CITY OF MORROW, GEORGIA
Regular Council Meeting
November 27, 2007
CALL TO ORDER: Mayor Millirons
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE: All
INVOCATION: Mayor Pro Tem Sorrow
Mayor Jim Millirons called the regular meeting of the Morrow City Council to order at 7:30 p.m. The meeting took place in the Council Chambers of the Morrow Municipal Complex, 1500 Morrow Road, Morrow, GA, 30260. Everyone stood for the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Mayor Pro Tem Sorrow gave the invocation.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Work Session –November 13, 2007
Regular Meeting – November 13, 2007
Councilman Sorrow made a motion to approve the minutes, seconded by Councilman Slaton. The motion passed unanimously.
AMMENDMENT TO AGENDA:
Councilman Huie made a motion to amend the agenda as presented. Item 2 Public Hearing, the 1st Public Hearing of the annexation, I would like to add zoning so it will read “1st Public Hearing for the zoning and annexation of” and that is Item 2.
The motion was seconded by Councilman Barfield. The motion to amend the agenda passed unanimously.
Mayor Jim Millirons introduced the city attorney, Laurel Henderson.
PUBLIC HEARING:
Laurel Henderson
City Attorney
Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council Members. In the back where you came in there are copies of the proposed annexation ordinance along with a copy of the legal description and a map of the tract so that you can see exactly what we are talking about. There are small copies in the rear of this same map that shows the area under consideration. It is composed of 59.78 acres. It is to the south of Lake Harbin Road and includes a number of streets. This is done pursuant to petitions from residents and voters in the area under consideration. The public hearing is for a dual purpose; both to consider the proposed zoning for the property as well as to consider annexation of the property, the zoning portion will be done first followed by the annexation portion. The city has properly noted this for both hearings and the public will have an opportunity to comment on either or both of those issues as they see fit. With respect to the proposed zoning, there is a condition that is proposed in the ordinance and the condition is this: The zoning attached to the subject property annexed by this ordinance and identified more particularly on Exhibit A and Exhibit B, the single family residential, the RS80 category subject to the following conditions: the subject property formally was designated as RS110 in Clayton County, RS80 is the most analogous city zoning classification to the County’s designation. A one year moratorium is imposed on any further subdivision or re-subdivision of existing lots in the annexed area. The purpose of this moratorium is to ensure no increase in density of the subject property occurs as a result of annexation. Finally, a one year moratorium is imposed on acceptance of any zoning application seeking to modify the uses allowed on any property in the annexed area. The purpose of this moritorium is to ensure no change of use of the subject property occurs as a result of annexation. I would like to point out to the public that neither of these conditions is permanent in nature. They are only for a one year time and they are included in order to comply with a state law requirement that does not allow changing the use or configuration of the property to a more dense or more intense use without county approval. Because county approval is hard to obtain these days and we did not want to set any roadblock in the way of those property owners that wanted to come into the City of Morrow. The city is adding that voluntary one year moratorium. It will not permanently bind your use of property. It does not change your existing use of property in any regard whatsoever. It simply will preclude a developer during one year’s time coming in and wholesale changing the neighborhoods. That wasn’t what you were seeking as I understand it to achieve anyway, so this actually goes to neighborhood preservation and that’s the reason you see it here. At any point you have any questions later on I would be happy to try to address those.
Thank you.
First Public Hearing for the Zoning and Annexation of the Subject Property located in Land Lot 115 of the 12th District of Clayton County, Georgia, more particularly described on Exhibit A hereto and shown on Exhibit B hereto, comprising 59.78 acres.
Mr. John Lampl
City Manager
Economic Development
Good evening Mayor and Council and members of the audience. We are going to go through this public hearing and it is going to bring up a number of different assets the city has. Most of that is going to relate to our personnel which are personnel, service driven type of business as a governing entity. You are going to see our Department Heads come forward and explain each part. I am will start it off and I will also pick up Public Works because our Public Works Director Jeff Eady is at class tonight. So we will go through this with a public hearing for the zoning and the annexation of the property. Dealing specifically with the future land use for Clayton County, the unincorporated section, you have got a chance to always spot Morrow simply based on the little donut that is up here for Southlake Mall (City Manager Lampl is referring to a slide), your property is right up on this side. The future annexation map or future land use map is mostly done in the low density as you can see from the legend and the medium density is yellow. You have each number of zoning classification for Clayton County, specifically RS180, RS110 and RS110CR which is the conservation zoning. That is the 13 lots over off of Lake Harbin, almost all of those are fee simple residential detached zoning classified and all of that is compatible with the adjacent City of Morrow properties.
When you look at the City of Morrow’s 2004 Comprehensive Plan you see the yellow defined significantly better. It is all compatible not only with the future land use plan but the current zoning of the entire city. The area that was defined earlier by the city attorney is outlined here in black and that is the survey itself. All of those properties within the area are the properties we are talking about today. That would be exterior boundaries that do not create any islands or things of that nature. Initially the city itself, as part of our Comprehensive Plan, does determine areas of which we may be able to annex and how we deliver those services as part of that Comprehensive Plan. This is well within our long term annexation plan and the future annexation map adopted by the city. We are requesting, as the Ordinance will state, the annexation of that with some conditions for the properties. We are also going through and explain why we think that it is in the best interest of not only the future residents and land owners that are out there but also our current land owners and residents. And one of those is always financial. Everyone pretty much says why is it in my best interest? We have a $170,000 homestead exemption in the City of Morrow regardless of age or income. So as a city tax if you own a home that is $170,000 or less you pay zero dollars to the city itself. There is a house in Central Park that had a market value of roughly $170,000. It may have been higher but we are using that number. Property tax-wise you have got Morrow and Clayton County comparison. The school system is the largest taxing entity for property taxes in the county and it is the same regardless of where you are. Then we all pay Clayton county tax. There is a property tax paid by everybody whether you’re in the city or in the unincorporated sections, to operate the regular tax digest. However, what you do not pay as a city resident vs. an unincorporated resident is the fire district tax, which is always separately listed on the Clayton County tax bill itself. That represents about 3.92 mils. What is that worth? On a $170,000 home using a 40% assessed rate divided by 1000, you basically come up with your average mil cost and then ultimately multiply that by the 3.92 which gives you $266 per year. So if your house is at $170,000 exactly the absolute financial savings for locating in the City of Morrow vs. locating in the unincorporated section is $266.
Additionally, the city provides street lights out of our general fund. Some of the annexation area does have those street lights and the county is charging you $20 a year. That is a service we offer for free and if you do not have it, we will add it. So every other light pole gets a standard light provided by Georgia Power and we cover that under our general fund, which is an additional savings to you. When it comes down to tangibles vs. intangibles, code enforcement is probably one of the things that protect your property value more than anything else. It is easy to determine whether that provides you with real value just by looking at a website called realtor.com and typing in the 30260 zip code, which is the Morrow zip code, but it encompasses the annexation area. Look at the streets and it is very easy to notice the property values change, when you walk within the municipal boundaries of the City the Morrow that is very easy to do and anyone can pull that off, but it is sometimes easier to do visually. Visually things that we all know will detract from the value of your home are things that you would hope would not locate next to you, or if they had some how or another been there for some period of time, that someone would work diligently to clean those up.
We have a code enforcement department and it is run through the Police Department. We are firm but fair and have proven time and again that we can maintain, or some cases increase the property values depending on what condition your property is in. Traditionally we plan for up to 24 months to take a subdivision and bring it up to our standards. We go out, meet with people and we want to be fair. If you do not have the financial means to maintain your property or if you are not physically able, we certainly have to look at each one of those factors and figure out how we can find people to help you. We have church associations which help throughout the year. We can certainly get them in touch with people.
We believe we offer a family environment. When you came in here today you saw a Christmas tree out front, we have a big event planned for December 1st and you all are welcome to come. We have other events as well. Our Day in the Park, which will be some time in April or May, is always here for our local residents. Then we do Summerfest which is July 4th, we have one of the best fireworks displays around. Your right underneath the excitement. I think you will find we have one of the best packages and you never can underestimate our leadership.
You have got to have leadership that is responsive and we have great leadership. As a Morrow resident you vote for every single one of the council members, not just one per district, who may or may not be able to have enough votes to be able to keep things within your subdivision the way you would like them. In Morrow every one of us is accountable and the staff is all accountable to the leadership and ultimately accountable to you. (Referring to a slide) Right there you are seeing us receive our second Georgia Trend Award. That particular type of City of Excellence award has only been issued to one city three times and five cities twice and we are one of those five. These awards are issued to us by our peers; we do not simply go out and obtain one. We have to go out there and earn them. So leadership counts.
As a city we have to have long term planning, it is not all about today. We have to make sure we understand there is a tomorrow and that tomorrow is what produces the results that we all live with at any given time. We have got some real results to show for it. The LCI is under construction. You can drive up to Clayton State Boulevard right now and look at it. Southlake Mall, in terms of the redevelopment, you see a number of structures on the back, the different projects that the city has and that we are moving forward with that. The Jester’s Creek trail system, you are going to hear a number of things happening on that. The bridge, the wooden covered bridge concept you see over on the right, we signed those contracts yesterday to allow those to move forward. So we have real defined accomplishments and goals and that is just dealing with economic development.
We are moving and we are proactive on your business side, too. We may have some people from the business community today wondering how things are looking. Here what you have is the Honorary Consulate General on the right hand side and Mayor Millirons on the left. General Parikinson with, Abdras Simonyi, the Ambassador for the Country of Hungary. You see Sister City opportunities and other things move forward. It is an international world and you have to be able to play at that level and think at that level, regardless of your size.
Now let us look at our current residents. Why is it in our best interest if we are offering different services, in some cases for free? We start basically with a number of different answers but we can always come back to the same ones we started with earlier – financial. Local Option Sales Tax is certainly one of them. It is an offsetting tax that supposedly reduces property tax dollar for dollar and Morrow is unfairly penalized due to a lack of census population. The legal requirements of the law actually require that Morrow should get more but our census population was used against us and we have only got 4700 residents. But yet we have between 50-70k people in our city on any given day. Morrow produces retail gross sales of 1.2 billion dollars. When you look at all the financial statements and, by the way, we have won 12 consecutive financial awards, we have produced 12 million of those dollars for Clayton County in Local Option Sales Tax option. That lack of census population really allowed our share this particular year to be 1.85 million. Now imagine if you were out there and you were producing someone 12 million dollars in annual revenue and they offered to share it with you. What is they offered 1.8 million but you should get 4.6 million, you would feel pretty slighted in that because you are providing the service for a large number of people most of them not living here. So with this we have an annual projected loss of about 2.7 million dollars. That is not a small amount of money when your entire budget is just a little over 10 million. So having that additional population allows us to be in a better position to recover what is technically ours in the first place.
It works both ways and an example of that is the mall itself. Remember different parts of Southlake Mall are not owned by the Mall, such as Macy’s, Rich’s, Sears, and JC Penney. All those buildings are owned independently. This is dealing with just the interior structures. It had a fair market value of a little over 60 million dollars. In 1996 the Local Option Sales Tax dollars we were receiving was equitable. It was something we at least had agreed to and they would have been charged zero mils because the offset was there and their tax bill would have been zero. Since the change, Southlake now paying 121 thousand dollars more per year than they were before and getting nothing for it. You may think that does not affect you. But for homeowners with houses at a market value of $270,000, you are paying the difference between $170,000 and $270,000 and what you are being taxed on is the value of 100k dollars. So if you have a 270k dollar house the tax value is $100,000 and in 96 you would have paid zero, now your tax bill would be $200. So as an owner of one of those houses, there is at least $200 dollars out of your pocket that is not be applied to your tax exemption. That is $200 dollars of your money that is being cheated. This is not so much cheating the government it is the independent business people out there and those are ultimately independent homeowners. It was your money that was taken not necessarily ours it was just the services we provided.
Mr. John Lampl
City Manager
Public Works
Going into the public works side. There is no good side of Morrow and there is no bad side of Morrow. Most of our top staff lives in the city and we all get the same services you do. We are all getting the same services that you do. When you look at those services dealing with Public Works it is usually infrastructure. Most people know this as your streets, the physical elements, but we do more than that. It is also the parks and recreation that we offer. In years past we have gone from nine acres of property to 120 acres of property. We have got public facilities, tourism, buildings, vehicles and equipment. It is not easy to maintain all of that and there is solid waste management or garbage service. Additionally Public Works is involved with development and redevelopment as well as storm water. The one that means the most to you is probably the paving and construction management.
Four years ago we repaved every single street in the City of Morrow. We mill them down the first time and we do not just pave them until your curb disappears. We go ahead and mill them back down and we bring them back to the original. Once it’s been a life span of say five to seven years we go ahead and put a sealer over the top of it and that maintains it easily for another five to seven. That’s just great maintenance in getting the most value for your dollar. Some subdivisions, some parts of your subdivision that are out there have not been paved in 20 years. We do a drive around of the entire city and all of the streets regardless of where they are. We do an inventory of the best to the worst and start with the worst. Since your roads have not been paved in 20 years, they would be at the top. Your subdivision is relatively small and the job could be completely quickly. The other things that you see out there, beautification, right of way, street patching and the pavers you are all entitled to those. You are also entitled to subdivisions markers and all the steps we take to beautify and maintain city residential property. We have cleaned up to the point where you know when you are in the city and when you are not.
The pocket parks are also a part of what we do. We went into every subdivision, found little small pieces of property and built a recreation or leisure area. We will add those parks as necessary and pay attention to what type of park best suits a neighborhood. Almost every subdivision at this point has access to or long term plans for us to have park availability for them.
Mosquito control is another important service we provide for free. We all are aware of the creeks behind our properties that make this service necessary. And we are also aware of the things that you can put out in the atmosphere that people can breathe that have to be diluted so it does not hurt anybody. What the spraying process does is it knocks down the adult mosquitoes. We do not do it during the cold times; it is mostly a summer type of project and some neighborhoods have more needs than others. Hopefully it is a service that you never realize that we have. You should be able to play outside, sit outside on the back patio or other places without being interfered too much.
In terms of community development, anything that is submitted for new development we want to make sure it goes through a process so that it fits in with the rest of the city. We want to make sure we know what it is, how they are going to do build it and how it is going to affect water, drainage and things along those lines. For town center development there is Olde Morrow. The plan is not yet at 100% but we have a three dimensional model called a form based coding. This is new and different. The older style is like the pictures that I showed you at the very beginning where it just did color. The old style indicates components with color schemes the new format puts a plan into a 3 dimensional format. This means that when someone talks about developing something in the community we can literally lay the building out to see how it is going to affect how you do business. The town square, the middle part you see with the fountain that is actual and you will see that project come forward.
Then there is solid waste management for both residential and commercial. The residential back door garbage service is written as a collective group. One person can not get as good of a price as a thousand people can. That service is issued to you at cost and there is no profit for us on that. Usually toward the end of the year we are actually behind and have to absorb some of the costs. It is twice a week backdoor which is almost unheard of. Most people get once a week front door and if you ever drive down Forest Park and you see all those blue canisters laid out you can realize it can visually detract from the value of your property. People do not exactly work on the same schedule so they decide to pick theirs up whenever or just leave it out there for the entire week which is not good. Our price is $56.28 per quarter. That is competitive with what most of you are being charged already for once a week front door pickup. Usually for the seniors specifically, this is a service they really like. All we ask is do not play musical chairs with it do not move it around try to confuse the garbage man. We have a person right here on staff, Sarah; you can call her up if anything happens. If garbage pick up misses your street, let us know and we will get back to you quickly. Additionally, if you have an existing contract with a garbage carrier we will honor that existing contract for 3 years. So that is more than enough time to adjust. Once a week in terms of garbage there is a service that is provided by Clayton County, but they charge for that service when you want somebody to come out and pick up the stuff on your street. We provide that service to you for free. There are limitations, we do not want to have a contractor use our service and just dump everything in his front yard every week. This is designed for you as a residential homeowner. Every week on a particular day is a schedule for your street. If it’s Friday, it’s Friday and we’ll be there pick it up. If Mother Nature gives us a little bit of a twist and we get a large amount, obviously were going to be a little bit behind. Work with us were certainly going to the very best we can.
Morrow Public Works has thirteen full time employees but we also work a large number of inmate labor. They did the crime they are doing the time right here which is great. These are people who are late on their child support or spend too much time drinking and driving, things like that. We use these individuals to offset our costs. Public Works uses common sanitation service. You are not going to have people waking you up at 5 o’clock in the morning and waking you up the next day. Georgia law actually has a Georgia solid waste management which requires us as a county and a city to come up with a methodology to reduce the waste that is produced by 25%. We did it commercially by picking up cardboard when you pick it up separately it does have some recylability and it also has some resale value as well. Then residentially we have to know what are metric tons are but for some of the leaves and limbs waste we ask that people mulch those. Certainly you can come to city hall and purchase a garbage bag sticker. But if you prefer you can mulch them on your property correctly and the master gardeners can show you how to do that. With no real costs to you we reduced the residential garbage by 25% in terms of metric tons.
Public Works coordinates all beautification projects, street lighting and park projects. We do monthly street sweeping which almost nobody does. Streets regardless of what they are, they’re going to get dirty. There’s going to be a number of things happening, leaves and other things are going to biodegrade and they’re going to sit out there. Not all that is really necessary to run down your storm sewers and clog them up. So we go out there and sweep them once a month. We actually check to make sure it’s done and done correctly or were not going to pay them. We also schedule right of way maintenance. Different things happen, curbs break, the Water Authority creates a hole and does not compact it correctly so we have to make sure we can go out there and fix those problems. Really it all comes down to increase or stabilizing your property values. With that being said I'm going to turn it over to Communications.
Ms. Verna Watson
Emergency Communications
Ms. Watson addressed the Mayor and Council and explained that she is with the Emergency Communications Department.
We have ten full time employees including the Director, Assistant Director and three part time employees. These employees work eight hour shifts, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We are the hub of dispatch for the City of Morrow Police, City of Morrow Fire Department, Public Works and Lake City Police Department. Our fire department services Lake City for their needs also.
Since January 1st of 2007 we dispatched 14,874 police calls, 1,116 fire calls, and 4,648 Lake City police department calls for a total of 20,638 calls for service. During that time we also handled 15,564 911 emergency calls and 37,329 administrative calls for general information, administration for the Police Department and transferring calls. The national average for answering a 911 call is 10 seconds, Morrow’s Emergency Communication Department answers 911 calls on the average between 2 and 5 seconds. These seconds make a big difference if you have a life or death emergency.
From January 1st of 2007 until now the proposed annexation area in question put out 30 calls for service for police and 17 calls for service for fire rescue in Clayton County. Breaking that down, all calls are considered emergency or a high priority calls. Under the police calls, the ones that we would consider a very high priority would be the alarm calls and suspicious vehicles. On the fire side it would be the chest pains and difficulty breathing. So on one side you have six calls and the other you have five that would be extremely high priority. (Ms. Watson is referring to a slide which breaks down the calls for service last year in the annexation area.) These calls would have the same response.
Morrow Emergency Communications is also Phase II compatible. This means, if you are making a wireless call it is going to hit the antennae on a repeater and then it will bounce back to us. When it shows on our screen it will show the address of the tower that it hit and it will also show the longitude and latitude of where the caller is on their cell phone. With this technology you can pinpoint the call. There is a radius around you which enables response to locate the cellular caller if for some reason the caller can not communicate this to you.
Our staff is emergency medical dispatch certified which means if you have a medical emergency we can give you pre-arrival instructions before our rescue arrives on scene. In a lot of cases if you need to do CPR prior to our fire rescue getting there we will walk you through that. We will walk you through delivering a baby; we will tell you how to take care of a severe bleed because that is what we are trained to do. Having said that I would like to turn it over to Chief Baker.
Chief Jeff Baker
Police Department
Thank you all very much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you. I would like to go over a couple of things the Police Department offers that you can look forward to once the annexation takes place. Each of our officers have the skill and equipment to process crime scenes. We don’t have to wait on other agencies to show up. They’re able to do those themselves; they are trained to do it. So it relieves some of the time we have to wait for someone else to come out from an independent agency to come and process the crime scenes.
The Morrow Police Department comes to you. We do not take reports over the phone. Some of you may have had experiences with Clayton County on burglaries or things like that where they will actually take a report over the phone. We feel its necessary to go to the crime scene, collect evidence and solve the crime therefore, we come to you. Morrow police actually patrol our residential areas and our business areas even when we are not answering calls in them. So you will see a patrol car and just because you see them in your neighborhood does not necessarily mean they are there for a crime or any other call for service. They patrol those areas during the regular route of their duties.
The average response time we have to calls, for non-emergency call is seven minutes and up top you will see for emergency calls on average is three minutes. Comparable data that you might find interesting is information taken from the Clayton County Police Department’s annual report for 2006. Their average response time for calls was 19.05 minutes and that was a non-emergency call. Their average response time to emergency calls is 10.16 minutes. That is a substantial difference and I think you can see the benefit there. In 2006 Clayton County had a volume of almost a quarter of a million calls for service. So you can see how their system is a little taxed. The Clayton County Police Department, as Verna just went over with you, received a few calls in that area. It is fairly nominal, nothing that would impact our call ratio or ability to respond to those calls. It will not significantly impact our response time to the calls that we have. So, you will still get the same professional service that we offer to our citizens currently. You may have seen some of the patrol cars now because we currently get to some routes that are in the city by going through some of your neighborhoods. So you will see some of our cars that have already been in the area and you may have seen some of the benefits.
The Morrow Police Department currently has 37 sworn and full time police officers. That represents about 8.2 police officers for every square mile in the city. Clayton County has 271 sworn officers and as a comparison they are about 30 officers short at any given time. That represents abut 1.85 police officers for every square mile in the county. Some of the other things we find, an interesting fact for you is the crime data. This is something we pay close attention to. You may have seen the article in today’s paper and some of the HEAT units and the residuals of what we do. Reduction in crime does not happen by chance. We think that it’s a strategy that you have. Part of our strategy is increasing the traffic patrols that we do. That gives us visibility. It is a natural deterrent and it actually causes criminals to circumvent the city and they have told us that themselves.
We have recorded some crime stats from last year in Clayton County. These are the categories that we’ve selected here. (Chief Baker is referring to a slide presentation). You can pull up the County’s annual report. It is available from the Clayton County Police Department on disc. You see some of the increases from 2005 to 2006. These are not the City of Morrow, this is Clayton County. You see the homicide rate is up to almost 74% and there are substantial raises in almost everything that is up there. The vehicle theft was up .35%. I don’t want you to think that’s 35%. It is point 3 – 5. And then I have some comparisons for you for the City of Morrow of what we have been able to accomplish, and these are continuing trends, these are not just a one year trend. So after we publish our annual report, which you can look at online at the end of the calendar year, you will see that these trends are continuing into the second year. Commercial burglaries are down substantially, auto thefts are down, aggravated assaults are down and some of these crimes are difficult to control, like the aggravated assaults. That’s a person to person crime and the precursors and indicators are mostly physical assault, domestic disputes, etc. So its difficult sometimes for us to reduce those types of crimes but we feel like visibility can have an impact on them. Felony arrests, on the other hand, are up 13%. Our misdemeanors are up 53% and our DUI’s are up 106%. This year were on track to have another 100% increase in DUI’s. That makes for safer roads for everybody involved regardless of where you live.
Morrow police utilize the GPS system. That is one thing we do offer is the state of the art mobile data for GPS tracking that is in the cars. Each officer has their own laptop computer and printer inside the vehicles so they can print their tickets right inside of the car. We are trying to look to use technology to make sure that we can better utilize our manpower resources because we do have a finite amount of manpower resources and we want to maximize that for your benefit. When the officers are dispatched, they are dispatched based on their proximity to the call. So if their closer they respond. We do not put officers in zones they patrol the entire city. Kind of makes sense but in the past law enforcement has not really done that. This is a snapshot of the laptop screen shot in the vehicle itself so they can look at the some of the crime mapping information and use an analysis on it. The officer can pull this up, look at where we have calls for service, pull up the specific calls and look at some indicators hopefully that will help them individually. This is on top of the roll call training and the crime analysis we do on a monthly and weekly basis. We try to do everything we can to look instead of just hoping were lucky and actually focus in the problem areas.
Some of the services we offer, upon request we can do a residential survey for you, which is important. There are some environmental crime reductions that you can do and some of the things that people do not think about. If you have high shrubs in front of your windows, someone can slip behind the shrubs and break into your house. Simply cutting down the shrubs so people can see and the officers driving by can see what is going on is a help. If you do not want to pay for monitoring services on an alarm at least get something that has a sensor and has some type of an audible alert to scare off the individuals that are there such as lighting and things of that nature. But we will come out, do a survey for you and give you a couple suggestions of what you can do. If you are out of town and will call dispatch let them know what dates you will be out of town, what vehicles will be in your neighborhood and who is allowed to come and feed your dog. The officers actually check it per shift. We try to check it multiple times per shift based on our call volume. We actually keep a log of that. We go and look and log that we are checking your property. Officers will often get out and walk around so if you do have a big Great Dane please let us know. That would help us out.
Citizens police academy and alumni. These are things that we do and we have a couple of graduates in the room here. It is a citizen’s police academy where you can come and actually see how we do what we do. You get an opportunity to ride along. We do a bunch of different things. That is on our website for an application if you’re interested in doing that. We offer that two or three times a year. We strongly encourage citizen involvement. If you guys are involved, as the man who created the London Metropolitan police said, “Every citizen’s responsibility is law enforcement; police officer is just paid to do it full time.” So we need your help, to help us reduce crime. We do not want you to be afraid to call. You can call anonymously to dispatch and let them know what is going on in your neighborhood or call or email us anonymously. There is a tip line on our website and we greatly, greatly need your help on anything that you see going on in your neighborhoods.
We also offer a service through AARP. This is a safe driving course. It is called 55 alive and is offered at least bi-annually. It will reduce your driving rates for your insurance if you take the class. It is AARP certified and sponsored and the instructor comes from AARP.
We have P.R.O.U.D. neighborhoods. An officer will actually be assigned to your neighborhood that will be his adopted area of responsibility. It is not the only area they patrol but its one when they are working they will stop by and try to forge relationships with you. Give you the opportunity to know an officer. So if you have a problem you can call up to the office and leave a voice mail for them or an email and give them some information about what is going on in your neighborhood, request some services and you have some personal contact with an individual officer who stays in your neighborhood. That is the person who has meetings at least bi-annually where we let you know what is going on in the city and also the community round tables. So we invite you to them.
Referring to a slide, Chief Baker points out that this is a picture of CERT training. That is actually the fire department and we assist any way we can. Volunteers in Police Services, these are our extra eyes and ears. These are actually volunteers that go out and this is one of our volunteers going in and doing a house check. You see this clearly marked car. It does not say Police Department, it says Citizens Corp. We utilize those guys and gals and we are tremendously, tremendously happy to have them because they have dedicated, sometimes individually, over 1700 hours a year in volunteer services. That helps us out a great deal, frees up some of the certified officers to do some other duties.
For presentations, we have officers that are available to speak on any topics that you see up here including internet safety, fraud, identity theft, things of that nature. Anything that you might need we can find some information or someone that can come and speak to you on it. The Governor's Office of Highway Safety. This is something we have been involved in for at least three years now. This is the car, you may see him rolling around, and these are actually Morrow. The state sets up how we have the color schemes on them. Their primary duties are to enforce traffic laws. We want to attack aggressive drivers; we want to reduce accidents and assist with special events. Morrow has actually seen a declination of serious accidents and also our regular accidents based on these guys being out here. There are four people that are assigned to the HEAT unit. We have proven over the last year that we can do some good things.
We have been recognized by the State and by the Federal government through the IACP. We have been given an award for first place in our category for the National competition, which is actually an International competition because people from Canada are allowed to compete in it. We placed first in our category there, first in our category in Georgia and also took home the Governors Challenge Cup, which is a prestigious honor. We have radar trailers that we put out. We also have street signs that you may have seen with digital speed readout. That is also something we can collect data from. The purpose of these is not just to remind you that you are going too fast. We harvest data from that and we can download that data and look at times and be smart about using our resources.
Our Vice Unit has been fairly successful as you can see. There are some drug dealers crying somewhere. We participated in a lot of different activities and shut down the illegal spas in Clayton County. Some people think well how does that affect me? They eyesores up and down 1941 and all around the area decrease your property value. These are things that when we entered into a partnership with the Sheriff we have been able to do. One of the spas that you see here is now a daycare center so we have seen some positive changes. None of them have come back into the County at this time and one of them has led to the release of someone, they were basically in a slavery situation, two individuals for almost four years. So these are important things with which our Vice Unit has been extremely successful. We also feel it is important to get involved with our youth so we are participants of the GREAT program. We go into the middle schools and teach the components of the GREAT program.
This annexation is in the best interest of the residents because you know as the officers are out there we have a Code Enforcement officer who is a civilian employee. Additionally, every one of the officers is encouraged to also participate in code enforcement. That helps to enforce our high standards that we have here in the city and that helps to maintain your property values as well. We think it probably increase your property value. It is just part of when you drive into Morrow, like Mr. Lampl said, you can tell the difference. When we see graffiti immediately an officer gets out there with the spray paint remover that will remove that graffiti because criminals are marking their territories. You can go down to the corner of Maddox and see it took about three weeks and we had to call the sheriffs department. He had to go out there with his removal unit to get that trash off the side of the walls. We do not tolerate it and were not going to tolerate it. That helps you with your property values also.
We are moving toward our CALEA certification and accreditation. We are currently a state certified agency. CALEA is a difficult thing for us to accomplish. It sets forth best practices, proven best practices. You can say you do it, but we have to prove we do it. It is a very complicated, very complex thing that we are doing. It is a benefit to the Police Department and a benefit to our citizens. You will also see that you will receive a faster response from our officers than where you are now. If you have any questions, well entertain them now or come back.
Citizen Comment
I live at 6562 Peacock. Today I got burglarized. They did not take a lot because I did not have a lot to take. But as the data shows about the response time for Clayton county, it took them awhile. I spoke to my neighbors, was outside relaxing, and went inside and went to get a drink, but it took awhile and I felt if I was in the City of Morrow the response time would have been quicker. Like I was saying they are coming into our neighborhoods because it is just very accessible and if we do not take the initiative to really look at what is going on they will know what is going on before we do.
Mayor: Thank you very much
Chief Baker: We can not always prevent crime. We try our best to and that is our goal. It is an impossible goal, but that is what we do. One of the things we do a little bit different is our philosophy as a Department. I welcome you to check out our website and the City’s website. We post our philosophies on there proudly. Part of what we are trying to do is instead of being reactive we try to be proactive. That is when we go out and try to prevent these types of crimes from occurring. We are not always successful because crime will occur but were not pleased anytime it does occur. We try to take a proactive stance on that and reduce the opportunity for them to commit those crimes as much as we possible can.
Citizen: I have one question. Do you all have any type of an agreement with the animal control of Clayton County?
Chief Baker: Yes and no. We request them and wait patiently for them to show up. We utilize the county services.
Citizen: If refuse control needed to come out and pick up a refrigerator or something like that. Will a city resident still utilize and pay for that service through the county?
Mr. Lampl: If you will just call us. Well pick it up. The same rules apply though, specifically when you are talking about a refrigerator realize there is hydro floral carbon on the inside and that is required to be evacuated under state law, whether they pick it up or we pick it up.
Citizen: I did not make it in the city. I am just asking the question for those who did make it in the city.
Mr. Lampl: We will pick it up and we will not charge you anything for it.
Citizen: I just wanted the residents to know that they were not locked in to not being able to dispose of large appliances like that.
Chief Baker: Thank you very much. Chief Herendeen will come up from the Fire Department now.
Chief Mark Herendeen
Fire Department
Good evening everyone. This is our organizational chart for the Fire Department. Chief, Fire Marshall, the Fire Marshall’s office is a separate entity and the Fire Marshall is named Herb Jones. He inspects over 800 businesses a year. We have three shifts and they work 24 hours and then they are off for 48 hours, A shift, B shift, C shifts. This is a picture of our fleet (referring to a slide). We actually inserted an ambulance that went into service last week so it gives us a total of three. This is the area that is going to be annexed. I just took an address that is fairly close to the fire department and it is less than a mile. The farthest point in the annexation program is about a mile and a half from our station compared to station 8 for the County which is on Maddox Road, they would be your first department. You can see the comparison. Here is our fire station vs. the one on Maddox Road. It is not that much farther but you have to keep in mind that Clayton County Fire Department runs about 25,000 calls a year and we run about 2000 calls a year. So there is no guarantee that the County will be there for you anyway.
Our average response is 3.45 minutes and that is on the total of all calls, fire, EMS, etc. It is looped in there with putting on the turnout gear, getting in the fire trucks and going out. We do pride ourselves in having a very good response time to the areas it is 3.45 minutes. This is well below the national average which is around 7 minutes. We operate with a 10 person shift with an eight person minimum because sometimes we have people on vacation, sick time, holidays, etc. We keep a staff of eight people at two stations. We have two engines, three ambulances, and a ladder truck, with a 105 foot ladder and a command vehicle. That is what the shift captain rides around in and the Chief, myself. We have Mutual Aid Agreements with the City of Forest Park. We work very close with all surrounding agencies. We do not discard anybody. We call on anybody we need. I will call the county everyday if I had to. Fire station one is located right here behind City Hall. I do not think anybody has ever toured there. Come on out, the guys are friendly. They would love to show you the equipment. Here we have one engine, two ambulances, a ladder truck, command vehicle, etc. Station 2 is fairly new. It has not even been there a year yet. It is at 1705 Mt. Zion Road or behind the old Southern Bonding building. We keep one engine and an ambulance there. Every ambulance we have is a paramedic level ambulance. Every fire engine has at least one paramedic on it in case our ambulances are tied up on calls. So we can deliver the same medicines and attend to your cardiac care in every engine as well as an ambulance.
Administration offices, the Fire Marshall’s office are right here. And if you need to pickup an EMS copy of a report or any copies of reports are right here. There are thirty one employees which equates to 75 firefighters per square mile. You have only got one firefighter per 2.26 square miles for Clayton county. Obviously they are really spread out they have a lot more territory to cover. Here is a picture of our EMS fleet. We just took this last week. This is our brand new ambulance. The other one is not very old; it is a 2005 and in very good shape. The oldest one is actually a 2000 so they are really fairly new trucks.
Like I said before we offer ACLS, which is Advanced Cardiac Life Support ambulances. It is just another term for paramedic level. Morrow also responds with ACLS engines. We were actually the first department in the county to implement paramedics on engines. We are always the first to try to do something and I will go further that with our fire prevention. Just re-stating we have three paramedic transport units per 4900 residents. Right now Clayton county has eight paramedic transport ambulances in service for the quarter of million residents. We are here more and we are going to be available when the time comes.
The City of Morrow Fire Department is funded 100% out of the general fund. I think the City Manager touched basically on the Clayton County fire tax fund. We are all paying the county EMS fund. Clayton County basically says they are paying their employees out of two different funds for their services. Morrow Fire Department is classified as an ISO class three for over a year now, ISO is Insurance Service Offices. They come out every 10-15 years and evaluate your municipality and evaluate the fire services that you provide to your residents and businesses. There is a big formula that is involved. The formula covers manpower, square miles, how fast it takes you to get to the calls, your water volume in all your fire hydrants, equipment and training records. The best rating is a one and the worst is a ten. Morrow went from a four to a three and that is a very good accomplishment for the City of Morrow. There are only a few departments that are a Class 2 and probably only 2 or 3 in the state of Georgia that are Class 1. Clayton County Fire Department, not taking anything away from them, they are a Class 3 also. Forest Park, Morrow, Clayton County are all Class 3.
The Morrow Fire Department is one of the first cities in the state of Georgia to mandate residential sprinkler systems. Every new structure that is built is mandated to have an internal fire sprinkler system. Nobody to this day has ever died in a fire when a sprinkler system is activated. We require all our commercial businesses to be sprinklered. We are revising the ordinances, we had a 5000 square foot exemption but we have decreased that for commercial structures as well. A little fact comparison, we carry a 5-inch supply line on all our engines. You get 1500 gallons per minute of water supply. Its like taking the water main out of the ground and putting it right on top of the road. It gives you less friction loss, more water to work with you do not need as many trucks. You obviously do not need as much hose. Right now Clayton County fire truck still uses the old 3-inch hose. You need at least three lines running parallel to get the same amount of water. It takes two or three more trucks to get the same amount of hose. This all comes down to dollars and cents and manpower and equipment.
City of Morrow Fire Department always prides itself in getting involved with the community. We have active smoke detector surveys to survey your house. We do not come in unless you let us in but we have not had too many problems yet. We administer home fire inspections. If you feel like you want your home inspected, we will come out and inspect your homes. We do a lot of education for the schools. We have hundreds of kids come through here every year. Its kind of fun. I know our guys love it. We do blood pressure checks. I bet we do 10 blood pressure checks on the average day. This is all free, our guys love it and it does not take anything from us.
As I mentioned earlier we have a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) team. These are our citizens and people from the surrounding areas getting involved in activities that support emergencies such as tornados and large fires. They are even trained to do basic first aid and traffic control. CERT is a program set up by the federal government. The City of Morrow has the first emergency CERT team in the state of Georgia. Everybody’s welcome to come in for this program. We probably put another class on shortly. We feel it is in the overall best interest for the residents out there because we are right here. You are already in the neighborhood and we are closer. I guarantee you that we will be here more than the County station because I know how many calls they run a year out of that Station 8. We have more paramedic firefighters per resident. We pride ourselves on having one of the highest ratios around that we have more paramedics per fire department than most any department in the metro area. We pride ourselves in public safety and being involved with every resident in the community.
Mr. John Lampl
City Manager
That was just a brief overview of some of what we do. This is a public hearing and we want some input from you all as well. That goes for the zoning part as well as the annexation in terms of what you have. Feel free to ask questions. We certainly have the people in the room that are able to answer them or if you just want to make comments please feel free to do so.
A citizen made a comment complimenting the fire department on their home surveys.
Mayor Jim Millirons
Let me say a lot of comparisons were drawn up here between the City of Morrow and Clayton County. This annexation is taking place between Clayton County and the City of Morrow. So for us to do our job we have to draw comparisons as to which organization is providing the best service. We are not trying to put Clayton County down. We are merely saying what we are and who we serve. We feel we are very good at what we do. I know they are very good at what they do. We have never had better leadership in this city in the 30 years I’ve been associated with it. We are just very, very fortunate. That even includes Chief Baker back there who had a very good article in the paper highlighting some of the effects of the HEAT unit and the great job that they are doing. Its one on one. Its high level policing and high level fire safety work. We certainly are working from the level of confidence that is pretty unbelievable. Our job is to try to provide the resources so they can get out and do their best. They are demonstrating that our confidence level is justified. We do appreciate it. I would be remiss not to mention the city staff who has worked with them to get the job done as led by the City Manager. We think we have the package to serve you, each one of you.
We appreciate your interest in coming into the city if that is your motivation tonight. And if not we want to be convincing to try to get you into the city. We appreciate you coming out, that is for sure. Has anyone had second thoughts that they want to say anything? That will conclude the public hearing and we will proceed then with the ordinance reading and all of you are invited to stay. Again, we appreciate you coming out.
First Hearing: November 27, 2007, 7:30 PM
PRESENTATION:
Mayor Millirons and Police Chief Jeff Baker presented a 10 year service pin to Bobby Mosteller of the Morrow Police Department.
OLD BUSINESS:
Item 1: Ordinance 2007-12; Second reading of Ordinance 2007-12 to amend the Code of Ordinances of the City of Morrow, Georgia, as amended, concerning Title 4, Public Safety, Chapter 2, Fire Prevention and Protection, Article C, Fire Protection Systems Code, by deleting Article C, Code Section 4-2-31(a), and adopting in lieu thereof a new Article C, Section 4-2-31(a); to repeal all ordinances or parts thereof in conflict with the foregoing; establishing an effective date; and, for other purposes.
Councilman Sorrow made a motion to pass Ordinance 2007-12, seconded by Councilman Barfield. The motion passed unanimously.
Item 2: Ordinance 2007-13; Second reading of Ordinance 2007-13 to annex property into the City of Morrow, Georgia, pursuant to Chapter 36 of Title 36 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated; to designate the zoning to be attached to said property; to provide for an effective date; and for other purposes.
The Subject Property is located in Land Lot 115 of the 12th District of Clayton County, Georgia, more particularly described on Exhibit A Boundary Survey hereto and shown on Exhibit B Legal Description hereto, comprising 59.78 acres.
Recommendation of zoning: The Subject Property described above is currently zoned as RS-180, RS-110, and RS-110CR in Clayton County. In the City of Morrow, this property will be zoned RS-80 with a conditional use. The conditional use requires the Subject Properties to retain their respective density restrictions as defined by Clayton County Zoning regulations. This conditional use will expire one year after the final annexation is approved and is designed to retain the density levels that currently exist.
Additionally, a one year moratorium is imposed on any further subdivision or re-subdivision of existing platted lots in the annexed area. The purpose of this moratorium is to ensure no increase in density of the Subject Property occurs as a result of annexation.
Councilman Huie requested a motion on the annexation and rezoning matter. He moved that Ordinance 2007-13 annexing 59.78 acres of land in Land Lot 115 of the 12th District of Clayton County, Georgia into the City and zoning the property to RS-80 classification and the conditions set out in the ordinance be adopted, seconded by Councilman Slaton. The motion passed unanimously
NEW BUSINESS:
Item 1: Stephanie Lucas from the Reynolds Nature Preserve spoke to the Council regarding their Annual Christmas Event title “Yule Log”. She requested a contribution from the City of Morrow to support the event.
Councilman Huie made a motion to contribute $300.00, seconded by Councilman Barfield. The motion passed unanimously.
Item 3: Authorization for Mayor Jim Millirons to enter into a contract with Cooper & Company for the construction phase of the LCI Parking Deck (471). This project is funded in part by the Georgia Department of Transportation.
Councilman Slaton made a motion to grant the authorization, seconded by Councilman Huie. The motion passed unanimously.
Item 4: Resolution 2007-21: a resolution acknowledging the City of Morrow’s commitment to THE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCE’S TRAILS GRANT PROGRAM.
Councilman Slaton made a motion to pass Resolution 2007-12, seconded by Councilman Sorrow. The motion passed unanimously.
Item 5: Approval of Surplus Items: Police Chief Jeff Baker requested items listed on Attachment A be approved as surplus.
Councilman Slaton made a motion to approve the designation of Surplus Items, seconded by Councilman Huie. The motion passed unanimously.
Mayor Jim Millirons adjourned the meeting at 8:50 p.m.
______________ _____________
JIM MILLIRONS, MAYOR
_____________________________________________
CHARLES O. SORROW, MAYOR PRO TEM
______________________________________________
C.R. HUIE, COUNCILMAN
______
VIRLYN SLATON, COUNCILMAN
______________________________________________
H. MASON BARFIELD, COUNCILMAN
ATTEST:
________________________________
Sylvia Redic, City Clerk