Listen to @CityofAuburn Mayor @ronanders2020 On the Mark @ONTHEDMARK1 recapping City Council meeting Nov 5

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And third Tuesday, we have city council meetings in Oplik
and Auburn, and we get the recap from our mayors.
Mayor Eddie Smith in the first hour, Mayor Ronald Andrews
Junior in the second hour interviews that brought you by
four seasons Federal Credit Union. Time to go to that
Hamilton sideline over to Auburn to bring into Oliverle Mayor,
our good friend, Ronald Andrews Junior. Good morning, Mayor.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Good morning, do you patch. It's great to be on
the patching scratch showing the beautiful fall morning here. And
I appreciate you guys sincere interest in what goes on
in the city of Auburn and allowing me to report
to our citizens the business that we took on on
their behalf last night. And it's good to be with you.
I want to start off by staying congratulations again to

(00:44):
Mayor Eddie Smith on his inauguration, his swearing in and
holding his first meeting. And I'm proud of Eddie. Sat
with him in his prayer breakfast yesterday morning, which was
a tremendous honor, and I just looked forward to working
with Eddie. I believe He's going to be a fantastic
either for the city of Opelika, and and I'm just
I'm happy that he's such a good man and cares

(01:06):
so much about the city so well. Good speaking time
with him over the weekend and see his family, and uh,
there's special people and the days of break for the
city of Opelika. They've got I've got good leadership over there,
and I look forward to continue the partnership and make
everything better in East Alabama. A lot of people that
count on Auburn and Opelikah to ride things for them
and to be a place of where they can find

(01:28):
good health care and good shopping and good food and
and good activities and in a safe in a safe environment.
And we're we're all going to work together to continue
to make that happen. But UH, congratulations to Eddy. I'm
sure things went well for him last night, and he'll
it's a learning curve. You can be there as long
as you want to, uh as the president of the
city council, but when you sit in the big seat,

(01:48):
there's things change and experiences, and I know he'll handle
it well. But we had a good meeting last night,
d Mark. We we started offering the community the whole
by making two of much to our Parks and Recodnisory Board.
I want to say thank you to Tammy Hollis who
served two full terms and so she retired and we

(02:08):
replaced her with Mary Mills who will begin her term
will begin December first of this year, and it's a
four year term, so we'll go through twenty twenty nine.
And then Aj Harris had served one full term. AJ
works for our Boys and Girls Club here for Greater
Lee County, and he was seeking a second full term,
which I've said before and you showed many times, D
mark if you're in your first term, if you do

(02:30):
a good job, if you're invested, if you show up
to the meetings, if you're prepared, if you're a good
teammate in the city Council's tradition in Auburn is to
give you a second full term. And that's exactly what
we did with Aj because he checked all those boxes.
So Aj Harris and Mary Mills were pointed to the
Parks and Recodvisory Board. We had a all star list
of candidates. That mark that I'm very proud of that

(02:51):
that many people were sincerely interested in serving the community
through to the Parks and Rec Board, and I want
to encourage the folks who were not chosen to guion
to look for opportunities to serve your community in different ways,
whether it's officially with the city or through our nonprofits
and through other organizations. There's always places to serve and
make Auburn a better place. But I appreciate people taking

(03:12):
time to fill those applications out and desiring to serve.
As we got into our regular meeting, it was first
meeting of the month, so we recognized our employee of
the month, which was Michelle Altman, and I have a
memorandum here from Katrina Cook, our Environmental services director, and
i'll read a short paragraph here recently Michelle, excuse me.
Michelle's commitment to pub services evident and every aspect of

(03:32):
her work. She promotes a responsible pet ownership and forces
city ordinances with fairness and integrity, and provides accurate, impactful
court testimony. As a team player, she readily shares her
knowledge with the officers and plays a key role in
training and entering. She works a lot with animal control,
and you know, people don't realize the serious nature of

(03:54):
that responsibility and the sadness that comes with that responsibility.
You know, it doesn't take long to understand that some
people just don't care for their pets and animals like
they should, and some people allow their pets and animals
to misbehave kind of bad parenting, and so that's where

(04:16):
animal control has to get involved, and you have to
have somebody that plays that role in your city, and
Michelle does that with integrity and a great effort, and
we appreciate her work. We recognize a number of people
with service awards. Sewn Amoson, Joshua Evans and Trump Posey
five years with our fire team, Brian Owens five years

(04:36):
with inspection services, Stephen Krantz who's our budget director five years,
and retiree. Monterrey Smith from our environmental Services retired after
twenty five years, and we certainly wish him the best
and look forward to his retirement. Under the consent agenda,
we approved three alcohol beverage license for special events. These
are in and around the Alabama Game Day weekend, all

(04:57):
on campus, and then we approved a retail beer and
table wine license for the new racetrack. It is a
shared project between the City of Auburn and the city
of Opalaikah. For Auburn, it's where Shelton Mill Road comes
to two eighty and if you if you go north
on two eighty out of Oblaka, you'll see it right
there on the left. It's this significant new project that

(05:19):
ironically is built half in Auburn and half in Opelika.
And there's a lot of agreements on how that all
came about and how that all moved forward, and we
got it all figured out, but anyway, we approved, so
they should be opening sun we approve the trash Amnesty months,
which will be March the ninth through April to third.
This is the time where you say those things that

(05:40):
you can't put out on a weekly basis. It could
be a piece of furniture. It could be a large limb,
small tree, it could be you know, just things that
appliances that we're not only going to take from you
on a weekly pick up basis, but during this month
you can put that kind of stuff. If you have
any question, encourage you to go to the Environmental Services

(06:01):
Department look online. They should have a list of things
that you can put out by the street. If you
don't see what you're looking for, please give them a call,
send them an email. Under contracts and agreements. Again, we're
into the second month of the fiscal year d mark,
so there's a lot of purchases going on that have
been budgeted for. So I'm gonna run through these pretty quickly.
As I always say. You know, if people that are listening, go,

(06:24):
what's he talking about? And you certainly you can go
use the resource of our council packing information that's online.
You can call me, you can send me an email,
and you can call your your counsel representative, send them
an email, you can call the department. We want you
to get the information you need. Okay, So if you hear,
I'm gonna run through this quickly, just out of respect

(06:44):
for time and the fact that you guys have a
show to run. But if you got any questions. So
we purchased eighty AR fifteen rifles for our police department.
We've been using used rifles over the years that frankly,
we've been borrowing. I didn't know this until we came
up with this, until this budgeted item came up. And
so this is to outfit our police officers and we've got,

(07:07):
you know, almost one hundred and fifty police officers, and
so you know, we've got to have we've got to
have the things to protect us and provide us the
same firepower that the bad people have. And so this
is a purchase that we've been budgeting and working towards making,
and so we approved that last night. It was a
budgeted item. We approved a public works project with Bargin

(07:29):
Design Solutions, which is a budgeted item. We approved the
purchase of a Caboda tractor for our Parks and Wrect Department,
an excavator, a Bobcat excavator for our public Works department,
a Bobcat compact track loader for Public Works, four excuse me,
one Colorado crew cab four by four for Environmental Services

(07:50):
for Enforcement officer one f one fifty four by four
for our Environmental Services. Also again one and four f
one fifty pickup trucks for our police department. Wanted they
need to pick up trucks or some of the off
road situations that they find themselves in. We also approved
the purchase of one two dred and forty eight roll

(08:10):
out garbage carts. Most of these are for new citizens,
but some of these are replacements for damaged garbage carts.
And then we approved the purchase of six hundred and
twenty four recycling carts, and then we approved the contract
with Walker Consultants who do maintenance and repairs to our
Wright Street parkingdect. All those items were budgeted. They're all
listed with narratives in our Council packet information under Ordinances.

(08:32):
Last night, probably the item that got the most attention
as we were evaluating an ordinance declaring a moratorium on
the construction of multiple unit developments and private dormitory developments
in the urban core and urban neighborhood West and Layman's terms.
It's to student housing, big large student housing complexes. We
had a work session on Monday d Mark for about

(08:54):
two hours where staff presenting concerns to the City Council
about the growth of student and housing and how the
pressure the pressure was put in on traffic, storm water
and sewer ish capacities, and so the council had twenty
four hours to really consume that. We looked at this
ordinance last night. The Council ultimately decided to postpone making

(09:14):
a decision on this for two more weeks, so this
will come back up on November the eighteenth. We had
about five people speak to this last night during a
public hearing. We'll keep the public hearing open in two
weeks to allow people to continue to talk to the
city council about this. But we've had tremendous growth. Anybody
that's been in Auburn knows that things have changed, particularly
on the West side. A lot of that was intentional

(09:36):
be marked. The idea fifteen years ago was to get
students near campus, which made them near downtown, which in
theory they could part their car and they could walk
the class. And then if the right amenities were nearby,
where they could find a pharmacy, find a department store,
find a grocery store, that they would spend less time
in their cars and more time on their feet or

(09:58):
on their bicycles or things like that and buying hards.
That's happened, without question, But it's happened. It's such a
great extent, and it's happened so quick that we've got
to evaluate that happened and continued to happen. I don't
know where the council is going to be ultimately in
two weeks on this decision. The moratorium would stop all
projects from occurring for a length of time, which right

(10:20):
now the old moratorium says eighteen months. The Council certainly
has the right to shorten that or linked in that
as they think, as they believe it is necessary. But
if you, as a citizen have an opinion about that,
certainly share that with us over the next two weeks.
And if you want to make that public, you can
certainly come to the council meeting on the eighteenth and
share that over the microphone. Thenbody's got any questions about that. Again,

(10:45):
the information the narrative on this is including our packing
information that they are welcome to call their counselmen or
certainly call me and I can certainly talk to them
about that. Finally, on the resolutions, we purchase two Graphle
lightning motors for environmental services, and we purchased two Kimborth
dual steer sideloaders. These are the trucks that go to

(11:05):
your front yard and they grab the trashes that you
lay down in your front yard that doesn't come out
of the can. These are important. It was reported last
night that we're making over a million stops a year
with our trash theme, and it's just significant the amount
of work that these folks do, and they wear out vehicles,
there's no question, and this is a significant amount of money,

(11:28):
but we've been budgeting for this for a while. We
got to have it in the growing community. And then
we also through the purchase of twelve Dodge to Rangos
for our police department. These are pursuit vehicles and most
of if all of these are replacement vehicles of cars
that we'd have worn out through the good work of
our police department and chasing down the bad guys. Just
under Mayor's announcements, I want to remind our community this Saturday,

(11:50):
if you're in town and you're not in Nashville watching
the Tigers play, the Sugar Bowl will occur and this
is our championship day for our youth football programs, named
after former Alburn coach Sugar Jordan, who helped found this
program in the seventies. As he approached retirement, he gave
his name and efforts and goodwill to our children back
in the day. And so the Sugar Bowl be going

(12:11):
out on duck Stanford Park on Saturday. If you got
some time to kill and I encourage you to go
by there and watch some children get after it. I
want to say thank you to everybody participating in Downtown
Trick or Treat. The final Downtown Trick or Treat happened
last Thursday, and it was a great night, beautiful weather,
a lot of people. I want to thank our downtown
merchants who stayed open and have continued to support this

(12:33):
event over the years, our Parks and rerec Department, our
Public Safety Department, our Public Works department. It's a huge
effort and we went out with the bang. It was
beautiful night, Everybody had a lot of fun, and we'll
move forward to the future. I'm not sure what that
means for that. It could mean just going back to
good old neighborhood trick or treating. There could be an
event that comes forward. We'll just see what the staff

(12:54):
comes up with and we'll determine that later. But it
was a good night downtown. I want to say thank
you everybody disipated in the Alzheimer's Walk a couple of
Sundays ago, tremendous crowd, primarily students on a Sunday afternoon
that brought attention to this horrible disease that affects so
many of us and so many of our families, including mine.
And I just appreciate the efforts of the local Alzheimer's

(13:16):
Association to raise awareness to this condition and all the people,
particularly our students who participate on Sunday afternoon. I want
to say thank you to everybody that came to the
Pine Hills Cemetery Tour recently. I was blessed to participate
this year as a character and that was a ton
of fun. But what great crowds we had on the
Thursday and Friday night and again Parks and Rec had

(13:39):
the cemetery Old Cemetery looking beautiful. Our police had us
well protected. The Auburn Heritage Association had a great organized
event and it was just a ton of fun that
evening and kokudos to them. And the last night we
had Auburn High Student Council come and attend our city
council meeting. I'm proud that our young people are interested
in what we do and they about how the city works,

(14:02):
and they had a good meeting to watch. And I've
been working with the student councils since I've become the mayor.
We spend we have four meetings a year when we
get together and talk about how the city works and
they get to ask questions, and they'll actually be making
a field trip to city Hall after the first of
the year and learning more about how the city works.
So I appreciate them showing up, and I want to
say all the best to Auburn High School at least GOTT.

(14:24):
They'll be hosting first round playoff games this Friday night,
and they've both got very good opponents that they'll be facing.
But I appreciate and value the seasons that they've had,
the way they represent the communities that they reside in,
and I wish them the very very best this Friday
night as they go into the playoff season. And that

(14:45):
gets me through my agenda.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
D mark Man, job, well done, Mayor, you have got
it down. Everybody in the family, good.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Bud, everybody's good. One final thing I forgot sure, let
me just sat back just a second. I want to
say thank you to the Auburn Pastors Associate for hosting
my second prayer breakfast last Wednesday. Last Wednesday, and it
was hosted at Cornerstone Church and they do all the
work and we had a beautiful crowd that morning. Woke

(15:12):
up very early in the time and not changed so
it was still pitch black dark at six point thirty
when everybody showed up, but we had a tremendous crowd.
A lot of their staff got there early to cook
breakfast for us, and we had a beautiful morning with
beautiful prayers extended on behalf of our community. And I
just want to think that that Pastor's Association for taking
that on, is their project to host a Mayor's Prayer

(15:33):
breakfast every year. It's beautiful things. So, yes, the family's good.
We're going to I'll see them all here this weekend.
We're going to Nashville and uh, we've got them all
going to be there for the for the weekend. And
we didn't expect things to turn out like like the
half of the Tigers, but that doesn't keep us having
good times with our family and our grandchildren. So my

(15:54):
daughter's even coming down from d C. So we're all
to spend some good time together this weekend and look
forward to look forward.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
To the Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate you, buddy.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Have a great week yep, y'all have a great Dan
Maddy

Speaker 1 (16:04):
The album Mayor, Ronald and