Sunday night’s meeting exceeded 3 hours and it was a packed agenda, let me quickly hit the highlights.
Public Comment - One of my first official acts was to ask that every meeting start with public comment and to date not one meeting has gone by whereby some portion of the allotted 30 minutes of time wasn't utilized by residents to make their opinions known and/or voice their concerns.
Three City Attorney applicants each made presentations to the City Council, we discussed the delivery of service options for city implementation and reviewed a revised proposal from Boyken (sorry only a paper copy was presented but I asked for electronic) to assist us in getting the city up and running, we discussed the city website which will be live by November 1st, and quickly discussed a few police details.
Our discussion of Municipal Court was fast, our extensive proposed ethics ordinance had some wondering if we needed such a detailed document and finally we discussed Dunwoody's Alcohol Ordinance.
We are thinking about rolling back the serving hours from 4 a.m. to 2 a.m. and I am for such a move except that I don't want to hurt any established Dunwoody businesses unless it can be helped. At the moment there are only two businesses which would have to roll back 2 hours and there really isn't any law allowing us to grandfather those two establishments into our ordinance.
Though I understand that late night bars do serve a select clientele of restaurant workers who just got off work, but for the greater good of the majority of Dunwoody residents these two businesses may have to be affected.
The City Council then broke into executive session to discuss personnel issues and then adjourned well after 10:30 p.m.
I have uploaded all 3 hours and 18 minutes of the City Council work session (no executive session) but beware that it is an extremely large (83 MB) file and should be completely downloaded prior to playing (right click, save link as.. save target as..). If you have a slow internet connection, it will take quite a bit of time to download.
Our voting meeting is tomorrow (Monday) at 7 p.m. at DUMC.
Thanks for the progress on a city web site. You've done a great job to date, but I look forward to seeing how well the official city operates with regards to transparency.
ReplyDeleteIf you need hardcopy scanned and 'ocr-ed', I can do this. I cannot afford the time for extensive proofing but would be glad to provide images as well as text.
You mention "our extensive proposed ethics ordinance had some wondering if we needed such a detailed document". Let me observe: that some would wonder that we need a detailed document is proof positive that we do. Why would anyone be bothered by a document that prescribes behavior they support and prohibits that which they claim would violate their own personal integrity anyway? Surely we're not asking that our neighbors and elected officials be too good.
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ReplyDeleteI understood that Danny Ross worked on the CfD Ethics Task force. Is that not correct?
ReplyDeleteThat is correct Councilman Ross worked on the the Ethics Task Force and helped draft the document.
ReplyDeleteI believe that mommy is mistaken about Mr. Ross since it was Councilman Shortal who spoke of the need for an ethics ordinance but would prefer that it be written in plain language and more clearly defined.
Opps. My mistake. I wish that we had a visual to go along with the audio tape. I have deleted my comments.
ReplyDeleteHere's a vote for late serving hours in a well-policed city.
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ReplyDeleteJust a question: Why do people need to drink that late into the evening/morning? By allowing such late alcohol ouring hours, aren't we, as a society, contributing to the ills that the excess of alcohol can cause.
ReplyDeleteHey ilovemykids
ReplyDeleteI by now means am I out at 2AM nor even 10PM, however there are many people that get off work late, especially with regard to restaurant workers. For a restaurant worker that leaves their place of employment at 1 am, having a drink at 3 am is quite normal. I am not for or against changing the hours, but if the council is concerned with and want to address the matter I am all for hearing both sides.
I think the big concern here is that if Buckhead and DeKalb close bars at 4 AM then the two Dunwoody spots would be the only (maybe there are more) bars open until 4 AM and the client base would change for the Dunwoody bars. If what another person posted here is true that the late-night clubs near Northlake are rowdy, this is a crowd that could be forced to Dunwoody if the Northlake bars have to soon close at 2 AM.
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