Join Rico Figliolini as he sits down with Peachtree Corners City Councilmember Eric Christ for a deep dive into the latest city developments, from parks to elections and housing.
🔹 Simpsonwood Park – What’s next for the 227-acre green space? Eric shares updates on possible improvements, conservation efforts, and the latest community input.
🔹 Jones Bridge Park Concerns – How the city and county are addressing parking, litter, and after-hours issues.
🔹 Housing & Development – The Gwinnett Housing Authority’s new apartment conversion project and its impact on the area.
🔹 Upcoming City Elections – Why voting might finally get easier and how local races could shape Peachtree Corners’ future.Tune in for insightful discussion on the evolving landscape of Peachtree Corners!
🔹 Simpsonwood Park – What’s next for the 227-acre green space? Eric shares updates on possible improvements, conservation efforts, and the latest community input.
🔹 Jones Bridge Park Concerns – How the city and county are addressing parking, litter, and after-hours issues.
🔹 Housing & Development – The Gwinnett Housing Authority’s new apartment conversion project and its impact on the area.
🔹 Upcoming City Elections – Why voting might finally get easier and how local races could shape Peachtree Corners’ future.Tune in for insightful discussion on the evolving landscape of Peachtree Corners!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And so this time Simpson Wood is a Tier one project, okay,
and they have ear marked eight million dollars.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
You're listening to Peachtree Corner's Life, a podcast sharing ideas, opinions,
and news about the city of Peachtree Corners, the community
we live in and the people that are your neighbors.
Now your host, Rico Figliolini.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Hi, everyone, This is Rico Figliolini, host the Peachree Corner's
Life here in our little smart city just north of Atlanta,
and I have a great guest today, Eric christ who's
city Count's person at large. Hey, Eric, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Great to be here, Rico, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yep. We're going to be discussing quite a few things,
so stick around. But before we get into it, I
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(01:10):
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(01:32):
and employees are considered family as well, and they do
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(01:54):
they'll they'll come through. So check them out of voxpopuli
dot com or link in the show notes as well. So, Eric,
it's been a while since we've had our had an
interview here.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, it's not been a little while, recur, but great
to be here and glad to talk about whatever you
think is on the mind of folks here at Beatry Corners.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
You know, there's so much going on it's ridiculous. So
but you know, let's let's start off with the thing
from last night. There was a meeting last night about
Simpson Wood Park. But that's been There's been a lot
of talk about it about what should be done with
that park, even though there was a master plant some
years ago when it was first bought that was surveyed
(02:33):
and put together but never executed. But that'splos money I
believe still sits there.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Well, yeah, so they back, Yeah, let's let's take a
quick step back, just in case that people aren't familiar.
So what's now known as Simpson Would Park was obviously,
for many years since the seventies, owned by the Methodist Conference,
and they operated a retreat center there and various different
and they had an office building and all sorts of things,
and they just sided that they didn't want to be
(03:01):
in the retreat center business anymore, and so they sold
the property in twenty fifteen to the county and as
a park. And so yeah, they went through a master
planning exercise to say, hey, here's the buildings on the
property today, here's what we envisioned, hiking trails, modern bathroom facilities,
(03:23):
and other types of park type features.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
And for people that may not remember, there was literally
a resort hotel almost.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
There were oh yeah, yeah, tell you it was quite
an operation. One hundred and seventy hotel rooms. They had
a dining hall that could feed three hundred and fifty people,
had a pop They had twenty thousand square feet of
meeting space. They had a three story office building which
served as the offices for the North Georgia Conference of
the United Methodist Church. That's where the bishop of that
(03:52):
conference had his offices or offices, and four hundred parking spaces.
At one point they had an RV campground. Yeah, they
had a ropes course, they had there was there was
a they permitted overnight camping by like local Scout troops,
you know, that a lot of different end While it
(04:14):
was their private property, they did permit people to you know,
come onto the property and use it in a sense
like a park, right, so you could walk your dog
in there. You could come and just stroll through the
grounds during you know, sunrise to sunset type of hours.
But they did that. They didn't have to do that.
They could have had you know, a gate at the
(04:34):
front and said no, this is the simps Wood Retreat
Center and unless you you're there to do you know,
to stay at the retreat center, attendant event, you know
that type of thing.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Well, and most of that, if not all of it,
has been removed I mean all the structures have been
removed the parking space pretty much.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I mean a couple of things that that are still
there that then the Methods Conference had built were one
a chapel. There's a a seventy five seat chapel. There's
there was a there was a there's a large pavilion
and a volleyball court and a single bathroom facility. Otherwise,
(05:12):
pretty much all of the buildings are gone. There's a
there's a maintenance shed that still exists back in the
woods that the county uses. And then there's a there
is another tenant back there which is causing a little
bit of disruption right now, which is the Department of
Water Resources has their Wolf Creek pump station and and
they're in the midst of upgrading the sewer line that
(05:34):
runs to that to that pump station.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
How many and how many actors are there?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Two hundred and twenty seven acres seven acres.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
And the chapel is still being used as Gwinnett Park
as a rental for wedding right.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, yeah, I just actually posted on my Facebook page yesterday.
I happened to be on the website looking at it.
If Gwinnette Park in addition to people don't know, you
can rent their pavilions. You can reserve a pavilion for
a birthday party or something like that. But they also
have what they call premiere facilities at some of their parks,
like pinnevill Community Center is falls under the Gwinnett Park system,
(06:12):
so that's off of you know, P Street Boulevard, and
you can rent space there. But yeah, you can rent
the chapel for weddings, vow renewals, anything, there's no you know,
it doesn't have to be for a wedding or a
religious service. So you can rent the chapel. You can
rent the grounds which has a small gazebo if you
(06:32):
want to do something outdoors, or you can rent both
for a fairly reasonable fee. It's like one hundred and
twenty five dollars an hour.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yeah, I was going to say a sad expensive in
this coin.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So that's we're saying. So they did that master planning.
It was on the So we had a sploss that
we voted all voted on back in twenty seventeen and
they put this the improvements to Simpson Wood on the list.
But they put it in what they called Tier two
and what that meant was Tier two projects only get
funded if they first fund all the Tier one projects,
(07:08):
and they didn't, so they the amount of money that's raised,
or maybe those projects you know, got more expensive. There
wasn't any funding available for tier two projects. So then
in twenty twenty three we've had an or twenty six years. Yeah,
twenty twenty three, we had another SPLOST, which are running
(07:29):
for the next six years. And so this time Simpson
Wood is a Tier one project and they have earmarked
eight million dollars from the current SPLOST current the sales
tax towards enhancements to Simpson Wood. And so the county
I think it was a good move to say, hey,
(07:51):
it's twenty twenty four when this process started. We built
that original plan eight years earlier in twenty sixteen, let's
dust it off and go through a planning process again
to see if things have changed, you know, what other
things people would like to see in the park, and
(08:11):
the thinking even a you know, good like last time.
There are lots of discussion around should there be a
fenced in dog park type area inside the park or not? Right,
so they say, we want we want to get more
input on those types of questions. So they've embarked on
a about a year long planning process. We're just about
halfway through and it'll wrap up in August of this
(08:36):
year with a final plan. So so last night it
was like the third of six meetings to look at
different plans.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
So the lot of people that make up the the committee,
I guess, isn't there.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah. What they did was yes, So same thing they've
done back in twenty sixteen. They got a steering committee together,
primarily nearby residents, and so they did the same thing
again this time. First they asked people who had been
on the committee in twenty sixteen, Hey, did you want
to do this again, and about half of those folks
(09:14):
said sure, Like one of my neighbors here in Neely
Farm said who was on the committee, then said said yeah.
They then asked the city a piece of corners, you know,
and I volunteered or didn't step back fast enough.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Now they need a good rep on there. That's good.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And then they solicited and you know, they said, hey,
Sentuent Methodist Church, do you want to have somebody on
the committee, so sort of local organization representatives, and then
they opened it up to the general public. They had
a big community meeting at Simpsonwood Methodist Church and took
applications from people you could have send you know, you
(09:52):
could just applied by email. They took all of those
applications and they said, well, one, we can't have a
committee of like sixty people. That's not not practical. And
they also said, we you know, we want a variety
of members, but concentrated here in PC Corner. So of
the thirty one committee members, twenty seven are P Corner's residents.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
That's that's actually very good considering it's a county park, right,
not a city park. Right, maybe one day it could
be a city park, but not.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Well, I think, yeah, we do have in a sense.
I don't think the town Green is our city park today, right,
you know, and it has many of the same elements,
you know, has a playground, a law stage, bathrooms, you know,
trash cans that have to be emptied, all those kinds
of kinds of things. So yeah, So what they did
(10:49):
tonight was they the prior meeting, about six weeks ago,
they had presented three concept plans, three different maps, and
eat was slightly different. And so based on the feedback
of the committee provided last time they merged all that
into a single a single map and said, hey, what
(11:10):
do we think about this? It's still not that they
didn't even call it a preliminary plan. There's there's still
two more stages to go. They they said, we took
all your feedback and we we fitted in here.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
And so if can you say was left was left
in that map or what is the version at the highlights?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Sure? Yeah, yeah, A couple of things come to mind.
I think you know the first thing, you know, what
I think was big news coming out of last night
was and I I sort of prompted this because I
pushed them on it is that a commitment by the
county to keep the park natural and specifically to be
(11:53):
stay within the constraints of the conservation easement. So when
they bought the park, there wasn't any if you will underline,
overarching boundaries or limits on what the park could be. Right,
so you could have had playing fields with lights and
that sort of thing. Sure, but the steering committee back
(12:16):
in twenty sixteen pushed hard to say we need to
put what's called a conservation easement, which an easement is
a restriction placed on land. And so in twenty twenty
the Border Commissioners, when Border Commissioners voted unanimously to put
a conservation easement on the land. And it's what it
says is one, the land can only ever be used
(12:37):
as a park for the general public, so it can't
be developed into houses or used for commercial property. And
then it also limits the types of things that you
could do at this park, like it can't have active
playing fields. You can have a meadow or you run
around and toss a frisbee, but it can't have soccer fields.
It can't have lights, you know, lighted playing field. So
(13:01):
for example, there's a volleyball court there today and you
could have you can keep that can stay there, but
you can't add lights to it, right, So, and.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
That's in respect to the residential area around that podcast.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, yeah, I think that that was based on feedback. Also.
I think the other thing that we pushed them on
for the conservationment was the priorities for the things that
are going to happen at Simpson Wood, And right at
the top of the list last night that they committed
to was that it's about the primary purpose of the
(13:34):
park is the natural resources that are there at the park,
and so There was a lot of talk last night
about investing in the park to do things like to
restore the meadows. One of the meadows right now is
full of dirt and rock from the sewer project, which
the Department of Water Resources will remove, and then getting
that meadow back to what they call the Piedmont Prairie.
(13:56):
I guess it's the type of meadows that we have
here on the the southeastern part of the US the
so so that was big news. And in fact, they
used the word in perpetuity the conservation restrictions, and I
pushed again and they even said, well, we're eric we're
going to go even you know, be more restricted, even
(14:18):
than what that document says, Like that document says we
could have you could have theoretically have pickleball courts right
without lights, but you could have And they said, no,
we're not doing that. You could have mountain biking trails
under a conservation easement, and they said, no, we're not
doing mountain biking trails. And both the head of the
the the park planning process, as well as the director
(14:39):
of Gwinnette Parks himself, Chris Minor, was there and they
both publicly said no, this this is our commitment to
to this park, so that that was exciting. The other
things that they shared are in this the new plan.
They had in prior concepts they did have a dog
park area, like a you know, a fenced in two
acre area for dogs that that's not in the plan anymore.
(15:03):
There was a small overnight camping area which the church
had actually permitted camping and in a section for scout troops. Right,
that's been pulled out of the plan.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
They so there's no more, no more camping there at all.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Then, correct? Correct? Yeah, I don't know that's like immediately
an enforce but they're saying there the the concept plan
that they that they had shared last time had kept
there's sort of these ten little tent sites near some
near the front of the park off to the left,
so they've they've taken those out of the plan. The
(15:39):
other day, the in the concept drawings, there was going
to be there were going to be two multi use
trails and one which would go from like the center
parking area down to the river and back, and then
the other one there would be a loop around the
Great Lawn, the big meadow that's there today. And they've
they've taken that second one, the one around the Great
(16:02):
Meadow off the plan, there's still a path, but it's
not Their definition of multi use trail is a paved,
improved trail that someone in a wheelchair, stroller, a kid
on a pushbike, you know, could could use. So there's
only there's now down to one multi use trail, just
the loop that would go down to the river and
(16:23):
come back up sort of along the current road. And
if you've been Simpson, would you pass the chapel?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Are they going to improved I think there's a multi
trail or natural trail. There are two at one point
two miles or two miles. Are they going to keep
or improve those trails?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah? They talked about that alone. They had three categories
of trails. The first one what they would call multi use,
which is a paved asphalt or potentially concrete with a
maximum of five percent grade, right, so it's you know,
reasonable for a wheelchair user or something, or you know,
or pushing a stroller. Then they had what they called
(17:08):
accessible trails, which would be wherever possible natural surface there
might be. If it's steep or it's crossing a creek,
then there'd have to be a bridge. If it's steep,
they'd have to potentially do asphalt or concrete there because
of the erosion, right as people walk up down a
steep section. Sure, and that's what they called the accessible trails,
(17:29):
and then all the rest would what they called hiking trails,
would just be natural surface trails. But those trails would
still be intentionally laid out. Right, So what we have
today in the park is, you know, the Methodist Church
when they operate as a retreat center, they didn't necessarily
plan these trails, so they're sort of all you know, trails, right,
(17:52):
people just walk, I want to go that way, And
so you have some situations like you have trails like
right next to each other in pair, well you have
trails that go up a pretty steep section rather than
having like a little switch back. And so they would
come in and lay out those hiking trails and put signage,
and you know, you can if you want to, you
(18:13):
can go off trail and walk through the leaves. It's
not gonna They're not gonna be stopped there. One of
the things I asked about because I'd heard feedback from
my constituents in Revington, which is the neighborhood along the
north side is that there is a current amateur design
trail or just organically occurring trail that comes really close
(18:33):
to their homes, to their backyards, And so the county
committed that no, no, when we lay out the official trails,
there'd be a goal of one hundred one hundred and
fifty foot buffer between the trail and any any adjoining.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Residential That would make sense. Still, I would imagine there's
going to be because the bathrooms are really bad, I
think for even the Scouts to be using. So they
going to probably improve that, I would imagine, right.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, yeah, they would. The current facility is quite quite
old and comparison very poorly. I had a chance to
take a tour two saturdays ago with other members of
the committee and we went to some of the current
parks and yeah, the restrooms do not meet the Gwinette standard,
and so they would take that one down, replace it,
and then they would also add a second one down
(19:25):
towards the chapel. Actually look past the chapel. So if
you're down up the river and you need if you
have a young child and have a bathroom emergency, you
don't have to make it all the way up to
the to the front or even if you if you're
having an event to the chapel right now, if you're
it's quite a little walk, you just want to get
in a golf cart or get your car to go
use the restaurant.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
And I mean, yeah, I agree, and that's probably that's
a great idea to think about that holding events there.
That would make sense. They and they're adding also, I
would imagine they're adding some some additional parking because is
never enough parking for even the current use over there.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yes, what they talked about is, yeah, so when it
was a retreat center, there were over four hundred parking
spaces between the retreat center and the office building. Right
now they're about ninety depending on how you count, because
there's some gravel you know, that don't have areas that
don't have specific you know, line spots, right, So they
talked about three paved areas with thirty spaces approximately each
(20:25):
that would be ninety about the same as theirs now.
And then down near the chapelish area a overflow parking
area which would be just grassy like like hardened grass surface. Right,
you have to still be previous, right, and it would
if you had an event like the walk through Bethlehem
(20:45):
event that Methodist Church does every year, or you had
I mean, I was thinking, you know, it's a seventy
five seed chapel. If all of your guests come two
to a car, that's still thirty cars or thirty five cars, right,
and then plus the normal that ares on that day.
So anyway, so they ended up with about ninety paved
spaces and I think it was sixty unpaved.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
And that's that sounds reasonable.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Well, they still in total compared to the four hundred
that were there before.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Well, even the way it's split up and stuff makes
it's not all one big area. So that's that's better
looking and better use of the land. At that outcrops
overlooking the river. I think there were two planned. Is
that still part.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
They still show those? I mean I think what they've
I heard this back in twenty sixteen as well, serving
on that String committee, is that the purpose of the
of the overlooks is actually to protect the environment. And
so how does it protect the environment to build these
overlooks And the answer is, as humans, as soon as
we know there's water nearby, we want to go see it.
(21:52):
We want we can we want to go touch it.
We're is sort of instinctally drawn to do that. So
they know that if they don't provide these overlooks centry
outlets for that instinctual drive, people will push their way
through the through the you know, undergrowth, they'll try to
climb down the banks, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
So yeah, yeah, and that that happened that Jones Bridge Park.
I think that's why they eventually started years back putting
out crops and rocks and the steps leading into the
river and stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Right, and well, and what they've had to do at
Jones Bridge is they've fenced in certain areas to try
to let the bank recover, right because and we actually
saw this on our tour one of the little parking
lots we parked in and we were walking this way,
what what are this fencing around these trees and they
they said, well, we're trying to let these are new
trees here, and if we didn't fence them in, just
(22:44):
people walk where they People always take the shortest route
and as they thinking about what what what's happening to
the tree roots and and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
So any any other any surprises or anything additional or
something different from No.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I think it's pretty pretty everything that. Yeah, nothing new
added to the constant plans and more things, you know,
a shift in what I viewed as a shift in
focus about natural resource management, the restoration of the meadows,
better management of the forest. One of the things we
had learned was that about twenty years ago the there
(23:23):
was a pine bark beetle infestation in the park and
so the church actually clear cut some big sections of
trees if you're going down the center road along your right,
and then they didn't necessarily focus on forest management, so
it grew back as sort of dense scrub pines, which
actually now makes it more likely to have another pine
(23:44):
bark beetle infestation because the trees are so close together.
And so the ecologist who's on consulting with the park
system had made some recommendations about here's the type of
what a healthy forest looks like, and you know, the
mix of trees that you have and just a bunch
of scrub pines and a dense thicket is not an
(24:07):
ideal environment.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I got a Seque Parks has won quite a few
National Park awards, so and I was on the park
authority some years ago, but it doesn't seem to have
changed a lot. I mean, they do great work, so
I have all the respect for them.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, they mentioned last night that they had been up
for an award and they lost out to City of
Minneapolis Park System. And one of the where they got
dinged was that they didn't have a natural resource plan
as part of their planning process, specifically looking at trees
and vegetational and not that they weren't doing it, but
(24:48):
they didn't have it as a formal part of their
planning process. And so they they're doing that now for
Simpson Wood, and that they mentioned two other parks the names.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
So let's I mean that if I think that covered premium.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Just wrap it up. So what happens now, So three
more formal meetings of the steering committee between now in August.
So that and well, they're going to keep refining the plan.
What we're supposed to see next time is a more
refined version of this single concept plan. Then the next
one will see costs and which would then potentially say
(25:28):
here's how you're gonna have to phase it right, maybe
maybecause maybe the total plan is twelve million dollars or
something right to do all the things on the plan.
So here's how they would phase it in and then
the final instead who you know, who is approving this.
As you mentioned, it's a county park now a city park.
So this's go to the Gunnett Parks Recreation Authority. They
(25:48):
vote on the plan and then it goes to the
Board of Commissioners for final approval and funding.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Right, and we have two if it's the same, we
have two appointees from our commissioner that we're presents us on.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
That, Yeah, from District District one. Yeah, and there are
two there are two members one. Two of them are
from the park's authority, Eric Thigpenn, who's the current chair.
And then for her name, another woman who she actually
lives in Lawrenceville, so she's presently not a District one representative.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Yeah, so let's segue then into this. So there's another
park here in the city, Jones Bridge Park. I mean,
there's several besides these two, but so Jones Bridge Park
is another one that has had some issues. People are
a bit upset with things that go on there, sometimes
on all hours or even during the weekends, where garbage
(26:43):
is over running maybe or you know, it's just things
are happening to have any any.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Sure, Yeah, I think yeah. There's there's a group of
local residents who've formed I don't know they have an
official name. We'll call them the Friends of jones Bridge Park, right,
So they live near by or they enjoy the park,
and they had reached out and gotten in touch with
the park system, and so they've had a couple of
(27:09):
meetings at least two, and I think gotten a very
good response from both the park system and also win
At Police who's responsible for patrolling the parks, as well
as around city marshals who've helped out as well. And
so I attended a recent meeting of this jones Bridge Park,
(27:31):
a community meeting, and so one of the things that
I recall was, you know that there had been problems
with people parking outside of Dosney parking spaces right and
specifically there is actually a good amount of parking in
the park because if you go farther into the park,
up towards the soccer fields, there's parking there. But people
(27:52):
were just being a little lazy and saying I don't
want to go to the soccer fields, I want to
go to the river, So I'm just going to park
on the grass or pull over ull pull pop two
of my wheels up on the curb. So when at
police starting in July had gotten more aggressive about warning
and then towing, so they towed forty five cars since July,
(28:13):
although since October they've only had to tow two. So
the message seems to be getting out, you know, parking space.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Well, the weather is getting cooler and come the summer, that.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Could be right, a fewer people there the trash you know,
the county had committed to adding additional trash cans. You know,
rica when I when I go to a park or
any public space or even our town green and I
see an overflowing trash can, I don't see a problem
with citizens. I see a problem with the city or
the county that were not emptying that trash can right
(28:49):
because of it. What I see is that somebody tried
to bring their trash to the trash can, but it
was full and they presumably they didn't take it in
their car, you know, and so they put it next
to the trash can. So that says we either need
to empty them more often or we need to have
more of them. And that's not to say that as
in any park any public space. No, there certainly was.
(29:11):
Is trash not near trash cans down along the river
or something, and that's the you know the Yeah, sometimes
people treat public spaces differently than they do their their
personal spaces. Right. The other thing that the county had
committed to reacting to the you know, complaints about after
(29:34):
hours activity. All Gwnett parks close at dusk and the
so the county has has or is going to put
a cutoff timer on the power outlets in the pavilions
at Jones Bridge so that they you can't there's no
so there won't be power after after six pm or
(29:55):
literally a detect that is dust or something like that.
The other thing that the city had done as we
had installed a license plate reader camera on the road
that leading into jones Bridge Park and it's programmed to
if it sees a license sees a car, sees a
license plate after hours, it sends an alert to Gwinnett PDA.
(30:19):
And if if they have that maybe we can talk
about that a little bit. If they have an available officer,
that officer will respond that alert. And the major said
West Precinct commander had said that they had in the
since July, they had been to the park one hundred
and fifty times. Wow, so that's that's almost once a
(30:39):
day if service. So so that seemed to be working.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
That the were they going to do? I know someone
was asking about twenty four hour camera surveillance like in
in the park but.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
The part Yeah, so once again the city had offered
to subsidized purchased. You know, through our Curiosity Lab, we
have pretty good connections with vendors for and we don't
mind trialing new technology, and we'd help get cameras inside
the park at this meeting, and this might have been
resolved since that meeting, they were working on improving the
(31:18):
internet infrastructure and the power availability. But essentially what you
do is you replace like the top of one of
the street lights in the park with a new head
unit that's called which would have cameras. So the city
is still happy to help support that effort.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Okay, so yeah, these things progress. I mean, we could
always talk about it at another point, the city taking
over those parks and they become city parks. But then
again we'd have to stand up a parks department.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah yeah, because right now, you know, our staff eighth
whatever we're at right now. You know, we do I
think a pretty good job of managing the town green.
But yeah, that's you know, managing you know, a two
hundred and thirty acre park like Simpson Wood or Jones
Bridge is much smaller, but it has active playing fields
(32:09):
with I think you actually wrote an article about in
Pcburns magazine the Jones Bridge Football Club I think.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Right football inside as a soccer club, right.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
So there, you know, and maybe wrap it up in
our distinction with Simpson would Jones Bridges is certainly not
under a conservation easement. It's an active what they call
an active park with playing fields with lights, and you know,
it's in sort of a mini version of what we
have over at the Pinkneyvale Park right with futball fields,
and so there's a different experience for sure.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah, I mean, we have good parks around here. So
all right, let's let's move away a little bit from
the parks and let's get into let's talk a little
bit about what just recently got voted. Ones does this
trend of doing office conversions to apartments or hotels to
apartments or multi family So this one that you were
(33:08):
telling me just before we started the show that Gwenette
Housing Authority has taken over and will be managing. And
this is in an area by Jimmy Carter and p
Stree Boulevard. I have to stop from s.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, I introduced the resolution to change the names. I'm glad,
I'm glad to see you. Yeah. You know, after Chamberlye
and Doraville had changed Ptree Industrial Boulevard to p Stree
Boulevard and Georgia Department Transportation changed the signs on twenty five.
Now they just say p Ttrie Boulevard. So they said,
(33:45):
well we we, I said what we did, we need
to update the name as well. But yeah, so a
couple of years ago, six six years ago, the staff
was thinking ahead and they created a new convert option
in our residential code that would that would permit a
extended stay hotel to be converted into apartments through a
(34:10):
specific process. You know, normally residential and hotels you know,
different sections of the code. But we said as we
particularly unfortunately our friends to the east in the city
of Norcross have had some challenges with extended state hotels
that they essentially go down in quality, go down in
(34:32):
safety and security, and become a problem, and so that
the on Jimmy Carter Boulevard, just when you come off
Piecee Boulevard, there's a car wash there. There's the Crown
Sports Bar. Across the street from what I still think
it was the old La Fitness shopping center is there
are actually two extended state hotels just down a short
(34:53):
road and one of those particularly problematic regular visits be
from the police. And so the Gweneth Housing Authority said,
we'd be interested in purchasing that property, but we don't
want to run it as an extended stay hotel. Right,
extended stay hotels are you rent by the week. In
(35:14):
the it's a very tough environment for the people living
there because because it's a hotel, you don't have any
tenant rights, so you can be kicked out without notice
because you're a hotel resident, not a not a not
a lesser right or less ee, and and it creates
(35:35):
this challenging environment. And so they say, we want to
convert it into apartments which will be rented by the month,
by the year type of thing. And so they came
to staff. Staff worked with them on some conditions for
the property, one of which was that the total number
of units would stay the same seventy three units and
that they would do refurbishment and investment in it are
(35:59):
our order and it's actually says to do this conversion,
you have to put a washer and dryer in each
unit right to make it a true apartment. And they said,
these units are pretty small, there's already a central laundry facility,
and could we get a waiver from that one requirement
and that the staff recommended approval of that. So they
came afore City Council last Tuesday and they presented a
(36:22):
couple of questions. I asked, was you know, talk about
who are the target market for these apartments? And they
talked they said, as the housing authority, they have, you know,
specific objectives of what the type of housing they're trying
to provide. And so their target market is a twofold
it's young adults who've aged out of foster care are
(36:44):
no longer eligible to be part of the foster care system,
so that's eighteen to twenty four years old. And then
also seniors, so they have low income of fixed income
seniors who are struggling to find a safe place to
live and that they have some experience both here in Metrolana,
but in other states of having a mix of young
(37:06):
people and seniors creates this great synergy and so and
they also one of the questions that I also asked
was you know staff on site, right, and so they said, yep.
Of the seventy three units, two of them would be
for staff. One would be for a property manager, full
time property manager, we'd live on the property. And the
(37:26):
second would be for a case manager from the housing
authority who would provide you know, social services to both
of those. Those constituents are types of residents. And so
that that request passed unanimously, which sometimes when it comes
to the housing and the word apartments, we don't always
give unanimous votes on council. This one, I think everybody agreed.
(37:49):
Don't want to speak for my other council members, but
it certainly appeared to me that replacing a increasingly problematic
extended state hotel with apartments that would serve underserved communities.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Interesting interestingly enough, the other day, I forget who I
was speaking to, was someone in the police department, and
they were they were mentioning that that area of Jimmy
Carter and keep wanting to say, p I b at
least instead of like, yeah, so that that area, if
(38:28):
you take that as a and work your way out
as a circle, that is the higher crime area if
you will, moving out from that circle in this area.
And you mentioned that that was obviously an extended to
stay hotel, and there's one right next to it actually
as well. And these are the well, now that there's
(38:49):
one there, that's one of what three.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, there may be three left in the city after
after this one. And then there are a couple right
on our border, right, and people that always missing in
where piece of corner ends and Norcross starts right. And
you know, we're working to support City of Norcross as
well as they deal with these challenges. And I certainly
don't want to, you know, blame the residents of the
(39:12):
extended state community. And right before I started, you know,
we talked about that the City of Norcross happens to
have a housing authority and they had done a study
that actually gone and knocked on doors and said, hey,
how long have you been in an extended stay? Why
are you here? And they found different types of residents,
those that were families. One of the one of the
(39:35):
most common reasons they were in extended stay was not
that they didn't have jobs and couldn't afford apartment rent.
It's that they didn't have enough cash reserves to fund
the security deposit and the first month's rents call let's
call it two months rent. So giving that and so
like Norcross is looking at creating a may have already
(39:55):
done so a grant program to say, hey, if we
can get you in an apartment, if you got a job,
you're going to pass the background check at the apartment.
That sort of thing will help, you know, give you
the table stakes to get into the inspartment.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
And that's a great idea. And that's that's yeah, that's
really a good idea. It's like someone like a business
owner investing in their property to a degree and then
but they're operating. Operating funds could handle the operation, but
maybe they can't pay off the debt. And that's that's
how that feels like to me, you want to be
able to do it. You can, you can expend, you
(40:31):
can pay for it, but it's getting over that hurdle.
So right right, the before we get to to I
know you have limited time, so I just want to
make sure we cover Also the next thing, which is
the upcoming elections, right, you're running for re election and
Post four as an out lord seat.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
No too, I know, I'm I'm district too. I'm post
to district two. Four is four as council member, just okay,
and six is councilor rat Wick. So yes, yeah, this November.
This November, we have city elections. So we have elections
(41:13):
every you know, there's seven of us on council, the
mayor plus the six council seats. Half of us plus
the mayor are elected in one two years in one cycle,
and then the other three seats are elected two years later.
And so we call that sort of are big and
our small election, all right, because one is four seats
(41:35):
the mayor plus three and one is one is three.
So this year it's the small election. So Posts two,
four and six will be up for re election. The
election is, like you know, every election, the first Tuesday
in November, so November fourth. And one interesting thing about
(41:55):
this year's election is because our city elections and the
odd years, we don't normally have other county wide elections
happening at the same time, right, because the presidential election
is in the even years, and then the midterms are
in between that that's an even year, as well as
argument editorial and our state legislative elections. But every now
(42:20):
and then the county has an election in an odd year,
and it could be something like in twenty fifteen there
was the most recent Board of Education splossed. This year
there actually will be a county wide election because of
a state mandate that it's finally time to have some
elections for the Public Service Commission. There was some litigation
(42:42):
over the PSC and so elections were delayed, but two
of the seats on the Public Service Commission will be
on the bout this November. So on November fourth, there
will be at least two elections the PSC, and if
you live in a city here in Gwinnad, there'll be
city elections and a personal, you know, pet peeve of
(43:05):
mine has been the fact that when that happens, that
we have to go to two different places to vote yes.
And the reason is that Gwinnette in contrast to all
the other counties in the metro Atlanta area, and in
fact I haven't been able to identify a single county
in Georgia other than Gwenette, who doesn't offer the cities
(43:26):
inside the county the option of combining elections. And this
I've been working on this project a long long time
is when I started this. After that, actually back in
twenty sixteen, when I first ran, I was in a
special election in an even year. I was in twenty sixteen,
and so to vote vote in my election you had
(43:46):
to go to two places in May of twenty sixteen.
So I said, this is done. And first I was told, well,
the Board of Elections has a policy against providing city
elections services. So I went to the Board Elections and
lobbied them and said, this is dumb. And so I
got them to rescind that policy. And so now here
(44:08):
in twenty twenty five, this is the first time since
twenty thirteen, so that for the city of PG Corners
that on the same day as our city election, that
will be a county wide election. And so what we're
asking the county now to do is please just tell
us what the cost would be if we were to
(44:29):
tag along on your election. You already have to have
you already have to open up alle hundred and fifty
six polling places. You already have to have your three
weeks of early voting. We know it's an electronic you
know ballot that can when Rico walks in, it can
say hey, Rico. In addition the psc because you live
in phgre corners, I'm going to show you these additional
(44:50):
you know, races. And we know they can do it, Rico,
because in twenty thirteen, twelve years ago, that was still
during our two year transition period with the county, when
we first became a city, they did this exact thing
for us. We had our twenty thirteen council elections and
we even had a referendum about this tax allocation districts
(45:12):
that people vote voted for, So we know they can
do it. They just right now have been sort of
dragging their feet on telling us what it would cost
for us to hire them to manage urla.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
How many precincts are in the City of Peace three corners.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Yeah, so if you look at the county precincts, because
they when they were the lines were drawn, they didn't
that predates the city existing. So it's eleven or twelve,
of which nine, if I were caall correctly, eight or
nine are wholly inside the city. Right, So every voter
at that polling place, like the Good Age Building in
(45:48):
Jones grid Park is a resident of the city of
p Corners and then the other three are are split.
But which they already know how to do this, that
they have other precincts where they have sure some of
the people vote in some states house race and some
people don't, and the commuter system takes care of that.
It just I mean when you log in or when
(46:09):
you log in, when you check in, and.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
I can't imagine. I mean it courts us what.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
fIF we generally budget fifty dollars. Yeah, our Kim Cheroke,
our city clerk, does a great job. She comes in
below that. But it's also just the the confusion and
the inconvenience because what's happened. People are going to for
the PSC somebody's upset about their electrical bill. The Public
(46:36):
Service Commission regulates Georgia Power and other electrical monopolies. That's
their primary function. So they're going to go vote early,
let's say, over at Tinkneville Community Center, and then they're
not going to see the city races on there and
they're gonna and then they go, I don't want you
have to do this again. What or they're going to
come to city hall on election day vote in the
(46:59):
city races, because you're gonna have local candidates trying to
get the vote out, and then they're gonna the psc thing. Well,
you're gonna you're gonna have to go to pg Elementary,
You're gonna you're gonna have to go to PCBC, and
they're gonna go, well, I gotta go to work. I don't.
I don't got time to do that.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
And well, no, I agree. I mean even under fifty thousand,
I mean, how much can it possibly cross the county
to add for what we're talking about when they already
have the precincts in place, everything's in place. They just
have to Really, it's almost a programming, it is.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
It's literally just programming to say, if voter, you know,
reside in Pgree Corners, then show these races on the
ballot here. And we know from twenty thirteen Rico, the
last time this exact situation happened, they charged us thirty
five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (47:50):
There you go, okay, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Let add some inflation in there. So okay, it's fifty k,
even if it's more, even if it's sixty even then
it's more than that. We theoretic it's still from Eric's
point of view, that's still the right thing to do
for the voters.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah, you know, I totally agree, and I'm glad that
you did that because I mean, that's I always thought
that that it was stupid to to have to do that,
to go to two different places, and not just the
the the the pain of doing that, if you will,
but it's almost undemocratic because it forces it forces the
(48:29):
well intentioned voter to have to go to two places,
and not everyone is like that, right, So you end
up this enfranchised and quite a few people, you know,
by by by forcing them to split up and making choices. Now,
granted this early voting, but we don't have early voting
(48:50):
in the city. You vote on that day, right, I
mean there's.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Absence now the last couple elections, we'd have had a
smaller period of election voting. But is generally because our
city clerk chief, and this is one of the reason
why she's been ab what keeps the costs low is
that we're open from like nine to six, right, We're
not open seven eight, seven pm. You know when the
county does it, they and I love what they do
there is you know, they're open for like twenty straight days,
(49:15):
Saturdays included at seven am to seven pm, so you
don't have to remember because everybody knows election day. But
also for the cities in Gwinette, we do have a
few cities in Gwinnette who do hire a county to
manage their election. But those are cities who go in
who cross the boundary. So like the city of Auburn,
which is in northern Ginnette, is partially in Walton County,
(49:38):
so they hire Walton County to manage their elections. And
Walton is much much smaller than Gwinette, but they say, sure,
we're happy to do that. It reminds me if I
never called back. In twenty eighteen, we had a city
special election to vote on something called the Brunch Bill.
This was about whether restaurants could serve alcohol before new
(50:01):
and so for us did and we we just the
first opportunity to do that was in twenty eighteen, but
our next scheduled election wasn't until you know, November twenty nineteen.
But we as a council said we don't want to
wait because we don't want our restaurants to be at
a disadvantage here. You know, if John's Creek does it
then and there's people want their mimosa or they're bloody
(50:21):
mary at you know, eleven thirty in the morning. So
we said we're going to go ahead and do the election.
So what we had to do our city clerk had
to you know, get the polling place, which yes, is
our community chess room, hire the poll workers, advertise the election,
all that just to ask this with a single yes
or no question. So she did all that. We held
(50:41):
the election, cost us about eight twenty thousand dollars and
we had four percent turnout. You go, four percent of
the people in the city came out. The city of
John's Creek did the exact same thing on the same day.
But all they had to do they picked up the phone,
they called Fulton County and they said, run our election.
(51:03):
And Fulton County did everything else. They had sixty four
percent turnout participation in their brunch bill. And then here
to add insult to injury, Gwinnette County for the unincorporated
parts of Gwinnett. Right, So, because only twenty percent of
the inside a city, they also had to hold the
brunch bill referendum. They did it on the same day
(51:26):
as ours and they had fifty five percent participation across
the county, but they wouldn't they wouldn't add ours to
their ballot back in twenty eighteen. So I'm I'm pretty
hard on this issue. I got the council unanimously endorsed
the resolution that I had drafted that call on the
(51:46):
called on the county. All we're asking for right now
is please give us an estimate of the cost. State
law already allows us to hand over our election management
responsibilities to a county. State law already midst this. But
we said for us to decide whether we need to
do that. You know, like, because I don't know the
county comes back and says it's three hundred thousand dollars,
(52:09):
why they would come and no, but let's just say
they did, right, we might say whoa nor I said,
if they come back anywhere you're close to fifty thousand,
then I think there would be you know, I'm something
gonna argue passionately. I wish that we should find the elections.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
I'm totally behind you on that one. Yeah, So I
don't even see that there should be an argument on
that part.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
We're trying to figure out because like as I said,
I researched this every single county around us. In Little
Hall County, I guess that little more, you know, to
our north they offer it. The city of Gainesville Dunwoodie
to our west runs the elections.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
How late do they do they have until? Well, how
late do we have until they have to until?
Speaker 4 (52:57):
Yeah, we saw some time the the the biggest stumbling
block is we have to update your official voting right
so right now, if you look at your voter registration card,
it says for you know, federal and state elections you vote.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
At like for me, I vote at Ptre Elementary School,
but it says for city elections, I vote at city Hall.
So legally we have to tell people update your voter,
your voter registrate, your polling place and so. And there's
a postcard that gets mailed out when that happens. So
the elections and no number fourth early voting if we
(53:36):
piggy back on the county and they do three weeks
of early voting, so yeah, we need to decide probably
with the next you know, forty five days or so.
It's just just to get because what would happen is
the county comes back with a cost estimate we then
also have negotiating an agreement with them, you know, like
in the cab for their cities, like they say, we're
(54:00):
we'll run your elections for you, but we don't want
to do the candidate qualification piece. That's where you show
up at city hall, you sign a form, you write
a check, and our clerk. So no, that's perfectly fine.
She already has to do that today, so that that's
not a problem at all. And the other thing, like
those agreements say, is if there's a lawsuit over this election,
(54:20):
the city has to be the one to you know,
to bear the burden of that lawsuit and our answers.
Of course, that's fine. You know, it's our election. We're
just hiring you to run it, right If somebody wants
to sue over it, yeah, well we'll take the lawsuit. Yeah,
that's that's perfectly fine. So get a cost estimate, get
(54:42):
a contract, and there's, as I said, with lots and
lots of other counties doing this, there's lots of examples
of how to do that and then move forward and
get it done so that when people show up in
November they can go to one place.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
Excellent, Eric, you're spending your time with us. Derry Christ,
he's a city council in post two right, running for
re election. You know, chat GPT just got that information wrong.
I was being a little lazy and I used chance that.
Speaker 1 (55:20):
Yeah, we'll have you know, so for city elections, we
don't have primaries, right, so that everything happened for us.
The candidates will qualify you in August. That's when you
officially become a candidate for re election.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
Because it's a non partisan race.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
That's correat. Yeah, we don't run with party labels. A
few big, big cities like Atlanta have run partisan elections,
but of five and thirty eight cities in Georgia, the
vast majority are non partisan elections.
Speaker 3 (55:51):
Well, we've been speaking to Eric Christ. Thank you, Eric,
appreciate you sharing the information on Simpsonwood Park, on the
elections and all these things. There's definitely gonna be a
lot of stuff to talk about over the next three
months four months that's going to be coming up. So
I'm sure we'll have you back again at some point
to talk about a bit about some of these things.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
Sure, you always have to do it.
Speaker 3 (56:14):
Yeah, appreciate it. I want to say thank you also
to Ev Remodeling, Inc. And to Vox Popular Life for
being supporters not just of these podcasts, which includes this
Prime lunch Time with City Manager and Urban abb but
also of Peatrecorna's magazine in Southwest Winette Magazines. So appreciate
them supporting us our journalism and the ability to put
(56:36):
out this stuff. And just you know, listen, we've been
doing this. I've been doing this for seven years and nothing.
You know, things just get more complicated as we go
and having media out there to be able to bring
people like Eric on to explain things is really important
to do that. So if you found this podcast, whether
(56:57):
it's video or audio, whether you found it on the
spot fi on YouTube, please share it with your friends
that live here in the city. Let them know what
we're doing and let them know what's going on. So
thank you again, Eric, appreciate it. Appreciate you. Let me
one more thing. I guess if anyone wants to sign
on to your really really good newsletter. I love your newsletter.
(57:20):
You give your opinions on things, you share all sorts
of stuff going on. Tell them where to find that
and how to subscribe to it.
Speaker 1 (57:28):
Yeah, the simplest thing to do is is because the
URLs will complicated for the mailchamp sign up for and
if you go to my Christopher City Council Facebook page,
it's a pinned link on that page is probably the easiest,
easiest way to direct people.
Speaker 3 (57:43):
And they can find that by searching as a vote for.
Speaker 1 (57:47):
Christ Well, yeah, just in Facebook Christopher City Council. We'll
take take you there. Yeah cool, yep, all.
Speaker 3 (57:55):
Right, hang in there with me for a minute. Everyone else,
Thank you again, leave your reviews, your comments. There'll be
links in the show notes as well. Funny for most
of what we've discussed. Some check that out.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Thanks for listening to Peachtree Corner's Life with Rico Figliolini.
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(58:32):
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(58:54):
show at the Capitalistsage dot com.
And so this time Simpson Wood is a Tier one project, okay,
and they have ear marked eight million dollars.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
You're listening to Peachtree Corner's Life, a podcast sharing ideas, opinions,
and news about the city of Peachtree Corners, the community
we live in and the people that are your neighbors.
Now your host, Rico Figliolini.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Hi, everyone, This is Rico Figliolini, host the Peachree Corner's
Life here in our little smart city just north of Atlanta,
and I have a great guest today, Eric christ who's
city Count's person at large. Hey, Eric, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Great to be here, Rico, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Yep. We're going to be discussing quite a few things,
so stick around. But before we get into it, I
just want to say thank you to two of our sponsors.
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(01:10):
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(01:32):
and employees are considered family as well, and they do
anything you can think of that deals with imprinting to anything,
whether it's a car wrap and they've done over think
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(01:54):
they'll they'll come through. So check them out of voxpopuli
dot com or link in the show notes as well. So, Eric,
it's been a while since we've had our had an
interview here.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, it's not been a little while, recur, but great
to be here and glad to talk about whatever you
think is on the mind of folks here at Beatry Corners.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
You know, there's so much going on it's ridiculous. So
but you know, let's let's start off with the thing
from last night. There was a meeting last night about
Simpson Wood Park. But that's been There's been a lot
of talk about it about what should be done with
that park, even though there was a master plant some
years ago when it was first bought that was surveyed
(02:33):
and put together but never executed. But that'splos money I
believe still sits there.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Well, yeah, so they back, Yeah, let's let's take a
quick step back, just in case that people aren't familiar.
So what's now known as Simpson Would Park was obviously,
for many years since the seventies, owned by the Methodist Conference,
and they operated a retreat center there and various different
and they had an office building and all sorts of things,
and they just sided that they didn't want to be
(03:01):
in the retreat center business anymore, and so they sold
the property in twenty fifteen to the county and as
a park. And so yeah, they went through a master
planning exercise to say, hey, here's the buildings on the
property today, here's what we envisioned, hiking trails, modern bathroom facilities,
(03:23):
and other types of park type features.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
And for people that may not remember, there was literally
a resort hotel almost.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
There were oh yeah, yeah, tell you it was quite
an operation. One hundred and seventy hotel rooms. They had
a dining hall that could feed three hundred and fifty people,
had a pop They had twenty thousand square feet of
meeting space. They had a three story office building which
served as the offices for the North Georgia Conference of
the United Methodist Church. That's where the bishop of that
(03:52):
conference had his offices or offices, and four hundred parking spaces.
At one point they had an RV campground. Yeah, they
had a ropes course, they had there was there was
a they permitted overnight camping by like local Scout troops,
you know, that a lot of different end While it
(04:14):
was their private property, they did permit people to you know,
come onto the property and use it in a sense
like a park, right, so you could walk your dog
in there. You could come and just stroll through the
grounds during you know, sunrise to sunset type of hours.
But they did that. They didn't have to do that.
They could have had you know, a gate at the
(04:34):
front and said no, this is the simps Wood Retreat
Center and unless you you're there to do you know,
to stay at the retreat center, attendant event, you know
that type of thing.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Well, and most of that, if not all of it,
has been removed I mean all the structures have been
removed the parking space pretty much.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
I mean a couple of things that that are still
there that then the Methods Conference had built were one
a chapel. There's a a seventy five seat chapel. There's
there was a there was a there's a large pavilion
and a volleyball court and a single bathroom facility. Otherwise,
(05:12):
pretty much all of the buildings are gone. There's a
there's a maintenance shed that still exists back in the
woods that the county uses. And then there's a there
is another tenant back there which is causing a little
bit of disruption right now, which is the Department of
Water Resources has their Wolf Creek pump station and and
they're in the midst of upgrading the sewer line that
(05:34):
runs to that to that pump station.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
How many and how many actors are there?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Two hundred and twenty seven acres seven acres.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
And the chapel is still being used as Gwinnett Park
as a rental for wedding right.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, yeah, I just actually posted on my Facebook page yesterday.
I happened to be on the website looking at it.
If Gwinnette Park in addition to people don't know, you
can rent their pavilions. You can reserve a pavilion for
a birthday party or something like that. But they also
have what they call premiere facilities at some of their parks,
like pinnevill Community Center is falls under the Gwinnett Park system,
(06:12):
so that's off of you know, P Street Boulevard, and
you can rent space there. But yeah, you can rent
the chapel for weddings, vow renewals, anything, there's no you know,
it doesn't have to be for a wedding or a
religious service. So you can rent the chapel. You can
rent the grounds which has a small gazebo if you
(06:32):
want to do something outdoors, or you can rent both
for a fairly reasonable fee. It's like one hundred and
twenty five dollars an hour.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yeah, I was going to say a sad expensive in
this coin.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So that's we're saying. So they did that master planning.
It was on the So we had a sploss that
we voted all voted on back in twenty seventeen and
they put this the improvements to Simpson Wood on the list.
But they put it in what they called Tier two
and what that meant was Tier two projects only get
funded if they first fund all the Tier one projects,
(07:08):
and they didn't, so they the amount of money that's raised,
or maybe those projects you know, got more expensive. There
wasn't any funding available for tier two projects. So then
in twenty twenty three we've had an or twenty six years. Yeah,
twenty twenty three, we had another SPLOST, which are running
(07:29):
for the next six years. And so this time Simpson
Wood is a Tier one project and they have earmarked
eight million dollars from the current SPLOST current the sales
tax towards enhancements to Simpson Wood. And so the county
I think it was a good move to say, hey,
(07:51):
it's twenty twenty four when this process started. We built
that original plan eight years earlier in twenty sixteen, let's
dust it off and go through a planning process again
to see if things have changed, you know, what other
things people would like to see in the park, and
(08:11):
the thinking even a you know, good like last time.
There are lots of discussion around should there be a
fenced in dog park type area inside the park or not? Right,
so they say, we want we want to get more
input on those types of questions. So they've embarked on
a about a year long planning process. We're just about
halfway through and it'll wrap up in August of this
(08:36):
year with a final plan. So so last night it
was like the third of six meetings to look at
different plans.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
So the lot of people that make up the the committee,
I guess, isn't there.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah. What they did was yes, So same thing they've
done back in twenty sixteen. They got a steering committee together,
primarily nearby residents, and so they did the same thing
again this time. First they asked people who had been
on the committee in twenty sixteen, Hey, did you want
to do this again, and about half of those folks
(09:14):
said sure, Like one of my neighbors here in Neely
Farm said who was on the committee, then said said yeah.
They then asked the city a piece of corners, you know,
and I volunteered or didn't step back fast enough.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Now they need a good rep on there. That's good.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And then they solicited and you know, they said, hey,
Sentuent Methodist Church, do you want to have somebody on
the committee, so sort of local organization representatives, and then
they opened it up to the general public. They had
a big community meeting at Simpsonwood Methodist Church and took
applications from people you could have send you know, you
(09:52):
could just applied by email. They took all of those
applications and they said, well, one, we can't have a
committee of like sixty people. That's not not practical. And
they also said, we you know, we want a variety
of members, but concentrated here in PC Corner. So of
the thirty one committee members, twenty seven are P Corner's residents.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
That's that's actually very good considering it's a county park, right,
not a city park. Right, maybe one day it could
be a city park, but not.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Well, I think, yeah, we do have in a sense.
I don't think the town Green is our city park today, right,
you know, and it has many of the same elements,
you know, has a playground, a law stage, bathrooms, you know,
trash cans that have to be emptied, all those kinds
of kinds of things. So yeah, So what they did
(10:49):
tonight was they the prior meeting, about six weeks ago,
they had presented three concept plans, three different maps, and
eat was slightly different. And so based on the feedback
of the committee provided last time they merged all that
into a single a single map and said, hey, what
(11:10):
do we think about this? It's still not that they
didn't even call it a preliminary plan. There's there's still
two more stages to go. They they said, we took
all your feedback and we we fitted in here.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
And so if can you say was left was left
in that map or what is the version at the highlights?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Sure? Yeah, yeah, A couple of things come to mind.
I think you know the first thing, you know, what
I think was big news coming out of last night
was and I I sort of prompted this because I
pushed them on it is that a commitment by the
county to keep the park natural and specifically to be
(11:53):
stay within the constraints of the conservation easement. So when
they bought the park, there wasn't any if you will underline,
overarching boundaries or limits on what the park could be. Right,
so you could have had playing fields with lights and
that sort of thing. Sure, but the steering committee back
(12:16):
in twenty sixteen pushed hard to say we need to
put what's called a conservation easement, which an easement is
a restriction placed on land. And so in twenty twenty
the Border Commissioners, when Border Commissioners voted unanimously to put
a conservation easement on the land. And it's what it
says is one, the land can only ever be used
(12:37):
as a park for the general public, so it can't
be developed into houses or used for commercial property. And
then it also limits the types of things that you
could do at this park, like it can't have active
playing fields. You can have a meadow or you run
around and toss a frisbee, but it can't have soccer fields.
It can't have lights, you know, lighted playing field. So
(13:01):
for example, there's a volleyball court there today and you
could have you can keep that can stay there, but
you can't add lights to it, right, So, and.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
That's in respect to the residential area around that podcast.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, yeah, I think that that was based on feedback. Also.
I think the other thing that we pushed them on
for the conservationment was the priorities for the things that
are going to happen at Simpson Wood, And right at
the top of the list last night that they committed
to was that it's about the primary purpose of the
(13:34):
park is the natural resources that are there at the park,
and so There was a lot of talk last night
about investing in the park to do things like to
restore the meadows. One of the meadows right now is
full of dirt and rock from the sewer project, which
the Department of Water Resources will remove, and then getting
that meadow back to what they call the Piedmont Prairie.
(13:56):
I guess it's the type of meadows that we have
here on the the southeastern part of the US the
so so that was big news. And in fact, they
used the word in perpetuity the conservation restrictions, and I
pushed again and they even said, well, we're eric we're
going to go even you know, be more restricted, even
(14:18):
than what that document says, Like that document says we
could have you could have theoretically have pickleball courts right
without lights, but you could have And they said, no,
we're not doing that. You could have mountain biking trails
under a conservation easement, and they said, no, we're not
doing mountain biking trails. And both the head of the
the the park planning process, as well as the director
(14:39):
of Gwinnette Parks himself, Chris Minor, was there and they
both publicly said no, this this is our commitment to
to this park, so that that was exciting. The other
things that they shared are in this the new plan.
They had in prior concepts they did have a dog
park area, like a you know, a fenced in two
acre area for dogs that that's not in the plan anymore.
(15:03):
There was a small overnight camping area which the church
had actually permitted camping and in a section for scout troops. Right,
that's been pulled out of the plan.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
They so there's no more, no more camping there at all.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Then, correct? Correct? Yeah, I don't know that's like immediately
an enforce but they're saying there the the concept plan
that they that they had shared last time had kept
there's sort of these ten little tent sites near some
near the front of the park off to the left,
so they've they've taken those out of the plan. The
(15:39):
other day, the in the concept drawings, there was going
to be there were going to be two multi use
trails and one which would go from like the center
parking area down to the river and back, and then
the other one there would be a loop around the
Great Lawn, the big meadow that's there today. And they've
they've taken that second one, the one around the Great
(16:02):
Meadow off the plan, there's still a path, but it's
not Their definition of multi use trail is a paved,
improved trail that someone in a wheelchair, stroller, a kid
on a pushbike, you know, could could use. So there's
only there's now down to one multi use trail, just
the loop that would go down to the river and
(16:23):
come back up sort of along the current road. And
if you've been Simpson, would you pass the chapel?
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Are they going to improved I think there's a multi
trail or natural trail. There are two at one point
two miles or two miles. Are they going to keep
or improve those trails?
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah? They talked about that alone. They had three categories
of trails. The first one what they would call multi use,
which is a paved asphalt or potentially concrete with a
maximum of five percent grade, right, so it's you know,
reasonable for a wheelchair user or something, or you know,
or pushing a stroller. Then they had what they called
(17:08):
accessible trails, which would be wherever possible natural surface there
might be. If it's steep or it's crossing a creek,
then there'd have to be a bridge. If it's steep,
they'd have to potentially do asphalt or concrete there because
of the erosion, right as people walk up down a
steep section. Sure, and that's what they called the accessible trails,
(17:29):
and then all the rest would what they called hiking trails,
would just be natural surface trails. But those trails would
still be intentionally laid out. Right, So what we have
today in the park is, you know, the Methodist Church
when they operate as a retreat center, they didn't necessarily
plan these trails, so they're sort of all you know, trails, right,
(17:52):
people just walk, I want to go that way, And
so you have some situations like you have trails like
right next to each other in pair, well you have
trails that go up a pretty steep section rather than
having like a little switch back. And so they would
come in and lay out those hiking trails and put signage,
and you know, you can if you want to, you
(18:13):
can go off trail and walk through the leaves. It's
not gonna They're not gonna be stopped there. One of
the things I asked about because I'd heard feedback from
my constituents in Revington, which is the neighborhood along the
north side is that there is a current amateur design
trail or just organically occurring trail that comes really close
(18:33):
to their homes, to their backyards, And so the county
committed that no, no, when we lay out the official trails,
there'd be a goal of one hundred one hundred and
fifty foot buffer between the trail and any any adjoining.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Residential That would make sense. Still, I would imagine there's
going to be because the bathrooms are really bad, I
think for even the Scouts to be using. So they
going to probably improve that, I would imagine, right.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, yeah, they would. The current facility is quite quite
old and comparison very poorly. I had a chance to
take a tour two saturdays ago with other members of
the committee and we went to some of the current
parks and yeah, the restrooms do not meet the Gwinette standard,
and so they would take that one down, replace it,
and then they would also add a second one down
(19:25):
towards the chapel. Actually look past the chapel. So if
you're down up the river and you need if you
have a young child and have a bathroom emergency, you
don't have to make it all the way up to
the to the front or even if you if you're
having an event to the chapel right now, if you're
it's quite a little walk, you just want to get
in a golf cart or get your car to go
use the restaurant.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
And I mean, yeah, I agree, and that's probably that's
a great idea to think about that holding events there.
That would make sense. They and they're adding also, I
would imagine they're adding some some additional parking because is
never enough parking for even the current use over there.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yes, what they talked about is, yeah, so when it
was a retreat center, there were over four hundred parking
spaces between the retreat center and the office building. Right
now they're about ninety depending on how you count, because
there's some gravel you know, that don't have areas that
don't have specific you know, line spots, right, So they
talked about three paved areas with thirty spaces approximately each
(20:25):
that would be ninety about the same as theirs now.
And then down near the chapelish area a overflow parking
area which would be just grassy like like hardened grass surface. Right,
you have to still be previous, right, and it would
if you had an event like the walk through Bethlehem
(20:45):
event that Methodist Church does every year, or you had
I mean, I was thinking, you know, it's a seventy
five seed chapel. If all of your guests come two
to a car, that's still thirty cars or thirty five cars, right,
and then plus the normal that ares on that day.
So anyway, so they ended up with about ninety paved
spaces and I think it was sixty unpaved.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
And that's that sounds reasonable.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Well, they still in total compared to the four hundred
that were there before.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Well, even the way it's split up and stuff makes
it's not all one big area. So that's that's better
looking and better use of the land. At that outcrops
overlooking the river. I think there were two planned. Is
that still part.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
They still show those? I mean I think what they've
I heard this back in twenty sixteen as well, serving
on that String committee, is that the purpose of the
of the overlooks is actually to protect the environment. And
so how does it protect the environment to build these
overlooks And the answer is, as humans, as soon as
we know there's water nearby, we want to go see it.
(21:52):
We want we can we want to go touch it.
We're is sort of instinctally drawn to do that. So
they know that if they don't provide these overlooks centry
outlets for that instinctual drive, people will push their way
through the through the you know, undergrowth, they'll try to
climb down the banks, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
So yeah, yeah, and that that happened that Jones Bridge Park.
I think that's why they eventually started years back putting
out crops and rocks and the steps leading into the
river and stuff.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Right, and well, and what they've had to do at
Jones Bridge is they've fenced in certain areas to try
to let the bank recover, right because and we actually
saw this on our tour one of the little parking
lots we parked in and we were walking this way,
what what are this fencing around these trees and they
they said, well, we're trying to let these are new
trees here, and if we didn't fence them in, just
(22:44):
people walk where they People always take the shortest route
and as they thinking about what what what's happening to
the tree roots and and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
So any any other any surprises or anything additional or
something different from No.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I think it's pretty pretty everything that. Yeah, nothing new
added to the constant plans and more things, you know,
a shift in what I viewed as a shift in
focus about natural resource management, the restoration of the meadows,
better management of the forest. One of the things we
had learned was that about twenty years ago the there
(23:23):
was a pine bark beetle infestation in the park and
so the church actually clear cut some big sections of
trees if you're going down the center road along your right,
and then they didn't necessarily focus on forest management, so
it grew back as sort of dense scrub pines, which
actually now makes it more likely to have another pine
(23:44):
bark beetle infestation because the trees are so close together.
And so the ecologist who's on consulting with the park
system had made some recommendations about here's the type of
what a healthy forest looks like, and you know, the
mix of trees that you have and just a bunch
of scrub pines and a dense thicket is not an
(24:07):
ideal environment.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I got a Seque Parks has won quite a few
National Park awards, so and I was on the park
authority some years ago, but it doesn't seem to have
changed a lot. I mean, they do great work, so
I have all the respect for them.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, they mentioned last night that they had been up
for an award and they lost out to City of
Minneapolis Park System. And one of the where they got
dinged was that they didn't have a natural resource plan
as part of their planning process, specifically looking at trees
and vegetational and not that they weren't doing it, but
(24:48):
they didn't have it as a formal part of their
planning process. And so they they're doing that now for
Simpson Wood, and that they mentioned two other parks the names.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
So let's I mean that if I think that covered premium.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Just wrap it up. So what happens now, So three
more formal meetings of the steering committee between now in August.
So that and well, they're going to keep refining the plan.
What we're supposed to see next time is a more
refined version of this single concept plan. Then the next
one will see costs and which would then potentially say
(25:28):
here's how you're gonna have to phase it right, maybe
maybecause maybe the total plan is twelve million dollars or
something right to do all the things on the plan.
So here's how they would phase it in and then
the final instead who you know, who is approving this.
As you mentioned, it's a county park now a city park.
So this's go to the Gunnett Parks Recreation Authority. They
(25:48):
vote on the plan and then it goes to the
Board of Commissioners for final approval and funding.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Right, and we have two if it's the same, we
have two appointees from our commissioner that we're presents us on.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
That, Yeah, from District District one. Yeah, and there are
two there are two members one. Two of them are
from the park's authority, Eric Thigpenn, who's the current chair.
And then for her name, another woman who she actually
lives in Lawrenceville, so she's presently not a District one representative.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Yeah, so let's segue then into this. So there's another
park here in the city, Jones Bridge Park. I mean,
there's several besides these two, but so Jones Bridge Park
is another one that has had some issues. People are
a bit upset with things that go on there, sometimes
on all hours or even during the weekends, where garbage
(26:43):
is over running maybe or you know, it's just things
are happening to have any any.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Sure, Yeah, I think yeah. There's there's a group of
local residents who've formed I don't know they have an
official name. We'll call them the Friends of jones Bridge Park, right,
So they live near by or they enjoy the park,
and they had reached out and gotten in touch with
the park system, and so they've had a couple of
(27:09):
meetings at least two, and I think gotten a very
good response from both the park system and also win
At Police who's responsible for patrolling the parks, as well
as around city marshals who've helped out as well. And
so I attended a recent meeting of this jones Bridge Park,
(27:31):
a community meeting, and so one of the things that
I recall was, you know that there had been problems
with people parking outside of Dosney parking spaces right and
specifically there is actually a good amount of parking in
the park because if you go farther into the park,
up towards the soccer fields, there's parking there. But people
(27:52):
were just being a little lazy and saying I don't
want to go to the soccer fields, I want to
go to the river, So I'm just going to park
on the grass or pull over ull pull pop two
of my wheels up on the curb. So when at
police starting in July had gotten more aggressive about warning
and then towing, so they towed forty five cars since July,
(28:13):
although since October they've only had to tow two. So
the message seems to be getting out, you know, parking space.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Well, the weather is getting cooler and come the summer, that.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Could be right, a fewer people there the trash you know,
the county had committed to adding additional trash cans. You know,
rica when I when I go to a park or
any public space or even our town green and I
see an overflowing trash can, I don't see a problem
with citizens. I see a problem with the city or
the county that were not emptying that trash can right
(28:49):
because of it. What I see is that somebody tried
to bring their trash to the trash can, but it
was full and they presumably they didn't take it in
their car, you know, and so they put it next
to the trash can. So that says we either need
to empty them more often or we need to have
more of them. And that's not to say that as
in any park any public space. No, there certainly was.
(29:11):
Is trash not near trash cans down along the river
or something, and that's the you know the Yeah, sometimes
people treat public spaces differently than they do their their
personal spaces. Right. The other thing that the county had
committed to reacting to the you know, complaints about after
(29:34):
hours activity. All Gwnett parks close at dusk and the
so the county has has or is going to put
a cutoff timer on the power outlets in the pavilions
at Jones Bridge so that they you can't there's no
so there won't be power after after six pm or
(29:55):
literally a detect that is dust or something like that.
The other thing that the city had done as we
had installed a license plate reader camera on the road
that leading into jones Bridge Park and it's programmed to
if it sees a license sees a car, sees a
license plate after hours, it sends an alert to Gwinnett PDA.
(30:19):
And if if they have that maybe we can talk
about that a little bit. If they have an available officer,
that officer will respond that alert. And the major said
West Precinct commander had said that they had in the
since July, they had been to the park one hundred
and fifty times. Wow, so that's that's almost once a
(30:39):
day if service. So so that seemed to be working.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
That the were they going to do? I know someone
was asking about twenty four hour camera surveillance like in
in the park but.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
The part Yeah, so once again the city had offered
to subsidized purchased. You know, through our Curiosity Lab, we
have pretty good connections with vendors for and we don't
mind trialing new technology, and we'd help get cameras inside
the park at this meeting, and this might have been
resolved since that meeting, they were working on improving the
(31:18):
internet infrastructure and the power availability. But essentially what you
do is you replace like the top of one of
the street lights in the park with a new head
unit that's called which would have cameras. So the city
is still happy to help support that effort.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Okay, so yeah, these things progress. I mean, we could
always talk about it at another point, the city taking
over those parks and they become city parks. But then
again we'd have to stand up a parks department.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah yeah, because right now, you know, our staff eighth
whatever we're at right now. You know, we do I
think a pretty good job of managing the town green.
But yeah, that's you know, managing you know, a two
hundred and thirty acre park like Simpson Wood or Jones
Bridge is much smaller, but it has active playing fields
(32:09):
with I think you actually wrote an article about in
Pcburns magazine the Jones Bridge Football Club I think.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Right football inside as a soccer club, right.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
So there, you know, and maybe wrap it up in
our distinction with Simpson would Jones Bridges is certainly not
under a conservation easement. It's an active what they call
an active park with playing fields with lights, and you know,
it's in sort of a mini version of what we
have over at the Pinkneyvale Park right with futball fields,
and so there's a different experience for sure.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah, I mean, we have good parks around here. So
all right, let's let's move away a little bit from
the parks and let's get into let's talk a little
bit about what just recently got voted. Ones does this
trend of doing office conversions to apartments or hotels to
apartments or multi family So this one that you were
(33:08):
telling me just before we started the show that Gwenette
Housing Authority has taken over and will be managing. And
this is in an area by Jimmy Carter and p
Stree Boulevard. I have to stop from s.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, I introduced the resolution to change the names. I'm glad,
I'm glad to see you. Yeah. You know, after Chamberlye
and Doraville had changed Ptree Industrial Boulevard to p Stree
Boulevard and Georgia Department Transportation changed the signs on twenty five.
Now they just say p Ttrie Boulevard. So they said,
(33:45):
well we we, I said what we did, we need
to update the name as well. But yeah, so a
couple of years ago, six six years ago, the staff
was thinking ahead and they created a new convert option
in our residential code that would that would permit a
extended stay hotel to be converted into apartments through a
(34:10):
specific process. You know, normally residential and hotels you know,
different sections of the code. But we said as we
particularly unfortunately our friends to the east in the city
of Norcross have had some challenges with extended state hotels
that they essentially go down in quality, go down in
(34:32):
safety and security, and become a problem, and so that
the on Jimmy Carter Boulevard, just when you come off
Piecee Boulevard, there's a car wash there. There's the Crown
Sports Bar. Across the street from what I still think
it was the old La Fitness shopping center is there
are actually two extended state hotels just down a short
(34:53):
road and one of those particularly problematic regular visits be
from the police. And so the Gweneth Housing Authority said,
we'd be interested in purchasing that property, but we don't
want to run it as an extended stay hotel. Right,
extended stay hotels are you rent by the week. In
(35:14):
the it's a very tough environment for the people living
there because because it's a hotel, you don't have any
tenant rights, so you can be kicked out without notice
because you're a hotel resident, not a not a not
a lesser right or less ee, and and it creates
(35:35):
this challenging environment. And so they say, we want to
convert it into apartments which will be rented by the month,
by the year type of thing. And so they came
to staff. Staff worked with them on some conditions for
the property, one of which was that the total number
of units would stay the same seventy three units and
that they would do refurbishment and investment in it are
(35:59):
our order and it's actually says to do this conversion,
you have to put a washer and dryer in each
unit right to make it a true apartment. And they said,
these units are pretty small, there's already a central laundry facility,
and could we get a waiver from that one requirement
and that the staff recommended approval of that. So they
came afore City Council last Tuesday and they presented a
(36:22):
couple of questions. I asked, was you know, talk about
who are the target market for these apartments? And they
talked they said, as the housing authority, they have, you know,
specific objectives of what the type of housing they're trying
to provide. And so their target market is a twofold
it's young adults who've aged out of foster care are
(36:44):
no longer eligible to be part of the foster care system,
so that's eighteen to twenty four years old. And then
also seniors, so they have low income of fixed income
seniors who are struggling to find a safe place to
live and that they have some experience both here in Metrolana,
but in other states of having a mix of young
(37:06):
people and seniors creates this great synergy and so and
they also one of the questions that I also asked
was you know staff on site, right, and so they said, yep.
Of the seventy three units, two of them would be
for staff. One would be for a property manager, full
time property manager, we'd live on the property. And the
(37:26):
second would be for a case manager from the housing
authority who would provide you know, social services to both
of those. Those constituents are types of residents. And so
that that request passed unanimously, which sometimes when it comes
to the housing and the word apartments, we don't always
give unanimous votes on council. This one, I think everybody agreed.
(37:49):
Don't want to speak for my other council members, but
it certainly appeared to me that replacing a increasingly problematic
extended state hotel with apartments that would serve underserved communities.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
Interesting interestingly enough, the other day, I forget who I
was speaking to, was someone in the police department, and
they were they were mentioning that that area of Jimmy
Carter and keep wanting to say, p I b at
least instead of like, yeah, so that that area, if
(38:28):
you take that as a and work your way out
as a circle, that is the higher crime area if
you will, moving out from that circle in this area.
And you mentioned that that was obviously an extended to
stay hotel, and there's one right next to it actually
as well. And these are the well, now that there's
(38:49):
one there, that's one of what three.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, there may be three left in the city after
after this one. And then there are a couple right
on our border, right, and people that always missing in
where piece of corner ends and Norcross starts right. And
you know, we're working to support City of Norcross as
well as they deal with these challenges. And I certainly
don't want to, you know, blame the residents of the
(39:12):
extended state community. And right before I started, you know,
we talked about that the City of Norcross happens to
have a housing authority and they had done a study
that actually gone and knocked on doors and said, hey,
how long have you been in an extended stay? Why
are you here? And they found different types of residents,
those that were families. One of the one of the
(39:35):
most common reasons they were in extended stay was not
that they didn't have jobs and couldn't afford apartment rent.
It's that they didn't have enough cash reserves to fund
the security deposit and the first month's rents call let's
call it two months rent. So giving that and so
like Norcross is looking at creating a may have already
(39:55):
done so a grant program to say, hey, if we
can get you in an apartment, if you got a job,
you're going to pass the background check at the apartment.
That sort of thing will help, you know, give you
the table stakes to get into the inspartment.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
And that's a great idea. And that's that's yeah, that's
really a good idea. It's like someone like a business
owner investing in their property to a degree and then
but they're operating. Operating funds could handle the operation, but
maybe they can't pay off the debt. And that's that's
how that feels like to me, you want to be
able to do it. You can, you can expend, you
(40:31):
can pay for it, but it's getting over that hurdle.
So right right, the before we get to to I
know you have limited time, so I just want to
make sure we cover Also the next thing, which is
the upcoming elections, right, you're running for re election and
Post four as an out lord seat.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
No too, I know, I'm I'm district too. I'm post
to district two. Four is four as council member, just okay,
and six is councilor rat Wick. So yes, yeah, this November.
This November, we have city elections. So we have elections
(41:13):
every you know, there's seven of us on council, the
mayor plus the six council seats. Half of us plus
the mayor are elected in one two years in one cycle,
and then the other three seats are elected two years later.
And so we call that sort of are big and
our small election, all right, because one is four seats
(41:35):
the mayor plus three and one is one is three.
So this year it's the small election. So Posts two,
four and six will be up for re election. The
election is, like you know, every election, the first Tuesday
in November, so November fourth. And one interesting thing about
(41:55):
this year's election is because our city elections and the
odd years, we don't normally have other county wide elections
happening at the same time, right, because the presidential election
is in the even years, and then the midterms are
in between that that's an even year, as well as
argument editorial and our state legislative elections. But every now
(42:20):
and then the county has an election in an odd year,
and it could be something like in twenty fifteen there
was the most recent Board of Education splossed. This year
there actually will be a county wide election because of
a state mandate that it's finally time to have some
elections for the Public Service Commission. There was some litigation
(42:42):
over the PSC and so elections were delayed, but two
of the seats on the Public Service Commission will be
on the bout this November. So on November fourth, there
will be at least two elections the PSC, and if
you live in a city here in Gwinnad, there'll be
city elections and a personal, you know, pet peeve of
(43:05):
mine has been the fact that when that happens, that
we have to go to two different places to vote yes.
And the reason is that Gwinnette in contrast to all
the other counties in the metro Atlanta area, and in
fact I haven't been able to identify a single county
in Georgia other than Gwenette, who doesn't offer the cities
(43:26):
inside the county the option of combining elections. And this
I've been working on this project a long long time
is when I started this. After that, actually back in
twenty sixteen, when I first ran, I was in a
special election in an even year. I was in twenty sixteen,
and so to vote vote in my election you had
(43:46):
to go to two places in May of twenty sixteen.
So I said, this is done. And first I was told, well,
the Board of Elections has a policy against providing city
elections services. So I went to the Board Elections and
lobbied them and said, this is dumb. And so I
got them to rescind that policy. And so now here
(44:08):
in twenty twenty five, this is the first time since
twenty thirteen, so that for the city of PG Corners
that on the same day as our city election, that
will be a county wide election. And so what we're
asking the county now to do is please just tell
us what the cost would be if we were to
(44:29):
tag along on your election. You already have to have
you already have to open up alle hundred and fifty
six polling places. You already have to have your three
weeks of early voting. We know it's an electronic you
know ballot that can when Rico walks in, it can
say hey, Rico. In addition the psc because you live
in phgre corners, I'm going to show you these additional
(44:50):
you know, races. And we know they can do it, Rico,
because in twenty thirteen, twelve years ago, that was still
during our two year transition period with the county, when
we first became a city, they did this exact thing
for us. We had our twenty thirteen council elections and
we even had a referendum about this tax allocation districts
(45:12):
that people vote voted for, So we know they can
do it. They just right now have been sort of
dragging their feet on telling us what it would cost
for us to hire them to manage urla.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
How many precincts are in the City of Peace three corners.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
Yeah, so if you look at the county precincts, because
they when they were the lines were drawn, they didn't
that predates the city existing. So it's eleven or twelve,
of which nine, if I were caall correctly, eight or
nine are wholly inside the city. Right, So every voter
at that polling place, like the Good Age Building in
(45:48):
Jones grid Park is a resident of the city of
p Corners and then the other three are are split.
But which they already know how to do this, that
they have other precincts where they have sure some of
the people vote in some states house race and some
people don't, and the commuter system takes care of that.
It just I mean when you log in or when
(46:09):
you log in, when you check in, and.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
I can't imagine. I mean it courts us what.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
fIF we generally budget fifty dollars. Yeah, our Kim Cheroke,
our city clerk, does a great job. She comes in
below that. But it's also just the the confusion and
the inconvenience because what's happened. People are going to for
the PSC somebody's upset about their electrical bill. The Public
(46:36):
Service Commission regulates Georgia Power and other electrical monopolies. That's
their primary function. So they're going to go vote early,
let's say, over at Tinkneville Community Center, and then they're
not going to see the city races on there and
they're gonna and then they go, I don't want you
have to do this again. What or they're going to
come to city hall on election day vote in the
(46:59):
city races, because you're gonna have local candidates trying to
get the vote out, and then they're gonna the psc thing. Well,
you're gonna you're gonna have to go to pg Elementary,
You're gonna you're gonna have to go to PCBC, and
they're gonna go, well, I gotta go to work. I don't.
I don't got time to do that.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
And well, no, I agree. I mean even under fifty thousand,
I mean, how much can it possibly cross the county
to add for what we're talking about when they already
have the precincts in place, everything's in place. They just
have to Really, it's almost a programming, it is.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
It's literally just programming to say, if voter, you know,
reside in Pgree Corners, then show these races on the
ballot here. And we know from twenty thirteen Rico, the
last time this exact situation happened, they charged us thirty
five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (47:50):
There you go, okay, so yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Let add some inflation in there. So okay, it's fifty k,
even if it's more, even if it's sixty even then
it's more than that. We theoretic it's still from Eric's
point of view, that's still the right thing to do
for the voters.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah, you know, I totally agree, and I'm glad that
you did that because I mean, that's I always thought
that that it was stupid to to have to do that,
to go to two different places, and not just the
the the the pain of doing that, if you will,
but it's almost undemocratic because it forces it forces the
(48:29):
well intentioned voter to have to go to two places,
and not everyone is like that, right, So you end
up this enfranchised and quite a few people, you know,
by by by forcing them to split up and making choices. Now,
granted this early voting, but we don't have early voting
(48:50):
in the city. You vote on that day, right, I
mean there's.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Absence now the last couple elections, we'd have had a
smaller period of election voting. But is generally because our
city clerk chief, and this is one of the reason
why she's been ab what keeps the costs low is
that we're open from like nine to six, right, We're
not open seven eight, seven pm. You know when the
county does it, they and I love what they do
there is you know, they're open for like twenty straight days,
(49:15):
Saturdays included at seven am to seven pm, so you
don't have to remember because everybody knows election day. But
also for the cities in Gwinette, we do have a
few cities in Gwinnette who do hire a county to
manage their election. But those are cities who go in
who cross the boundary. So like the city of Auburn,
which is in northern Ginnette, is partially in Walton County,
(49:38):
so they hire Walton County to manage their elections. And
Walton is much much smaller than Gwinette, but they say, sure,
we're happy to do that. It reminds me if I
never called back. In twenty eighteen, we had a city
special election to vote on something called the Brunch Bill.
This was about whether restaurants could serve alcohol before new
(50:01):
and so for us did and we we just the
first opportunity to do that was in twenty eighteen, but
our next scheduled election wasn't until you know, November twenty nineteen.
But we as a council said we don't want to
wait because we don't want our restaurants to be at
a disadvantage here. You know, if John's Creek does it
then and there's people want their mimosa or they're bloody
(50:21):
mary at you know, eleven thirty in the morning. So
we said we're going to go ahead and do the election.
So what we had to do our city clerk had
to you know, get the polling place, which yes, is
our community chess room, hire the poll workers, advertise the election,
all that just to ask this with a single yes
or no question. So she did all that. We held
(50:41):
the election, cost us about eight twenty thousand dollars and
we had four percent turnout. You go, four percent of
the people in the city came out. The city of
John's Creek did the exact same thing on the same day.
But all they had to do they picked up the phone,
they called Fulton County and they said, run our election.
(51:03):
And Fulton County did everything else. They had sixty four
percent turnout participation in their brunch bill. And then here
to add insult to injury, Gwinnette County for the unincorporated
parts of Gwinnett. Right, So, because only twenty percent of
the inside a city, they also had to hold the
brunch bill referendum. They did it on the same day
(51:26):
as ours and they had fifty five percent participation across
the county, but they wouldn't they wouldn't add ours to
their ballot back in twenty eighteen. So I'm I'm pretty
hard on this issue. I got the council unanimously endorsed
the resolution that I had drafted that call on the
(51:46):
called on the county. All we're asking for right now
is please give us an estimate of the cost. State
law already allows us to hand over our election management
responsibilities to a county. State law already midst this. But
we said for us to decide whether we need to
do that. You know, like, because I don't know the
county comes back and says it's three hundred thousand dollars,
(52:09):
why they would come and no, but let's just say
they did, right, we might say whoa nor I said,
if they come back anywhere you're close to fifty thousand,
then I think there would be you know, I'm something
gonna argue passionately. I wish that we should find the elections.
Speaker 3 (52:27):
I'm totally behind you on that one. Yeah, So I
don't even see that there should be an argument on
that part.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
We're trying to figure out because like as I said,
I researched this every single county around us. In Little
Hall County, I guess that little more, you know, to
our north they offer it. The city of Gainesville Dunwoodie
to our west runs the elections.
Speaker 3 (52:51):
How late do they do they have until? Well, how
late do we have until they have to until?
Speaker 4 (52:57):
Yeah, we saw some time the the the biggest stumbling
block is we have to update your official voting right
so right now, if you look at your voter registration card,
it says for you know, federal and state elections you vote.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
At like for me, I vote at Ptre Elementary School,
but it says for city elections, I vote at city Hall.
So legally we have to tell people update your voter,
your voter registrate, your polling place and so. And there's
a postcard that gets mailed out when that happens. So
the elections and no number fourth early voting if we
(53:36):
piggy back on the county and they do three weeks
of early voting, so yeah, we need to decide probably
with the next you know, forty five days or so.
It's just just to get because what would happen is
the county comes back with a cost estimate we then
also have negotiating an agreement with them, you know, like
in the cab for their cities, like they say, we're
(54:00):
we'll run your elections for you, but we don't want
to do the candidate qualification piece. That's where you show
up at city hall, you sign a form, you write
a check, and our clerk. So no, that's perfectly fine.
She already has to do that today, so that that's
not a problem at all. And the other thing, like
those agreements say, is if there's a lawsuit over this election,
(54:20):
the city has to be the one to you know,
to bear the burden of that lawsuit and our answers.
Of course, that's fine. You know, it's our election. We're
just hiring you to run it, right If somebody wants
to sue over it, yeah, well we'll take the lawsuit. Yeah,
that's that's perfectly fine. So get a cost estimate, get
(54:42):
a contract, and there's, as I said, with lots and
lots of other counties doing this, there's lots of examples
of how to do that and then move forward and
get it done so that when people show up in
November they can go to one place.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
Excellent, Eric, you're spending your time with us. Derry Christ,
he's a city council in post two right, running for
re election. You know, chat GPT just got that information wrong.
I was being a little lazy and I used chance that.
Speaker 1 (55:20):
Yeah, we'll have you know, so for city elections, we
don't have primaries, right, so that everything happened for us.
The candidates will qualify you in August. That's when you
officially become a candidate for re election.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
Because it's a non partisan race.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
That's correat. Yeah, we don't run with party labels. A
few big, big cities like Atlanta have run partisan elections,
but of five and thirty eight cities in Georgia, the
vast majority are non partisan elections.
Speaker 3 (55:51):
Well, we've been speaking to Eric Christ. Thank you, Eric,
appreciate you sharing the information on Simpsonwood Park, on the
elections and all these things. There's definitely gonna be a
lot of stuff to talk about over the next three
months four months that's going to be coming up. So
I'm sure we'll have you back again at some point
to talk about a bit about some of these things.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
Sure, you always have to do it.
Speaker 3 (56:14):
Yeah, appreciate it. I want to say thank you also
to Ev Remodeling, Inc. And to Vox Popular Life for
being supporters not just of these podcasts, which includes this
Prime lunch Time with City Manager and Urban abb but
also of Peatrecorna's magazine in Southwest Winette Magazines. So appreciate
them supporting us our journalism and the ability to put
(56:36):
out this stuff. And just you know, listen, we've been
doing this. I've been doing this for seven years and nothing.
You know, things just get more complicated as we go
and having media out there to be able to bring
people like Eric on to explain things is really important
to do that. So if you found this podcast, whether
(56:57):
it's video or audio, whether you found it on the
spot fi on YouTube, please share it with your friends
that live here in the city. Let them know what
we're doing and let them know what's going on. So
thank you again, Eric, appreciate it. Appreciate you. Let me
one more thing. I guess if anyone wants to sign
on to your really really good newsletter. I love your newsletter.
(57:20):
You give your opinions on things, you share all sorts
of stuff going on. Tell them where to find that
and how to subscribe to it.
Speaker 1 (57:28):
Yeah, the simplest thing to do is is because the
URLs will complicated for the mailchamp sign up for and
if you go to my Christopher City Council Facebook page,
it's a pinned link on that page is probably the easiest,
easiest way to direct people.
Speaker 3 (57:43):
And they can find that by searching as a vote for.
Speaker 1 (57:47):
Christ Well, yeah, just in Facebook Christopher City Council. We'll
take take you there. Yeah cool, yep, all.
Speaker 3 (57:55):
Right, hang in there with me for a minute. Everyone else,
Thank you again, leave your reviews, your comments. There'll be
links in the show notes as well. Funny for most
of what we've discussed. Some check that out.
Speaker 2 (58:10):
Thanks for listening to Peachtree Corner's Life with Rico Figliolini.
You can listen to the show wherever podcasts are found,
like iHeartRadio, Spotify, and Apple Podcast. Leave us a review too,
it helps others find the show as well. Don't forget
to like our Facebook page and YouTube channel for notifications
of our live simulcast video streams of the show. Catch
(58:32):
our other podcast shows at Living in Peachtreecorners dot com.
In fact, you can listen to our other popular show,
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(58:54):
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