Development Modeling Software Could Benefit Buckhead, CID Board Told

Tbe Buckhead Community Improvement District's board, in a jovial last meeting of the year Tuesday afternoon, finished up business for 2011 and looked ahead to the future.

In the looking forward category, the board received a video presentation from Jonathan Reid of Parsons Brinckerhoff, a planning and traffic engineering firm whose Atlanta offices are in Buckhead's Tower Place, where the CID also resides.

Reid presented showed a video model of traffic and development patterns in Tyson Corners, Va., saying that such a model would be used by the CID in evaluating road plans such as improvements to the Peachtree-Roswell road intersection.

After board member Hunter Richardson of OliverMcMillan, who happens to live in Fairfax County, Va., where the traffic model was done, questioned whether the CID would be the right client for such work, the board asked Executive Director Jim Durrett and the CID staff to study Parsons Binckerhoff's modeling further to see how it might fit in with the CID's traffic studies. CID project manager Brian McHugh said a model of the Peachtree-Roswell project now under way could serve as a pilot study.

In budget matters, the board approved a 2012 expenditure of $290,650, a 22 percent increase, for the CID's traffic officer program. CID staff member Tony Peters explained that the increase stemmed from extending over the entire 12 months pf 2012 upgrades made in the final five months of 2011, when the in the Piedmont Road and Habersham-Roswell corridor. The off-duty officers received an increase from $40 to $45 an hour, Peters said.

Peters said the increase also includes a "cushion to make improvements, things to enhance it."

After approving a 2012 expenditure of $193,328 for landscaping/maintenance projects, the board approved to renew contacts with Gibbs Landscape Co. and ABM Industries, which does maintenance work.

The action led board Chairman David Allman to ask whether the CID needed a procedure to determine when work should be done by one contractor or offered for competitive bidding.

Durrett said he will study the procedures of different CIDs in the metro area and develop a proposal for what works best for the Buckhead CID.