Perry Mayor and Council held their first April work session on Monday evening with the city’s staff and department heads to discuss matters of the city’s continuous growth. Though a relatively short agenda, the lengthy meeting covered the current state of the city to proposals for efficiency, security and progress.
Mayor Randall Walker opened the session by going over a presentation structured toward various clubs, organizations and individuals who have recently requested information on the growth of the city. He presented the draft of the presentation to the council, staff and department heads for feedback before the full presentation is shown to the citizens.
“We want to let the community know that we are prepared for change,” stated Walker. Proceeding to explain, he said, “We’ve been planning and preparing for this growth over the last 10 years through our strategic planning process. We’ve been looking at it to better understand how we serve our public. But our goal during this period was to really manage the growth effectively and also preserve the quality of life in the sense of place that we have here in Perry.”
Walker continued through the presentation noting several key points: Perry’s population has increased 37.29% from 2012 to 2020; there are plans in place to expand on the eastern side of the city; various facilities, such as the Tucker Road Water Treatment Facility and the Harris Track Wastewater Treatment Plant, are currently in the works; future buildings for the city administration and city hall are being renovated and constructed; and new phases in the public park construction are underway. He detailed how the growth is possible for residential and commercial ventures due to available land with infrastructure plans to support it. The growing city has demonstrated previous success from its various awards and the decline in crime in the past five years.
Receiving minor suggestions and overall approval from the council, next on the agenda was the recommendation for facilities security vendors by Public Works Superintendent Ansley Fitzner. She highlighted why it was necessary to move forward with the Public Works Department’s suggestion of working with Convergint Technologies, a company based out of Macon, to address the problems between failures to the system, communication between building systems and with vendors. The Public Works Department compiled a list of goals, including having a vendor to provide blanket control across systems. According to the presentation, with council’s concurrence to proceed with Convergint, the partnership can begin with developments regarding Phase I installation based on facility priorities and regular maintenance. The council considered the presentation and agreed to move forward.
The Department of Leisure Services Director Sedrick Swan then took to the podium and proposed installing ice vending machines at Rozar and Creekwood Parks. Doing so will “provide an additional amenity to destination parks [and] create an additional source of revenue,” according to the presentation notes. Swan detailed that a vendor running the ice machines would lease the space from the city. The council agreed that plans for this proposal could continue as it stands.
Next on the agenda, City Manager Lee Gilmour presented the idea to schedule a town hall meeting to gather citizen input for the following phase of Pine Needle Park, to which the council agreed. The announcement of the date will be scheduled after details have been fully stamped out.
While on the topic of parks, Gilmour addressed the demand for nearby neighborhood park space called “pocket parks.” He suggested to the mayor and council that a process for acquiring these spaces should be established to combat the potential problem of increased growth before laying the foundation of the parks. In a memorandum written by Lee, he stated, “The recommended process would be approximately an acre size pocket park for every 250 single family detached houses. This would not be a requirement for developers to provide space but a partnership between the city and developers with the city purchasing the site.” The council provided concurrence for the city manager to move forward and bring forth more details at a later date.
In response to the power and water outage in Texas several weeks ago, the city of Perry ran an infrastructure assessment to examine the city’s preparedness of utility infrastructure in the event of extreme weather or temperature. The assessment came back as an overall positive review due to the number of backup generators in critical infrastructure locations. However, the assessment does note that the city is in need of two more generators and that the city is “at the mercy of our partner providers and their ability to provide” regarding natural gas and electric power.
Just before the meeting adjourned, Perry’s Economic Development Administrator Ashley Hardin urgently presented a potential buyer for the Eastgate property to the mayor and council. She suggested that the council provide an incentive to “sweeten the deal” for the potential buyer to move forward with the contract to create a high-end redevelopment opportunity, as the buyer is reputable for turning around successful shopping centers. She shared that the buyer took an interest in what the citizens are currently wanting as far as what to develop on the property. The property is in an opportunity zone, mostly blighted, and has been vacant for many years.
After Hardin went through the details, Gilmour shared that providing an incentive to this business could open the floodgates for the demand for future incentives for many upcoming and current businesses. Council agreed across the board and unanimously decided that more information about the business and their plans needs to be presented along with several options of particular incentives before a decision would be taken into consideration.
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