Hey all, happy holidays!
I missed the meeting from the previous month, and I'm posting this one very late, but here it is!
The meeting started off with, what seems to be, a routine greeting of the new police officers who've joined the police department. They all individually introduced themselves.
Next was the GLGPA Human Resources award, presented by the City manager. If I'm understanding it correctly, the "HR" department of the city did a great job, and got recognized for it.
After that we had the last award for the #1 City for Digital Technology. Marietta won the category for the "#1 City for Digital Technology in the United States with a population under 75,000". The city made a big deal of it because they're the first city in Georgia to win the award in this category. The IT director came up to accept the award, along with the rest of the department.
Then we had the scheduled speakers.
The first person came up and spoke about how Whitlock Avenue was destroyed by being turned into a state route. This was on topic because the road has just now been put under Marietta's maintenance liabilities, and they've aquired to right of way. The road has also been taken off the state route system, all the way down to Barrett Parkway.
The second person came up to say he was grateful for all the good things that happened, and pushed for more transparency on the Board of Lights and Water. It's been a seriously contentious issue for the past few meetings, but honestly I'm not educated enough on the issue to give an opinion one way or the other.
Next we get into the actual meat of the meeting where the voting happens.
The first item was a special land use permit to allow for the expansion of an inpatient drug abuse treatment center for women at 1055 Cobb Parkway North. There was general support for it among the people who spoke about it, but multiple people who came up were concerned about traffic, and one or two mentioned that they don't like the idea of the facility being near homes. The facility already exists though, and this would just be an extension of it. The council voted in favor of the extension, with the following conditions:
- No more expansion
- Parking offsite is allowed for times of overflow
- There will be gates? Didn't understand this part too well.
The following item was relating to a site that is proposed to be developed as a place to help temporarily house high school students, and their families, experiencing homelessness. This wouldn't be a homeless shelter, but more like a place with small scale tiny homes where people can live for an extended period of time. Some of the council, namely Goldstein and Richardson, had concerns about how many variances the developer was applying for. They didn't think this was the correct zoning category. However, the council deemed that it was too urgent to try and drag it out and make a new zoning category for the plan, so it got approved.
There was something on the agenda for Marietta Crossing, a multi family development going at the abandoned Harry's farmer's market. It was essentially skipped over in the meeting, so it either got tabled or it was approved. The development already went through council, so there's nothing spicy to report here.
The last big item was the Ethics Committee Forms. The agenda item reads:
"Motion to approve the Complaint Form and Rules of Procedures for the Thics Committee."
I don't know what this is in reference to, but if I do learn I'll post on the subreddit about it.
Finally, the Marietta Museum of Art got $17K in new funding, which is nice.
And that's it, thanks for reading :)
Agenda: https://www.mariettaga.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/5449?fileID=53048
Meeting Items: https://www.mariettaga.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_12112024-2618?html=true
