Meeting Recap
City Presents Downtown Streetscape Wishlist, Can't (or Won't) Answer Basic Questions, and Proceeds with Some Plans Before Public Input Deadline.
Last week, the City of Sugar Hill presented an extensive wish list of streetscape items for its “Downtown” area.
The City chose to present the meeting as a drop-in Open House rather than a formal meeting. Assistant City Manager Troy Besseche, Planning Director Kaipo Awana, former Council Member and current “Capital Project Administrator” Curtis Northrup, and “Downtown & Main Street Manager” Chase Rehak were there from the City of Sugar Hill to answer questions. Besseche and Awana did most of the speaking on behalf of the City, with Northrup serving as occasional backup and Rehak saying nothing. Two engineers from Keck and Wood, a Duluth-based civil engineering firm hired to help with the project, were present to answer questions from the public, with the obviously younger engineer doing most of the talking.
City Council Members Gary Pirkle and Meg Avery attended to observe and ask questions, as did your representative from Real Deal Sugar Hill, and about ten members of the general public.
Real Deal Sugar Hill chose not to record this meeting due to its informal nature. The article author also wished to participate actively in this meeting, given that after reviewing the material the City provided in response to the initial Open Records Requests, there were many unanswered questions.
At the meeting, the City posted enlarged copies of the “Concept Board” slide around the room, showing the items it wants to install for the “Downtown” streetscape. It also provided smaller copies of the “Concept Board” and distributed a meeting packet with a letter, a description of the project, and a comment card to attendees.
The “Open House” meeting format has been used by the City before. It was employed for the Chattahoochee River District planning meeting in 2020 and, more recently, for the Envision 100 Comprehensive Land Use Plan Update.
This format divides the audience as people drift in and out over a period of time and gather around the displays in smaller groups when they do arrive. The obvious inefficiency of that setup is that the City and its representatives end up answering the same questions over and over again. On the other hand, it offers the obvious opportunity to answer questions differently for different people, or handle questions with no good answers away from public view.
Real Deal Sugar Hill arrived at the “Open House” about ten minutes early, and Council Member Gary Pirkle was already there and settled in the room. The earlier arrivals, the small number of attendees, and the fact that most people came to the meeting at once rather than drifting in forced the City to deal with everyone as a group.
It was clear that the City was unprepared to deal with everyone at once as the meeting flew off the rails. I started on the top left of the Concept Board, and made my way through the items on it, asking the City staff and contractors the questions that had arisen as I reviewed the results of my Open Records Request (ORR) to write the previous article about the streetscapes project.
At least some of the City representatives had read the article, as they quoted it or referred to specific remarks from it at least three different times. Still, they had a difficult time answering the questions that they reasonably should have anticipated.
As different people in the group challenged the City and/or offered feedback, Planning Director Awana became highly agitated and said that people were focused on the “minutiae” of the items that the City chose to present on their “Concept Board” instead of the bigger picture.
That raised the question, what IS the bigger picture the City wishes to address?
The website announcement said the meeting was an “educational opportunity” and that the “pedestrian safety measures” were “under consideration.” After Real Deal Sugar Hill published an article outlining the extensive wishlist the City was presenting, the City created a packet for the meeting. In the packet, the City refers to the wishlist as a “proposed project” five different times.
Council Member Pirkle pointed out that many Sugar Hill residents don’t live within walking distance of “Downtown.” He polled the room to see how many individuals actually walked to that meeting, and only one hand was raised. The City’s response is that they were not trying to focus solely on pedestrian safety (contradicting their own documentation about the meeting) but were seeking “balance.”
The specific pedestrian safety problems the City claims it is trying to solve were not mentioned on the website or the meeting packet. Furthermore, only some of the items included on the “Concept Board” were directly related to safety. The remainder required a high degree of salesmanship from the younger of the two engineers at Keck and Wood (the son of a past mayor of Loganville, he told me) in an attempt to tie them to pedestrian safety. That same young engineer openly admitted he had an interest in getting the project items implemented.
Over the years, I’ve heard different residents weigh in on “Downtown”. The perceived narrow width of the paradoxically named West Broad Street receives frequent commentary. When I revealed the City’s active plans to get a trolley for “Downtown” in 2022 (without consulting residents), people asked how it was going to travel that core stretch of roadway if a delivery truck was parked in front of the Eagle Theater or if there were long pickup trucks in the streetside parking spaces.
While residents talk about this issue, the City consistently and continually avoids it even as it throws money in its general direction.
After the meeting cleared out, Northrup stated that one issue the City did see is that pedestrians tend to cross the street all over the place, not just at designated crosswalks. That is an accurate statement, but not one that they were willing to admit with other residents and Council Members in the room. I responded that I didn’t see how the measures they presented would fix that problem. There was no good answer to that, which probably explains why they had not brought it up earlier.
I pointed out to them that the City has basically built a really tiny, government-owned outdoor mall. They had no real response to that. What we are seeing is that people are walking through the area randomly, much as they do in parking lots at outdoor malls.
The meeting format, avoidance of certain topics, poor handling of questions, and Awana’s little tantrum gave the solid impression that the City wasn’t really that interested in feedback. Was this just a show meeting to give the impression that the people were thoroughly involved and completely on board with a decision they’d already made?
The comment card, which allows residents to select which aspects of the “proposed project” they like most and indicate just how much they like them, reinforces that impression. Although the packet assures us that “all comments will become part of the project’s official record,” the comments are being directed to the private company Keck and Wood rather than the City of Sugar Hill.
As such, they cannot be reliably accounted for via Open Records Requests. While you can query private companies in certain instances where they’re doing government business, you totally rely on the honor system for a complete response. So, we’ll never know if we are seeing ALL of the feedback for the streetscape project, or just the cherry-picked surveys of those who complied with government wishes, while the contrary surveys are filed away in the City of Sugar Hill Complaint Department.
The impression that the City was not really interested in resident feedback is also reinforced by the fact that it is already installing a couple of items from its “proposed project” list. Raised crosswalks paved with brick and a pair of “rapid [sic] flashing beacons” appeared in “Downtown,” not even a week after this meeting and well before the April 16 deadline for resident feedback. There are two additional stacks of bricks nearby awaiting installation.
From the Concept Board:
In “Downtown” Sugar Hill (as of Monday, March 25):
Although the City seems disinterested in public commentary, residents should still offer it. Otherwise, it’s too easy for the City to claim there was no feedback or rely solely on the fawning feedback of their friends, who are being actively recruited to provide feedback while the greater community is being ignored.
Below, there is an image of the meeting packet containing the comment card, as well as a downloadable PDF of the Comment Card.
While the City requests that you forward your comments to RRenwick@keckwood.com, you can also CC City Manager Paul Radford at PRadford@cityofsugarhill.com and Planning Director Kaipo Awana at KAwana@cityofsugarhill.com so your response is recorded on the City’s servers for proper accountability.
