City Council Meeting Notes: Dec. 12

If you weren't at the City Council meeting, here is a quick rundown of the major actions taken or news presented at the meeting.

1. Consideration and Action on Boards and Commission Appointments

Item: Appointments of Gina Foster to Board of Appeals; Christy Linksi to Planning Commission; Misty Palmer to Downtown Development Authority; Rick Rowe to Urban Redevelopment Agency; and Jonathan Cates, Kathryn Baldwin and Deborah Kepes to the Art Jurors group.

Action: This action was postponed until a later meeting.  

2. Consideration and Action on the city attorney's engagement letter.

Item: The new city attorney Stuart Oberman, appointed November 14, sent a new schedule of fees to the city. His fee is $150 an hour.

Action: There was no motion on this item, and therefore it failed.

3. Consideration and Action on mobile stage

Item: The cost of the mobile performance stage is $103,263. This amount is expected to be taken from $108,000 allocated from the 2009 SPLOST monies for town green improvements. It is expected to be used for a number of activities held in the city. Councilman Tom Witts said the stage would pay for itself in five years, but mayor Kelly Kautz and Councilman Mike Sabbagh were against the idea and believed there were better ways to use the SPLOST monies.

Action: The motion passed, 4-2, with Kautz and Sabbagh voting against.

4. Consideration and action on resolution against crematory in Gwinnett County.

Item: A crematory is proposed for 637 Athens Highway, Grayson. The city council presented a resolution showing its strong opposition to the county application.

Action: This action passed unanimously.

5. Consideration and action on personal care homes.

Item: The city of Snellville wants to bring its zoning code on personal care and nursing homes in line with the city, and until that has been done, the city would like to issue a moratorium on additional businesses of this type for the next 90 days, or until zoning changes have been adopted.

Action: This action passed unanimously.

6. Consideration and action on amending city code on parliamentarian.

Item: Normally the city parliamentarian has been the city attorney, and this motion would change that to be an elected member of council chosen annually. This was introduced by Councilman Tom Wits.

Action: This action passed unanimously.

7. Consideration and action on election of Mayor Pro Tem.

Item: This motion would abide by section 2.28 of the city charter that allows the city council to chose the mayor pro tem. However, based on a charter change related to "home rule" in 2010, those powers are held by the mayor. See section 2.20b here, where it reads:

"All committees and committee chairpersons and officers of the city council shall be appointed by the mayor and shall serve at the pleasure of the mayor. The mayor shall have the power to nominate and confirm new members to any committee at any time."

Action: This motion (for council to chose mayor pro tem) was deemed improper by Mayor Kelly Kautz.

8. Consideration and action on opening an investigation into Councilman Sabbagh's appearance at Marietta City Council

Item: To open an ethics investigation into , where it spoke in favor of a local business man and said he was a professor at at Southern Polytechnic State University. Snellville Patch later asked Sabbagh about this, and he said that he was an adjunct professor at the university.

Action: Action on this item was moved to a later council meeting date.

9. Consideration and action on contract with GDOT on a right of way for the city's LCI project

Item: Right-of-way contract with Georgia Department of Transportation is scheduled to end on December 31, and the city wants to extend until June 2012.

Action: This action passed unanimously.