you know we it is time to take a look at everything and how it is and maybe there's ways to to do things as we've discussed in the past if you make certain investments you don't have to go through the ddrc which ends up costing time and money to everybody who goes in it and it was originally created as a landmark commission which was supposed to be incentive driven not penalties and we we penalize people through that process but the inconsistency is you know we've got an overlay in good part of the city but we got several several block areas and lots that were completely left out and it puts them at an unfair advantage you know and so i think it's time to reevaluate that and figure out i think it's worth us having a round table discussion if it's bringing in you know maybe get asked will she left maybe get rebecca and and maybe get some of the some development team members you know but maybe lyle you know somebody from the leasing side somebody think hey what are we doing what what can we do to change to be more attractive and bit friendly to get the investments you know taxes is a challenge for us i think hopefully we're going to direct that this year with looking at those non-profit parcels and how they can contribute more and be part of the community which will help level the playing field a lot of that is on the state which you know we don't have a lot of control about but also putting in potential opportunities as we discussed the other day like a ssrc credit you know that some some standard we have so people know what their options are and do it but we we need to look around we are we're missing opportunities i've been interested in what kind of credits mr. devol had us if we're going to do an in-depth study of our economic development abilities for the city acclimate i think we need to put on the table and look at the development corporation i've always felt that we are fractured we're fractured in our ability to go look at things because we have different people assigned to different areas of town we need to have an economic development office that throws the holes that are right and looks at the total overlays is it possible then that we're concerned that it's whether it's the general overlay of the city that that's identifiable then we defer this to uh economic development we can defer all of that today yeah all of that can be taken up by the committee and although the committee has members any any member of council to come as a citizen to come and listen contribute yeah i think it's on the right i think we're on the right if we get to uh if that committee functions um and brings up a lot of topics we need to hear we can go into a committee of the whole correct yeah well eventually i think we're going to have you're going to it's probably automatic you're talking about so many topics there well you know it's interesting because some of the other communities i've been to they started they do a committee of the whole once a month anyway so that they can can go over all that and start getting things moving so it doesn't take you know forever to get something moving and maybe we ought to consider having a you know committee the whole lives like every other maybe you even say every other month or something or we just add another meaning but it'll help us move things along from the discussion standpoint i want to i want i want our city to be competitive and grow new track people here when we're moving around and we just we just don't see it so maybe instead of doing referring it to the committee maybe and i know we're in budget right now but maybe after after budget miss wilson and in july we can actually just do an economic development work session like we did annexation and others just just dedicate a work session bring all of our ideas figure out where we're going and then and then if something needs to go to a committee after that yeah i would just ask that part of that if we do that that we don't make any commitments to anybody partners so the money is actually in the budget ryan is on us we need to look at what's in there i think he did some streamlining already this year's budget request but we will look at it again and make sure is just for clarity though you want to because the other thing that we implemented even with his additional streamlining he's doing is you know the contract for services so in line with what you're saying if they if they're partners that do stay in the budget the service delivery ought to be in line with what you're trying to get how you're trying to move the growth forward correct so i think you're writing so you have that discussion now the budget would be passed and i guess what we can do is maybe there's a pot of funds and there's just no commitments made on can't you can't hold off on other things that we can do creatively and i'll just west columbia which is very interesting what they're doing is is so when the new restaurant comes in they require to put in this grease trap and everything else which is very expensive they allow them to use the hospitality tax they collect to pay that back and then once that's paid back then they put into the pot it's a way to allow because it's just become an inhibitive for for businesses and look let's face it hospitality is one of our biggest businesses here we don't embrace it well i mentioned several things so i think the concept of the work session to accommodate all of that is a great idea but what we can try to do leading up to the work session is to work with legal maybe on some of the thoughts i know mr rick and then as far as the corridors you're not just a great example and i think that um you know there was a nuisance going on in one particular part of not that we got our hand arms around with pd and it's amazing what changes you see when you do that and so i think without us you know going in a great detail that across the city is happening for things like that when it comes to demolitions and funding for demolition obviously we need more funding i love when the chief to talk about at that work session of project he he's mentioned to me as another approach to getting demolitions done um which is uh partnering with a different agency so i think there's a lot of things that we gotta be creative about to be creative um and what we'll do is try to put some of that together maybe they're from a demolition standpoint if you get the contractor you may go back and redo figure out a way that we can give him credit to upgrade the property and cover that up i don't know how it does but i mean i think we have to start being creative and and and getting people to re-invest you know it's just you know i'm i'm worried about you know i don't know how the state can fix the tax structure so we're gonna have to be creative outside of it i think there there's a member of our legislative delegation who's interested in attempting to put something on the table for a legislative session that didn't quite work but again i think we may have to help be the voice of the community outside and give some numbers and take that picture for some of his colleagues and you know how that type of project are community or something like that but anyway we're happy to help with that more especially other if will you be able to still get a little i have said i actually sent stuff over all right last item and the mayor is on his place that he should be here before we go in executive session mr is this mr recommend or is this mr is all i put it on there for discussion i think it's probably really mike him with legal um and cpd i did not realize when we put this together the mayor wouldn't be here well he's on his way he's aware i think you want to go ahead and probably be here in the next 10 minutes i mean i think i think howard had some some amendments he wanted to share i think we all got him the email you don't get your call me i see no because legally i can't forward them to my personal email anymore and i have issues getting into it on the city device so i'm i'm learning i'm not i know how to work my devices i don't necessarily know how to work the other one so i wouldn't understand you your that would be my preference if you can if you remember to do that i would i would prefer that to make sure i'm getting it good afternoon good afternoon i where we are on the on ordinance uh 1801 we've had first reading in between the first reading and today which is the scheduled second reading we have made some technical changes to clarify some things there were some issues that were brought to our attention that weren't necessarily clear they didn't change the substance of the ordinance tremendously but just some technical changes and in addition misty devol indicated that he wanted to propose some amendments to for council to consider during second reading and asked me to take his ideas and draft them ordinances which i've done uh and if you the ones that i emailed around it is the text of the ordinance upon which you are you can give second reading the green is the amendment that is being proposed by mr devol i can tell him what it is if you want to get somebody to get coffee i don't get coffees real quick made is there anything else you could go ahead and be i'm being picky about my time everything else is about the same as when we left it last month yes yes since uh the first reading of course this ordinance is a dramatic change from the ordinance that is currently on the books but um since the first reading there have been very few changes some of them again are technical um and might it might be helpful also i think mr rickman has gone out the room but i think in the interim as we discussed at the first reading mr rickman has been meeting with or at least having discussions with a representative from the neighborhood i think she's asked some clarifying questions or made some recommendations and those things have some of those things have have been made absolutely some of them have been made and the reason i would call those recommendations technical changes is that they didn't they didn't really change the the overall plan of taking this out of business license putting it into the police department and having actual um criminal penalties and administrative penalties which is a vast difference from the prior ordinance where the penalties were purely administrative we did adopt several of those ideas some of the ideas um were substantial changes that would have in the essence of time you want me to go ahead and explain he'll have the thing i think the city manager wants us to get over to the executive session which is important too uh i have i want to thank mr rickman for actually getting this ordinance drafted and like your input has been great too uh i think it is a big step in the right direction but i don't think it goes nearly far enough um i think that it gives the the uh city and the police department better tools to deal with the problem but it does not help the neighborhoods which uh it was my primary concern is to do something to the neighborhood but uh knowing the the feeling of most of the council i have proposed three amendments that i think help strengthen the ordinance to the point where i can certainly support it the first amendment deals with uh a grandfather clause asking the having the council accept the ordinance that mr rickman and his committee have put together and adding a sentence in amendment number one which says that it would only apply to the extended hour permits but only apply to people that have them as of june of 2018 in other words the 23 bars that now have extended hour permits would keep them and they would we would pass the new ordinance and let the ordinance itself winter them out i think this is very important because we have over 300 alcohol beverage licenses in the city of columbia any of which could apply for an extended hour permit and if we close down a substantial number of the bars in five points as i think this ordinance will probably do uh these bars are going to try to go in other parts of the city and so i think to prevent this cancer from from moving on to other parts of the city we need to say that we will let the 23 that now have extended hour permits keep those as long as they can comply with the ordinance but we're not gonna not issue any new one we have so what we're doing is we're just what what you're saying essentially is is that you're you're just rescinding it in a different manner no because because if you read the ordinance we put together if he moved to another spot and got a thing you'd have to have a minimum of two years in business before you could even apply which if you had any violations in that period or anything you wouldn't be able to to to get it if you followed the process so but if you had two years of operation anywhere in the city and you applied for an extended hour permit you would be able to make that application if you had no violations but we're not looking to we're not looking to rescind it we're looking to keep it keep it alive so this actually just goes back it's just another my interpretation is another way to rescind it it's a slow poke way to kill it it's a slow poke way to kill it but it's a way that is necessary because we do not need to have bars open from 2 a.m. to sun up every day except Sunday morning in the city of Columbia no other city has that no other city in sec has that and the reason they don't have it is because the service requirements for our police and other people to police this thing from 2 a.m. to sun up adds an additional burden this unnecessary if you take the statistics that were brought forth both by the neighborhood and the university and the city of police you'll notice that 90% of all the violations happened before 2 a.m. I would personally not be in favor of amendment one because I just think it's it's just it's just a backhanded way to rescind it well the 23 that you're worried about staying in business as long as I'm not worried about the 23 I'm looking at the right where you have other people who have the right to grow in areas and have the opportunity to do it we've had the same group of people for the since this came and think we haven't had any new applications and we've had a lot of bars and restaurants come and go and nobody else has added asked for it but you may have somebody a good example would be a diner operation closer to the hospital where you have shift changes people want to go eat dinner at 5 a.m. and have a beer because it's their time I mean there is a large population in our community that thrives after midnight we need to recognize that you know they are a majority too yeah I'm just trying to say this council from going to the other neighborhoods this is good discussion but the fact that the ordinance is on the night are we going to rehash this discussion and if we are then why not have it then and go in executive session I think there's a question for you I'm fine because he's proposing amendments I'm I'm assuming even if you get feedback on who supports it who doesn't you're still going to make your amendment depends on when I get support on I don't know either either we do it in committee format as before I don't I don't know that we need to ask this no well I would say for the purposes of of people who might support these or not I mean you've got community members who you know feel strongly you know how it may feel he has to propose them so that the community knows that this is you know he's advocated for it and I'm not saying I'm one way or another but if you know how we handle things you know that there are people would have feel like they need to say whatever even if you said it in here that you've got to say it in the public when the community is here so that they know your position I'm just saying in essence let's hash it out today if that's going to happen anyway why have that conversation now my further offer I read them all number two is the only one with a slight change in it that I think is acceptable which would be you know would be changing the word from current to applicable because that's the appropriate way that to do it but number three is you can't do that I mean you just that's just that that that goes hand in hand with one well uh that is that's the current law it's the current state law it's the current state constitution that's word for word out of south carolina state law i'm not putting in thing that's that that is what the law of the state of south carolina says why can't the city of columbia say what the state law says in state constitutions there serving would also be even more than the minimally adequate education so I wouldn't say we the state constitution is always applicable in this discussion do you think a little bit bigger than that they they they granted the the license this is this is an option and once they've gotten a license then we have the ability to grant them an extended permit that is not our jurisdiction that's theirs so on amendment number two if we change the word from current to applicable building in parka apical yeah I have no problem with that you know I will I will defer till till the evening then and um I don't want to make this a long meeting tonight I will briefly discuss these things with bottle number one two and three and be done can I ask I guess your question my question on number two um um when you say certification by an inspector approved by the city that would be code enforcement of code enforcement our code our code enforcement and they're not in the loop now okay you want to move on to exactly y'all I'd like to make a motion for that we move given I'd like to make a motion that we move into executive session to the discretion of matters relating to proposed location of national services encouraged location of national industries or other businesses pursuant to 70 a to usually 1800 main street discussion of negotiation that's proposed contractual arrangement pursuant to 70 a to busby street community center and police substation project 911 communication center consolidation agreement extension receipt of legal advice related to matters covered by attorney client privilege pursuant to 70 a to revised divine street variance exemptions amtrak Columbia canal and section 17269 drinking that that discussion of employment of of employee pursuant to 70 a to municipal court judge second second I would like to add under eight the contractual arrangements um uh lori all right any else uh seeing none um was there a second to me oh yeah second second uh with a previous question