City Council - workshop

No, no, no.

We'll call the meeting to order. This is the work session of Belle Vista City Council, July 20, 2026. First order of business is review of the minutes from the June 22, 2026 meeting. Anybody have any comments on that? Okay, next thing is unfinished business. ordinance amending section 1643 active permit maximum of the code of ordinances of the City of Bella Vista to increase the maximum number of short-term rental permits from 600 to 687 and for other purposes and that's going to be on third reading this week. Is there any comments?

Travis and so I was just wondering since this was proposed by a staff or proposed by you Was this a staff proposal or did the mayor bring this forward?

No, I actually brought this forward. I really was interested in seeing What public opinion was it took a while, but we we have gotten a good feeling for public opinion, I think And I talked to the staff about it and I You know, they were pretty neutral. They see pros and cons either way. So.

Okay, thanks for clarifying that because it just seems like it's being brought up during election season. It's a polarizing topic and I thought the timing of it was pretty odd myself to be honest.

So, yeah, yeah. So, well, it was mostly just because, uh, you know, the numbers were going up and, uh. And it was a modest increase, but I thought it would be really helpful to get the feeling for the people. Anybody else?

With some other proposals that we have, Mayor, on the agenda for our meeting, I'm suggesting that maybe we would table that action until some of the dust settled on some of the other areas. This is just a work session. Oh, yeah. He's just talking.

Yeah.

No, I understand.

Yeah. I mean, that would be my inclination because we have other issues that we need to wrestle with. And so this is only going to probably confuse the issue in the meantime. So I think we ought to table it.

Well, we can address that next week. I thought it was pretty clear, personally, regardless of what happens on those other issues, the people made it pretty clear they don't want any increases past 600. But we'll address it next week. Anybody else? Okay, the next one's ordinance requiring orientation and continuing education. for elected officials in the City of Bella Vista, Arkansas, establishing minimum training requirements, providing for reporting of compliance, and for other purposes. And this is on second reading. Wendy?

Yeah, and just per the feedback from last month, the mayor had a few just word changes he wanted to, if possible, get amended in there. So there's an amendment I passed out to you guys, one clarifying that The orientation hours for the 8th would only be for newly elected officials, not returning elected officials that were re-elected. And then in Section 2, Part C, just saying that I had the words to be clerk along with any other elected official.

Okay. What's the election on D3? It looks like there's a third amendment there. About the orientation?

Yes, basically orientation may be conducted by city staff, the league, licensed attorneys, certified public accountants, qualified consultants, or other individuals approved by the mayor. Okay. So if somebody had a meeting or a lesson or they could have.

We had made some changes to, because we had said as approved by the council or the mayor, and so we had made some changes and we had left one change out. And so this just makes them all, if the mayor approves them, then they would be approved. Yeah.

Okay. The next one is New Business and Ordinance Amending Section 1641, 1642, 1643, and 1645 of the City Code of Bella Vista regulating short-term rentals to authorize the transfer of short-term rental permits upon the sale of property to authorize prorated refunds upon the voluntary surrender of unused permits and for other purposes.

Travis yeah just to reiterate from previous conversations that were unrelated to this because this wasn't proposed yet but essentially the thought behind this is that it would reduce the demand for some of the short-term rental permits so instead of increasing the cap allow the transfer of a active permit if if they you know were to sell that property and so I Talked to Director Robinson earlier, and she said there's about 45 people on the wait list for STRs. And so, you know, this could alleviate some of that wait list without increasing the cap. I thought it was a good middle ground that works for both sides of the argument, personally.

Wendy?

Would you go over the refund portion of that? Thanks.

Yeah, that's another complaint that I have heard about is there's several people that, you know, they have a short term rental permit. They're no longer actively using their property as a short term rental. Maybe they've moved to midterm or long term rentals or maybe they've sold it and they didn't surrender their permit. So just kind of incentivize them to say, hey, here's I'm no longer using my permit. and let me surrender it to the city, that frees up another permit, and then you'll prorate them, you know, some of the $150 that they spend on it, or whatever the fee is. But anyways, the idea behind it was so that inactive permit holders will surrender their permits, so free some of them up. Wendy?

Just to follow up for clarification, would, because you, I think, now spend $100 for a permit and it's, is it $50 renewal? Would it be under the initial cost or would it be under the renewal? What would the tier be? Or for, I guess, unoccupied doesn't matter. So how would that work?

So I guess I would need Taylor or someone.

Well, I can tell you how it was written and whether that was welcome or not. It's a prorated refund of the annual permit fee.

So the renewal?

Yes. So I guess if you're in year one, you would get prorated of that, or if you're in the annual renewal, it would be that amount.

But the renewal is also $150, right? No, it's $50. Okay, $50. Taylor's not in $50. Yeah, so it would be the annual.

Well, I know the reaction of staff was that all the work of a permit is up front.

Yep.

It's not really pro. And secondly, you're prorating money back to people. I mean, it's really small amounts of money. You know, you have a permit for three quarters of a year, so you're going to get 25 or 12 bucks. It's created an awful lot of work for what's really almost petty cash, really.

We are welcome to put an amendment to it.

Larry? I guess, do we refund prorated business licenses if they come in and close? No. So I think that it's a done deal. We've invested the money in reviewing the process, and that's the basis for the cost. And so what we're doing is actually co-sponsoring the processing of the permits with taxpayer money. So I can't support that.

Well, is there any pushback on the other parts of it? Because I could strike that part of it and send an amendment. But also, I'm good to withdraw it. If I don't have any support from the council, then there's no point to even bring it up the following months. But is there any interest in the rest of it from everyone?

Well, I don't know what council thinks. I was baffled by it. If you're at the permit limit and somebody sells their house, you want that permit to go away so somebody on the wait list could get a permit. Secondly, well, somebody, I didn't check this, but someone wrote in and said nobody does it this way. No, the other cities do. But secondly, if you do it this way where the permit's transferable, you have just increased the fair market value of the house if everybody has a permit. So it strikes me the proposal is very much in your own personal best interest, frankly. And some other, and it's in someone else's best interest too. I mean, you're making that permit like super more valuable than it was. Craig.

Yeah, and I can't think of a worse news for somebody who's having a hard time with an STR right next door to them to find out that their home is suddenly or their neighbor is suddenly a legacy rental short term rental home. So they have absolutely no recourse. I mean, I don't see how that increases anybody's property value to have a hotel sitting right next to their house for generations i mean if it gets put back in the shuffle then then that gives somebody else a chance or it can go to a home owner or a long term it could go to several different things but i don't think that transferring it i had the conversation with i'm sure the same person that you did because uh His thoughts were identical to what you're proposing. And I didn't agree with him when I had the conversation with him. I don't agree with it now. So anyway, that's my thoughts.

And we don't do that with any other business licenses that we have. Every business license is up to the successor to make application for and qualify for a proper license. Now, granted, some of those other ones don't have a cap on them, but that's the risk. I think what it does is it artificially infuses a higher value for that property if the tag goes along with it in the sale. So it takes it out of reach of it returning to a typical residential property by doing that. So you increase the value of it, so it's marketable, yes, but you also take it out of the marketplace for a residential person moving into Bella Vista who does not want to do an STR. They just want a home. And so what you've done is you've elevated the value of that property automatically. So I'm able to support that.

Shea?

Just as a point of order, Mr. Harper, I definitely have thoughts on it, but I'll save it for the debate portion of next week's meeting, because as I understand, we're not intended to debate during this section, but only to have clarifications made.

Okay, I think we're set on that one. The next one is a resolution referring to the Planning Commission for public hearing and recommendation zoning codes change regarding density of short-term rentals within residential zones. Wendy?

I promise this is the last short-term rental discussion tonight. Sorry, friends. So this is basically asking the Planning Commission to consider if density would be an appropriate tool for short-term rentals in our city with the kind of loose framework of that it would not impact any currently existing short-term rentals. it would not impact any owner-occupied short-term rental. So the people who are renting out a basement or a room, you would also not be impacted. It would impact only any new permits if there's an existing non-owner-occupied short-term rental within 200 feet. And so this is asking the Planning Commission to consider that and have a public hearing and then give the recommendation back to council, positive or negative, their viewpoint on that.

Travis. Where would the 200 feet start?

The property lines. As the probe lies, yeah.

Shea.

Sorry, I'm going to play the new counselor card. So if we send this to the planning commission, do they also work with Mr. Kelly and come up with actual wording for an ordinance we would pass?

What I would anticipate, of course, Taylor's going to be heavily involved in this, but if you adopt this, then what we would do is we would draft a proposed ordinance that did what this is suggesting, and then that's the draft that the Planning Commission would be working off of and the public would see and all of that, and then they would make their recommendation one way or the other, and then it would come back to you, and then you go through the normal legislative process and amendment if needed and all that.

And then just for timeline reasons, From what I understand, this would be too late for the August Planning Commission meeting if it passed. It would hit the September Planning Commission meeting and then potentially be back to us in September for evaluation if they were able to get it done in that time period.

Keep in mind the Planning Commission has its own agenda. They'll conduct a public hearing. They may table for another week. We don't know. It kind of gets out of the council's hands for a little bit there.

I had a question, Jason. When you were talking about so council would pass this resolution and then you draft up an ordinance, would council vote on what you drafted up or it would just go straight then?

Well, it would go, you know, as it works now when there's a staff-initiated change, we write something up and it goes through the process and then you see it. So you will rest assured the council will have the ultimate say about what that ordinance says or doesn't say. It just comes after the Planning Commission has done their part.

The only comment I wanted to make, Wendy, was that it had a 200-feet rule, and I see that with single-family homes. I think it would have a completely different effect with townhouses. And I wasn't sure if we didn't have, I mean, it would probably wipe out 5 or so townhouses in a row. I wasn't sure if we wanted to have a different role with townhouses and I wasn't sure if townhouses. Townhouse association could make their own rule or do whatever they want.

Well, no, they can't make their own rule. I can assure you that. So it just depends on what the intent is. That could be something that comes up at the Planning Commission and could be worked in later. You're not locked in. What you're locking in is that Planning Commission, we want you to study these proposals and then come back to us with a recommendation, which implies that they will have some thoughts and ideas for you.

Yeah. Okay. Everybody good on that? Okay. Okay. Next one's a resolution accepting the financial audit report presented by Forbus Mazars LLP for the year ending December 31, 2025. I think that was sent to you all. And we're going to have the auditors here next week. And Kim Hall's here today. I think she could say a few words about it.

I wanted to say how delighted I was to see the public turn out for the audit. OK. You guys got this report. You're going to notice it's like 50 pages long. And so I think, I can't remember much from last year because it was a little under the weather, but I wanted to just remind you that there's some things to pay attention to and so that you don't have to read every single word. Of course, I know that you really, really, really would love to read every word, especially if you're having insomnia, it'll help. Um, okay, so I, I've mentioned this before, but this is called the gap audit generally accepted accounting principles different than what we used to do. And what this does is one of our lenders required this in order to loan us money. We paid them off. But it's kind of like a more professional report than the old one. But it is more geared towards investors and bond investors. organizations and Moody's and people like that. So it's a little different to read than what we used to produce, okay? So just to give you some highlights, this first, you're gonna find in your report, you're gonna find the first section is just a transmittal letter. This is new this year. Just basically telling you, hey, here's the audit. It gives you a few facts. I personally, you can skip it. Then we have the auditor's opinion, and the auditor's opinion is unqualified. And last year, if you remember, it was qualified, and it was qualified last year with just a little note because it was our first gap year. so we could not do a comparison between years, which is the next thing in your report. Starting on page four, you're gonna see the management and discussion, management discussion and analysis, okay? That's a pretty interesting section. You probably wanna read that. It'll give you some information about how we did this year versus last year, and that's always interesting. Okay, um, you in the report, you're going to see a lot of things and we talked about this a little bit. Uh, there's a concept called government wide. Versus governmental and the government wide is taking all of our departments, all of our funds and adding all of this generally accepted accounting principles to our information to produce a government wide. That's what. Uh, the bond holders and lenders really want to see. Okay. That's how they evaluate a city. Most of them look at that more than, like, you and I would normally look at what we look at when we get the monthly financials is the governmental level. What are different departments doing? What are different funds doing right? That's how you manage the city is basically on your governmental. Um, and that. get you through the MD&A, and then you're gonna see the financial statements themselves. And then you're gonna see the detailed government-wide. Okay, that's on page 10 and 11. I, you know, if you have questions, I'll be happy to discuss them with you on that. But where the report, I think, is most meaningful to you is on page 12, page 12 and 13, all the way through about page 20. OK, those are the those are the pages that you really do want to pay attention. That's telling you how the city is doing. Uh, as it's. As we manage the city right without adding all the top level. Uh, entries. Okay. And on page 12, you're going to see, we broke it down, restricted, committed, assigned and assigned. Okay, so the new, the new committed is new this year. And when you look at that number, you're going to notice that that is the, uh. reserves that we have put in place that we said we were going to maintain. So that's what committed is. Keep in mind that the unassigned, when you look at the unassigned, that balance looks really a little bit healthier than it is because you have to subtract out the 2026 capital expenditures, okay? So and that's about two million dollars. All right. So you're going to go through page 20 and then you get to the footnotes. First footnote is just all gap. It's in there just basically, you know, that's the. That's so much stuff that you're not ever going to be interested in in the first couple of footnotes. But if you have questions about it, I'm more than willing to answer anything you have about them. But I wouldn't spend a lot of time and effort But then you get to page 40, okay? And this is in the required supplemental information section. And on page 40, this starts to be interesting. 40 and 41 gets really interesting because what you see here is the original budget that you passed, the final budget compared to the actual. And so then the variances are the final budget compared to the actual, and that gives you the variances, okay? So that's a really interesting piece of information. It just reminds you that we increased the budget last year by approximately $1,000, okay? And then that page 41 is the street department doing the same thing, right? Budget, the original budget, the final budget, and the actual. Has anybody had a chance to look at it and wants to ask any questions?

I take one exception to an audit report. They list our physical assets as being streets, drainage systems and if we owned a utility would include the water system it would or a sewer system they would list those as assets but the reality is in the true public nature of things those are liabilities not assets yes so in a similar vein if you look at page what is it it'll be page 41 I believe no 42

It's either 39 or 42 in the report. You're gonna see where what we do is we tell you if you wanted to repair all the streets to meet the city standard, what would it cost you? And then what did we spend? So to kind of leverage what Larry's saying is that there's a difference between that. BECAUSE TO KEEP ALL OF OUR ROADS UP AT THE LEVEL THAT WE WOULD LIKE TO KEEP THEM UP, THAT WOULD BE VERY EXPENSIVE.

GOOD QUESTION.

I THINK IT'S PAGE 42, BY THE WAY. YES, MA'AM.

OH, SORRY. I'M SORRY. SHEA.

I WAS WONDERING WHAT IS, IF YOU COULD PLEASE REMIND ME, WHAT IS OUR RESERVE FUND PERCENTAGE FOR LAST YEAR?

It's 25% of the next year's revenue. So that's how we came up with that number. That's not a standard. Some people do it that way, but that's not a particularly common way to do it. It's usually a percentage of your expenditures. But that's been that way since 2019 or something.

But this is an informal policy that we just as a city uphold.

That's why it's committed, right? That's why the funds are committed, not. We can, with a resolution or ordinance, I'm not sure.

Years ago, the council approved a resolution setting those reserve amounts. As with the budget, it's all under your control. But we operate under that resolution, which mandates a certain percentage when we bring you a budget.

Thank you. Did anybody else have any questions?

Well, the only thing I wanted to mention was, of course, the balance sheet is as of December 31, 2025. And a lot happened. It happened in this year. A lot happened after that. Namely, we closed on a new bond in March 17. And the idea was to pay off the revenue bond, pay off the 2020 bond, and have this new bond. So there's a lot of things that are different than what's listed there just because of that happenstance.

And that is mentioned in several different places in this document that we have paid those, you know, that we did a bond deal to pay off some of those other... And with the bond money, we...

paid forward for financing a lot of acquisitions of vehicles and equipment and other things.

Correct. Correct. We are using those bond proceeds not only to finish the fire department administration building, I'm sorry, it's Fire Administration Department Building, I think is how the official title is. I don't know. I get that confused all the time. Anyway, we're finishing that up with those proceeds. We're building the towers with those proceeds. Two years of cars, two years of streets is in general what it is. And you guys, you know where I work. Feel free to reach out if you have other questions. I did want to take a second and say that, you know, this year, I don't know if you noticed, but we're two months earlier than last year. And that really demonstrates this year of the fact that the departments really stepped up and, you know, moved forward quickly. And last year was a hard year because it was the first year. But this year, people really, really got things done. And it was appreciated by everyone. by the auditors and by me.

So it's a credit to our department heads.

Exactly what I'm saying. So thank you.

Thank you, Kim. And as I said, next week, the auditors will be here to speak about it. Next one is a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into an amendment to the solid waste contract with Allied Services LLC DBA Republic Services of Bella Vista to provide a three-year extension to the current agreement and to provide an opportunity for curbside recycling in the city and You've got a copy of the contract. It didn't come with the original, but it came out. We had a couple little changes we were making. And I'm not sure if Jennifer Fagan's here. Jennifer, she was supposed to be at another meeting and was going to come next week to our meeting, but she was able to make it today. And if you want to come up and say a few words about the contract. Sure. Thank you. This is Jennifer Fagan of Republic Services.

Hello, everyone. Sorry about my voice. I've got a cold, if you can believe that, when it's going to be 100 degrees tomorrow. Um, basically what the extension is, it's not an extension, just an amendment to the current contract. The residential services for trash will all stay the same. Nothing's changing for that. But we are going to offer curbside recycling. Um, it'll be once a month and we'll provide a cart and, um. You know, there'll be a list of the items that are acceptable 1 and 2 plastics, cardboard, aluminum. Metal. And paper which are the are the normal things And then we will service it once a month We are going to do a sign-up period if this is passed between now and the end of December in which people can sign up because we do need a minimum of 1,250 people to participate. We don't really know what it's going to be like if we're going to make those numbers. We know there's a lot of people that are wanting to do it. I know there were some things that were tried earlier that didn't necessarily work, but we're going to give it a go to see if there's some people excited about it. And I can answer any questions that you might have about current situation or

Travis.

Hey, thanks for being here tonight and moving your schedule around. I have just a few questions for those watching or here listening that are interested. What would the cost be since it's once a month? Where does it go? And if it goes to Springfield, is that correct? Yes. And is there any interest in taking it to our recycling center here in Bella Vista?

Um, the cost will be 650 per month. Um, and of course, we do the billing so you'll get billed quarterly. So that would just show up on your bill along with your residential service We do currently take all of our recyclables right now to Springfield, which is a republic owned facility We haven't really had a discussion yet with the Bella Vista recycling center I know that's on our agenda to do now that we've kind of worked this out as to what the plan may be And we're not opposed to it Um, we just, you know, it's all commingled and that's the big driving force that, that has always been a problem in the past is that, you know, they want everything separated out. Um, but ours is commingled, but no, we're not opposed to, we can work something out that's in both parties interests and looking at that as long as they have the space and can handle the volume. Uh, Wendy, uh,

few questions as well. So I understand the current contract is up in December 31st, 2027. So one is, why are we doing this 18 months before that contract is up? Two, did this go out to bid to any other organizations? This might be the best pricing, but did it go out to bid? Three, I know that Pea Ridge recently moved from a once a month to a, I think, twice a month situation. And they did that because after talking to Mayor See, He basically described it as a nightmare because residents were calling a city hall multiple times a day, a week, because they forgot when their pickup was. And so would there be an option to do it more often than just once a month? Thank you.

Um, I believe the contract's up at the end of this year. That's correct. Um, so that's the end of 26.

Yeah. Right.

January one. So, um, uh, so it's, it's not really just what six months out or a little less than six months out. Um, you know, we, we are negotiating and working through this to do an, an amendment. Um, if the council decides they don't want to move forward with that, then obviously the bidding process would happen. Pea Ridge was every other week and they went to weekly and they did have some issues with the calendar of Knowing when it is we put out a recycling calendar and of course the the city would have that information to put on their website Cassie is fantastic about putting information out. So You know every month we could put it out, you know, it wouldn't it wouldn't change right? It would be set for the whole year so I think it's a good start Pea Ridge has probably 60% of their residents that participate in recycling. If we get that here, that's fantastic. We can look at going more often. I think really just the idea was to let's get it out and see what the interest is, and then we'll go from there.

Yeah, we're dipping our toe in the water, and if we did it twice a month, it would be $12.50 a month, and I was concerned we wouldn't get enough people signed up, as opposed to $650 a month. So that's how we ended up where we are. Shay?

Sorry if I missed it, but I'm not seeing the contract language anywhere. Is that right? OK, so it's not part of the packet.

OK. Yeah, unfortunately, we weren't quite done. And so we had to send a separate email afterwards. That's a good question. Travis, did you have something?

Yes. I never heard the answer to one of Councilmember Hughes' questions. I think it was for the Mayor, not for you. Was this sent out for competitive bidding? If not, why is that?

No, it was not. You don't have to have competitive bidding if it's an amendment or extension. We did get a deal where the 2027 rate is the same as 2026. And this, you know, a lot of people have wanted to try the curbside recycling. And we thought this was a good way to kind of dip our toe in the water and just, you know, see how it goes. So that's why we proceeded that we did. Anna.

I'm looking at the list of items that you would accept. I don't see Glass on here. I see glass is restricted. Can you explain why glass is restricted?

It's not accepted at our facilities Glass is really hard on the equipment But that's where these other drop-offs like the recycling facility here in Bella Vista and stuff where you can utilize and do glass drop-off and We don't take it in Springfield. When Mark's, before it burnt down, they didn't take it either.

And then just my other comment, I don't think once a month is enough. And I think fewer people would even consider signing up because it would be so infrequent. I think twice a month would be a better starting point, just knowing how much my family of four goes through. We're taking the recycling weekly.

There will be an option for an extra card if in those cases, but I understand what you're saying.

Anybody else? Anyway, I'd like to give you guys a chance. You know, we wanted to get this out so you'd have some time to study it and look it over and think about it and things like that.

Travis? I'm just curious, and I have nothing against Republic, but I'm just curious, even though we didn't have to send it out for competitive bidding, is there a chance that we could get a better deal? That's kind of my only hang-up with it. I'm just curious why we didn't, even though we don't have to.

Well, we got the same rate for the first year. We thought it was a good deal. And also, it's been, this is a fairly new thing that people would be willing to try the curbside recycling. As you know, that other guy wasn't quite able to swing it. We thought this might be a way that it would have a better chance to go forward. Shay?

Doesn't our current contract with the Republic also give them sole right or first right of refusal for recycling programs within the city?

If they're added to the existing agreement, yes.

Right. So we wouldn't be able to put it out to bid unless we canceled our current contract, I would think?

Correct. The contract comes to an end at the end of the year. There's an automatic renewal if that was decided not to happen, which if I recall, when we looked at it, it was at some point in September we would have to give notice to Allied Republic, same thing, of our intention for that not to renew. And so we would... we would need to decide by some point in September that we wanna re-bid and do something else. Otherwise, the existing agreement would renew without recycling and at higher rates. So that's kinda where we currently stand if you take no action.

Anything else?

I think that's good. Thank you. I really appreciate your coming tonight.

You're welcome. I'm available if you guys have any questions. Thank you.

Okay. The next matter is we have several different discussion items. First one is Bella Vista Recycling Center, and that's Council Member Travis Harp, Operations Manager Ken Nelson, and Volunteer Lou Sterick. Sorry about that. That's the way it was written. I knew that.

Mayor, council, I'm Ken Nelson. I'm a volunteer. This is the operations manager, Loose Derrick. Everything circles around him. I'm going to cut to the chase, and then I'm going to open the floor for conversations you may have of us. And our specific operation is still the same 501c3 that we've been since 2000 at the location we are. Historically, we've been the cookie jar for the charities of Northwest Arkansas and specifically Bella Vista. And that was up until July of 2025. The cost of operations is creeping up on us now. gradually and not so gradually. And so we have not been able to make any charitables since July of 2025. We are not a volunteer-based operation. We have five paid staff, three full-time, two part-time. And so we've most recently encountered a speed bump. And unbeknownst to us, We had a benefactor who was picking up the tab on our Republic dumpsters down there. We get a lot of trash. The bigger we get, the more trash we get. People are coming from communities all over the country which have all different kinds of recycling criteria. There is no uniform codes for recycling. There's altered resins, and it's just a mess. Our trash disposal is running us about $1,000 a month, okay? I talked to Travis. I've got a couple of proposals right up front. If we can't do a workaround, I'd like to see our operation incorporated in the 2027 budget, okay? to the tune of $12,000 or $1,000 a month. Now, if we could do a workaround, which I'm gonna propose, which would look like we get our Republic dumpsters and the costs associated with that on the city dole, on the city dime, and if that creates a workaround where you guys are probably, the city's probably getting a better rate than we can even get, But that's for you guys to determine. If there's a workaround possibility to move our cost of our trash disposal to the city budget, fine. If not, I'm graciously asking for a 2027 stipend budget deal. So that's the nuts and bolts of the point of our conversation. And coincidentally, it was nice that this recycle opportunity curbside is also on the table and up for conversation. I will express in lieu that single stream is not what we are. We're a recycling foundation. Bella Vista curbside as proposed, it's just single stream. Half the stuff on the curb is trash. It's co-mingled. It destroys everything. any recycling capabilities of the product. And then this whole thing is exacerbated by the fact that one of the biggest categories in recycling is clear plastic, PET, number ones. Number ones recapture this below zero. It's going to start costing us money as we speak. We're already a convenience center for the glass. Okay, there is no revenue in glass. We take 40,000 pounds of glass a month into our facility. The trucking, we get it trucked out of there and we don't lose money. But there ain't a nickel to be made in the cost of operation scheme insurance and everything that goes with that. So that's the gist of our conversation. Got Lou here. If you got questions for the recycling operation going forward, we did not bring a crystal ball, okay? So the floor is back at you guys.

Can I ask you a question? Just from the legal side, just for clarity, that's all. Sure. You said you were a volunteer for the group, but then you also said they don't have any volunteers, that they're all paid. I'm trying to figure out, do you have the authority to speak for the recycling center as the volunteer?

Our board members are volunteers. Oh, okay. All right. That's fine.

Are you on the board?

No. He's part of the board.

I'm part of the board.

He's our co-speaker.

And just to be clear, when I said volunteers, I meant operation. Okay. All right. Functional volunteers. I understand. Historically, the clubs and foundations around the city had volunteers that came down and we compensated them at $6 an hour. But it got cost-prohibited with the cost of return on our cardboard. So, yeah, we've got a board of directors, and I'm involved in that on a volunteer basis because I'm socially adjusted.

Are you on the board or not?

I'm not on the board. Historically, I've been on the board. I'm not currently on the board, okay, to make that perfectly clear. But there's 100 years of... intellect involved in this board that's keeping this thing running and what it's going to look like everybody's over 70 okay sorry john but larry but anyway uh we will entertain any recycling dialogue that needs to be entertained uh Like I say, we just had a single item that if we can get some relief. We've got cash reserves. We'll run until they're not there anymore, and we'll try to do it. But the cost of operations and the return from materials is getting tighter and tighter to below zero. Now I can turn it back to you guys. Shea?

First of all, thanks for all you do. I love coming to the recycling center and really appreciate all that. I was just curious, and it doesn't have to be exact, but could you rank the highest material return value to lowest? It sounds like glass and plastic won. Quantity or price? I guess if I'm going to.

Quantity would be a cardboard. That's 65 to 70% of the material coming in here. I don't know if you know it or not. We even go to the city and haul it in. We rent trailers out to businesses and bring cardboard in from Bentonville. Can you get to the mic?

Do you mind using the mic? Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay. My question was more if I'm bringing you a car full of items, what are you the most excited to see and what are you the least excited to see?

Aluminum cans. Aluminum cans. They're worth a dollar a pound. So every bale we make of aluminum weighs 500 pounds. It's a $500 bill. All right. And what's kind of next after that? After that would be cardboard. And on down with that would be milk jugs. They're worth good money. And the rest of it is glass. Every time we touch glass, we lose money. PET, that's your drinking bottles, your Coke bottles. This just happened about two months ago. Trucking is eating up the profit on it. I don't know... we may be uh ore's our uh broker for selling the products and uh she might be starting to take away some of our money just to ship it out to get rid of it it's it's awful right so that's one of the big changes and it's the plastic plastics it just it just happened in the last few months here it's just uh I was telling Kenny, I looked back in 2023, PET air plastics was worth 14 cents a pound back then. Since then, it's down to five or 10, five, three. Our last load, we got a half a penny. Just barely covered it.

So is that because the quality of the plastics that they're getting or?

It's just... We've got a big article that our broker sent on it. Virgin material is cheaper to make.

They can start from scratch cheaper than they can recycle. That's the biggest issue. Another issue in this conversation of PET is altered resins. And there's no standard enforceable government codes on those circles on the bottom that says 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Those are just error. because there's ones out there, a lot of times there's cake boxes, veggie trays, they've got a one on them. The resin is not compatible with traditional PET, so it turns into garbage. There's things like, or there's altered resins. Fair Life Milk, for example, has got a number one on the bottom, but it's not. It starts out with core resin, the number one, but I talked to the people in Chicago, And they're blending number seven with it. And so that makes them non-recyclable. It's just crazy. And single stream is just that. So you guys can tiptoe into this. I'm interested to see. We tried to work with Jeff Peterson, who brought curbside after numerous bouts of trying to get permission. And we didn't hold out a lot of hope for that operation. We'll see what the people of Bella Vista think about and if they really understand that it isn't going to really look like recycling. as we know it down there. So any other questions? Go ahead, Travis.

Thanks, Mayor. So I have a statement and then I have a question. So thanks for coming. Thanks for all you do. I consider Ken Nelson like the Aaron Brockovich of recycling. So it's very interesting to talk to him about that. And Lou works harder than a lot of 25-year-olds. So I appreciate everything that you're all doing over there. And if memory serves me correctly, when I was speaking to you all, you said that cardboard is the second highest payable to you all, and it's like $80 for 2,000 pounds of it. Is that correct?

It's $100 a ton right now. It moved. It gradually moves up by $10 a month. It's at $100 now. Probably about September, it starts going the other way. Every month, $5 go down. $60 a ton starting out this year.

So if you're getting started off, you've got $60 for 2,000 pounds of cardboard. So I would assume that your recycling center is highly visited. Do you know how many people stop there per day?

Karen's not here, but I'm getting a new record. We've got a thing across the street.

The clock's all right.

Karen, I asked Karen to do a traffic count. I would have had a new report for you today. The traffic count was a week's worth. It was done last Friday. They came and picked it up. The lawn people that mow the grass there for Carroll Electric ran over and chewed it up. So we started all over. Friday, and we'll be getting it. But I've got an old one back in 2021 in front of me. And I'm going to go down. 2021, we started on a Wednesday, 161 visits. Thursday, 401. Friday, 349 visits. Saturday, which is the biggest day, 472 visits. Sunday were closed, but 26 26 of them tried to come down New people new people a Monday a Monday's another busy day 462 Tuesday 375 and Wednesday 215 so Wednesdays and Thursdays are slow day What was you had another question beside that what was it I

I'd like to clarify what the request is. I'll tell you what I think it is, and then you can tell me. I think the request is in 2027 that we give you $12,000 or else we pay for two dumpsters.

Right now we have two dumpsters picked up twice a week by Republic. Three times a week. Three times a week they're picking? Okay. It's $1,000 a month. So if you don't want to wait to 2027, you can start any time by mayoral proclamation. You can sign it, and we'll graciously take it. We're already six months in arrears on that. We're eating up cash reserves. And so the question is, if there's an opportunity for us to have the city just pick up the public tab or put us on the dole,

We can't give you money. We've had this discussion before. You know that. So what we've done in the past is there are certain pieces of equipment that have been procured through grants that we've bought and leased back in exchange for services generally to the city. So I'm not saying it's impossible to get you that money but there's going to have to be some agreement between the agents or the foundation in the city about what is done in exchange for it. So it's not, we can't just cut a check to you for that. There's going to have to be more done to it than that. And I don't remember how many vehicles we currently have under a leasing range. Just one. That's a forklift, I think.

One, one vehicle. Isn't it just as simple, just one more stop and pick up two dumpsters, just our dumpsters in your fleet?

run the fleet, Republic run the fleet.

Yeah, well, I'm saying, can you just call Republic and say, hey, just one more pickup?

Well, we can't make them give us, give free services. No, no, it's not free.

It's just a being.

Okay, charge. I can answer you. Can they charge? Yeah. So.

You guys get better rates?

We, we, the city's facilities are covered as part of our agreement. So the city doesn't pay for its own trash. Okay. We get certain dumpsters for each of our facilities. And so we don't pay a bill to Republic. Your facility is not a city facility. It wouldn't fall under that. So it's going to have to be, if there's some arrangement, it's going to have to be separate from that.

We are a service to the city.

Let me jump in here for conversation. I'm going to take a breath here. Okay, we lock the gate on Saturday night at 6 o'clock because we're not open on Sunday.

7 o'clock Sunday morning, I close it.

7 o'clock Sunday morning.

Sunday morning, I close it.

Don't get me tit for tat. That's not where I'm going. He locks the gate 7 o'clock Sunday morning, and we don't open it for a month. We don't open it for two months. Our money is gone. We haven't figured out how to sustain the place, and the keys are on John's desk. Okay? This is just Chris Cabal's stuff. This guy is 79. He ain't going anywhere. He spends a little bit of time there. He fixes about anything he can break. But in the future of Bella Vista and the history of recycling, I mean, thousands and thousands and thousands of have gone through the 501 process to be encumbered with the legislation of what are we doing for you? Or what can't we do for you? I'm telling you what we've done. We will try to do more, but right now, it's tough. Ashay? Ashay?

Ken, I know why they sent you up here. You're very charming. Thank you.

Don't repeat that to the board.

I imagine I feel very supportive of what you're asking for. I think what we're trying to get across is that we have to have probably some sort of contract in place similar to what we have with the animal shelter where they provide services to the city. So I promise that I will help take a look at this and that we will definitely get back with you.

And that's where I'm just going to toss the ball into council's court. You don't need to see us next week, right? Mayor.

Mayor. Travis?

Yeah, and whenever I sat down and spoke with Ken, I had mentioned that we'd have to have some sort of contract agreement if there was some sort of service. I think Lou had mentioned maybe they could do the paper shredding for the city because they do that over there. So we had some of those ideas in the background. I think they wanted to come and gauge the level of interest on the council. So anyways, there's that.

Yeah, I think that's correct, that you wouldn't have to come next week. We'll take some time to think about things.

You guys, kick it around. We're there until we aren't. Okay? Not real complicated. And you'll know when we aren't because the gate will be locked and the key is at John's desk.

A bunch of equipment sitting there.

Yeah. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay Okay, next item is proposed. This is discussion item proposed planning and development code changes And this is councilmember Larry Williams, and I believe there's five is there five different items Five areas of concern

I guess starting off, the first one is we have incorporated administrative approval of subdivisions for under six lots in size, I understand, with the new code, but we've also exempted them from the same performance standards that would be attributable to a subdivision that would come before the council for approval. I think that that's an unfair advantage. It came to our attention with a backward situation last month. and that an administrative subdivision with five lots, one of the lots was purchased and a request was submitted to the Planning Commission to create two out of that one lot. So now it was a six lot subdivision and it fell under the purview of council approval requirements. They asked for waivers and that's where it caught our attention. They weren't required to perform Upgrades to the adjacent streets to bring them up to our code standard Which was also included with the extra lot division They wanted a waiver on that as well Planning Commission had approved that I don't think we should be granting any waivers of performance, whether it's an administrative subdivision or not. The performance should be the same. They should be required to do the same adjacent or contiguous or internal improvements that any subdivision would be required to do. So that's the first one. Okay.

Any questions? Let's discuss them one at a time. I'd like to hear from Taylor for the rationale for that. One thought that occurs to me is if you just have one little lot or two lots and we say, oh, it's a requirement that you fix this street, well, people will just never do it. It'll never happen. It's more easy to have that money if you've got something to spread it across. I can build whole streets for one lot, I don't think. Anyway, Taylor, I'm curious what you think the rationale is for the difference.

Well, actually, the explanation that you gave kind of confused me a little bit. I thought this was just generally speaking administrative or minor plats. If they weren't subject to the full PPL and final plat requirement, you wanted us also to apply, change the code and apply the development requirements to minor plats as well. But the example you just gave, they were making more than six. So they actually were required to bring the streets up to standards, but the planning commission gave them a waiver of that. that process was followed and it was given to them.

So the City Council had no say in what happened with that administrative approval?

No. Waivers are the authority of the Planning Commission for 107.

So I would take exception to that because it's, again, the Council has not approved that and it's an infrastructure that the City Council is responsible for. I would take exception to them being allowed to grant that waiver.

So any waiver of Section 107 you feel the council should approve, not the Planning Commission?

I don't think any of those should be wavered for any reason. Now, if you take a lot split, a single property lot split, that I can understand administratively. you probably would not require adjacent improvements to. But I think there's a lot of factors in there that need to be taken into consideration. But when you're talking about a subdivision, more than one lot being divided, then it's a subdivision. And so the performance standards on those should be the same as they are, whether they're administratively processed or whether they're council processed in the end. And no waiver should be allowed for required improvements that are deficiencies in the infrastructure adjacent. Because what that does is it puts that bill on our taxpayers to pay for that cost. Taxpayers are not benefiting from that sale The landowners benefiting from that sale they need to be responsible for doing the improvements attributable to our code in my humble view Shay

Larry, did you take that opinion to the Planning Commission and give them your input as a citizen or as a city councilor the night they had that vote? Because I think that would be the best way for you to be heard.

What we're doing here is we're talking about five areas, three of them relative to performance and code, and two of them relative to violations and what to do with the penalties. So there are two penalty areas and three code areas of performance. Are you planning on... I think we would draft, if I recall, I talked with Attorney Kelly, and we would kind of draft up some thoughts and pass them on to the Planning Commission for their action, and they would take those and fine-tune them and reprocess them and spit them out as some kind of a code amendment.

Okay, so you're going to share your thoughts now. pass it to the Planning Commission, and then perhaps this will come back to us in a form of an ordinance? I just want to procedurally understand what's happening.

What Mr. Williams would need to do, I think, is do something, what I know, would be do something akin to the resolution that Ms. Hughes has offered on a different topic that would request the Planning Commission to conduct a public hearing and suggest changes to the zoning code. Because that particular provision is in the zoning code?

No, it's in Section 107, but it is a development code, so it still requires public hearing.

Okay, all right, sorry. Yeah, it would. So I think that's what I was telling Mr. Wilms when I met with him about what the requirement would be. So a single member of the council does not have the authority to refer something to the Planning Commission to come back. The council itself has that authority, or the city staff has that authority, or the Planning Commission can act on its own.

Okay, so next month, Larry could bring a resolution outlining these very items, and then we could vote as a council to send that to the Planning Commission? You could.

Yes, that would be correct.

Okay, and for now, we're just discussing.

These are just discussion items. Right now, I'm soliciting the support or the interest of other council members to my rationale of application of our code to constituents investors, whoever.

Mayor.

Chavez.

I can't support you because I'm not fully understanding what you're trying. Is there a problem that you're trying to solve? I just don't fully understand the angle that you're coming from here. So could you help me understand that?

Do you remember a couple of meetings ago we had a lot number six right? I remember was a lot number five was split into two and so that made a six lot subdivision collectively of that of that action, okay, and so as a result of that the Planning Commission then needed to process it as if it were originally done as a six lot split and but only dealing with the one parcel that got divided. And they included in that a request to waive the infrastructure improvements that would be attributable to that because now it became subject to all of the improvements associated with that one lot. The rest of the lots were exempted because that was administratively approved. And so it's a little complicated process I think I have it clear in my mind as to what happened, but I'm suggesting that we are being remiss in requiring less standards of performance for administratively processed subdivisions or truck splits.

But they waived it. I don't think there's less requirements to my understanding. Taylor has it.

I might be able to clarify this a little bit. So currently minor plats that are making six or less lots, if they meet all of the requirements of a minor plat, then they are not required to go through the full subdivision and development process, which is a PPL through planning commission, construction permitting, and then a final plat with planning commission and then you guys approving it. If it's more than six lots it is considered a full subdivision and then it does require PPL or preliminary plat construction permits and then a final plat I believe mr Wilms is wanting to make any subdivision minor or full subject to the development requirements, which is street improvements drainage Pedestrian accommodations depending on what kind of subdivision it is, etc.

That is correct. You have a correct interpretation Thank you Wendy

So essentially not having the ability to have a waiver process. Is that correct?

That's why I asked my clarification question when I came up here, because the example was that they actually were required to improve the streets, but they were given a waiver from Planning Commission to not. But they had met the threshold of more than six lots.

What was the vote on that? Do you remember?

Uh, off the cuff, I don't want to give you a wrong answer, but it was four or more for it to pass.

So, yeah, just, I started a quick follow-up. So Larry is the intention or the hope to like not have a waiver process. So it just would not be, there'd be no ability for a waiver to be permitted.

Waiver of required infrastructure improvement should not be allowed by the Planning Commission, first of all, but I don't believe in the real sense we should be granting that anyway because what we're doing is we're shifting that cost burden to our taxpayers and putting it on the street department's bill when they do street improvements in that area or if they need to do upgrades. And so sometimes if you've driven up Gordon Hollow Road, the subdivision on the east side, the right side going up Gordon Hollow Road from Scottsdale, there's a strip there because that half of the street doesn't meet the code minimum, even though the city paid to build it. When it was built, we didn't have a street standard. So we built it to a reasonable standard. which was the standard that Cooper had used in a lot of their construction of their streets. And so what happened is our subdivision said that the abutting street needs to have a width of so many feet that half a pavement didn't meet that minimum, and so they put in a two-foot or whatever strip addition along that edge to make it conform. And these are the types of things that if we continue to waive them, then the city is the one that picks up the bill when you want to do a major street improvement. And I think that that's wrong.

I think the developer needs to... Taylor, did we incorporate fees in lieu Those say the Planning Commission had not waived it I don't remember if we if we allowed fees in lieu on something that small or not for pedestrian accommodations There's a fee in lieu of option but not for it because we're currently not requiring a street improvement on single-family Lots right.

That's why we didn't we don't require it. No not for just someone to pull a single-family building permit, right?

No, no, okay And then you can also have subdivision without necessarily a development item they could be just dividing lots without to sell them and with no current plan on development.

So point one. I'm sorry. I didn't understand what you were saying.

We're talking about subdivision. So they could just be dividing lots, dividing a lot or dividing a parcel into lots with no current plan to develop. They could just be dividing it.

And the question begs itself whether a lot division creating two lots should fall under the requirement of adjacent infrastructure improvement. And that's a question for the council. I have a question.

Travis. Okay. Sorry, just for clarification. So I'm generally not against waivers except for like when the mayor waived the fees for the bike park. I'm against those kind of waivers. But for this, you don't want the Planning Commission to be able to make the decision to give a waiver.

Not for infrastructure that the city is responsible for.

Okay.

Thank you.

Shea.

If this were to be in a resolution and the City Council were to vote on it and send it to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission can choose to act or not act on any piece or part of this, right?

They would need to conduct a public hearing, but they might. I would assume they're going to either recommend to do it or not do it or come to you with something different. I can't speak for what they might do.

Right.

Whether they might see it and just say, hey, I'm not going to talk about this. It would be on their agenda they would need to do this.

But they could edit, add, or drop, or remove, or craft it.

They're making recommendations. It's ultimately, it's like I said before, it's ultimately up to the council and what's finally done.

Taylor?

And just to clarify that too, as a part of our new code, our code does line out the process pretty tightly. So staff makes a recommendation to the Planning Commission, Planning Commission holds the public hearing, and then Planning Commission makes a recommendation to you all. And that's based off current code and state law. But I do have some general notes that may be helpful for this discussion, if I could just share those real quick. I know you wanted to take these one point at a time, but just there are some notes in here that are already in code So and there's already items in here that the Planning Commission has already directed staff to work on so we might I would recommend that we meet So that we can line that out not duplicate efforts because some of this is already being worked on and some of it's already in The code that we are enforcing every day You two haven't met yet Not about this

So that you and Larry could meet and go over the list.

I would recommend that. I would recommend that we meet so that way we're not putting effort into something that's either already been done or already exists.

So do you think we should stop talking about these tonight?

I am not the mayor. I was just offering my motion to approve.

Well, let me go through the rest of the list here simply to familiarize you guys with what my train of thought was. The number two, revise the code to require the same tree removal standards or permissions for existing platted lots as our code permits for new subdivision lots. And as I understand our code, when new subdivisions come in, the newly platted lots have a different standard for tree removal or tree removal permissions are different for requirements for newly planted lots versus existing planted lots. And we have 38,000, close to 500 existing planted lots that are a part of the Cooper development. And so if those are all exempt, those are the ones that are really largely being built on. And if this new standard only applies to new subdivisions created then we're being remiss and we deserve the complaints that we see out in the public of tree clearing. So that leads me then to item number three, and that is that we provide some very severe mandatory penalties for those builders, builders, not the contractor who does the tree clearing, but the builder who has the permit for the lot, would be charged $500 for the first offense. If he's got a separate lot elsewhere that he has a permit on and he does the same thing with that permit, that's a second offense. And then everyone after that is $4,500. We need to grab ahold of them by the nose and call their attention to the fact they need to read what the code allows for tree clearing on lots. Because we are being harassed and criticized grossly and PERHAPS FAIRLY BY THE PUBLIC IN THE MEDIA. SHAY?

LARRY, I'M DEFINITELY WITH YOU ON SAVING THE TREES AND HOLDING PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE FOR FOLLOWING THE RULES. AND I'M ALSO WITH YOU ON BUILDERS INVESTING IN OUR COMMUNITY WHEN THEY COME IN AND BUILD. I promise you I read every single word you wrote down, and so if you wouldn't mind, do you mind just expounding on your ideas rather than reading them to me, pretty please? I promise I already read it.

Okay. The fourth item is to require a higher tree replacement standard. I think an inch and a half caliper is a twig out there growing. and that we need some performance checking to make sure that, first of all, the caliper is much bigger, they're a much hardier stock that they're planting, that's number four, and it also then would require four inspections, one to verify that the trees were healthy at the time of the building permit issuance, and then three successive years thereafter, for the anniversary dates of the CFO confirmation. And we would charge a fee up front as opposed to loading that up to staff. We would contract with a licensed arborist doing business in Bella Vista. And there are several of them, I understand. So we would get a contract with them and that would we would pay it out of that collected fee or fund. The fifth one is require prepayment of those inspection fees for the occupancy. And I think that's it. Four and five, yeah. Increase the size of the tree standard replacement as opposed to just a twig.

Okay, thank you. I guess next step, you and Taylor will meet and hash things out a little bit.

We'll talk about the specifics of where this is in the code and what we have and what we may need.

Thank you, Taylor, for your input. Next one is creation of a green committee slash board. Wendy Hughes.

Hey, so I kind of mentioned this, it might have been a year ago or two, my time runs away from me, regarding we used to have a yard waste committee that was created to determine what to do with yard waste opposed to burning it. And I think they met maybe six or seven times and then kind of ran into some roadblocks and then disbanded. I'd like to, given our community is very passionate, I think we all lived here and moved here because of the trees and because it's green, it's beautiful. seeing if we can have some very smart people get together, form a new board or committee to have them focus on things like composting, things like herbicides being used in our community, other best kind of green practices, and just see if the council would like to have some smart people just investigate these things, figure out how to find grants to help support those items to help make our... community just remain beautiful and safe.

I like it. Shea?

I'm definitely supportive of that. I appreciate the idea. I think I do remember Mr. Kelly previously advising that this governing body doesn't have the ability to ban any pesticides. Is that right?

State law prevents you from regulating pesticides and herbicides? Yes, I just wanted to call that out.

Best practices and like educating the public, like having opportunities for the public to understand like, hey, what you're using, how it's used, and yeah.

I was talking to a citizen the other day and they were unaware of the yard waste possibilities with free public services and how you could get a bin, use it for yard waste.

There's options, and I know there's probably programs and grants out there about like, hey, this is how you can do composting on your own. I know there'd be so many regulations to jump through. I'm not educated in this, but what would it look like to have our own compost facility? partner with another count or in the county with theirs and have some reciprocal services. So it's having some smart people work together to provide information to the council for recommendations.

Travis. Yeah, I'm supportive of this. I think there's enough interest in our community that it would take off and they could do good things. But also, while we're on this topic, since you mentioned it, Mayor, I would love to see the city do some sort of publication about Republic, because I believe a lot of people don't know about that yard waste pickup.

Yeah. Yeah. In conjunction with the... new transaction, we could maybe figure out a way to do a little more aggressive job of publicizing, making sure people understand what the options are, especially with this new Republic was anticipating our communications people would help and, you know, trying to get people signed up for the recycling and they could, you know, let them know about it and what the decisions are and whatnot. Anybody else? Okay, we do have one more item that's not listed, and it's a dark trace email filter. Shea Newport had mentioned it, and I also had John Mogul from our IT department come. So, Shea, did you want to bring it up?

Yeah, I just wanted to bring it up. I happened to stumble upon this and I just wanted to make sure my other council members were aware. So often I have my city email on my phone and often I'd get that little preview, you know, hey, there's an email about this. And then I go to click on it. And then right before my eyes, that email would disappear. And so I thought I was going crazy, but I met with our fabulous IT department, kind of demonstrated that and named some of the emails, or at least to the best of my ability, what the subject had been or anything like that. And it turns out we have not only the Microsoft Outlook filter happening, but we have an additional filter that he can explain. But I just wanted to make sure all my other council members were aware. that sometimes emails are pulled from our inbox without us having any visibility. Like if I didn't happen to catch those previews, then I wouldn't know that they were missing at all. Or sometimes citizens have said they've emailed me and I just don't have it at all. And so then we're left unsure about like, did they send the email or what's happening? So I just wanna bring to everyone's attention that there's this additional filter and there's some steps we can take if we feel that an email is missing.

Yeah, thanks for bringing that to everyone's attention. Yes, a number of years ago, we bought a product from a company called Darktrace called Antigena Email. And it provides a kind of a second set of eyes on the email to scrub spam and junk mail and potential viruses, all that kind of stuff out. So I ran a couple statistics today. I looked at the last 28-day history of Darktrace. And Darktrace analyzed 58,136 emails during that time frame. It took action on 2,504 of those emails. And it takes generally four types of actions the least Invasive is called a link lock sometimes you'll see like you know here click on this link, and then it'll take it antigena and Say are you sure you want to unlock that? Then they have what they call a double link lock And move to junk is another very common feature that Darktrace will do. It'll move stuff into your junk email folder for you. And the one that's in question tonight is called withheld email, where it literally just vacuums it out of your email. Microsoft inbox and that happened 169 times over the last 28 days so as a percentage that's 0.29 percent of the emails that that happens to and most of the time it's right when it does that it's it usually is some you know junk email and The thing we can do is a workaround if it would be helpful is We could send a report from Darktrace to you that says, you know, hey, the following emails were withheld from you. And then if you want to request them to be released, we can take a look at them and decide, is it really legitimate? Because I'm not aware of any tool that's 100% accurate and Whenever it takes a legitimate email and sucks it out of the system, that is definitely a problem, especially for the sender, you know, because they feel like they're being ignored. And I certainly apologize when that happens. But like I said, I'm not aware of anything that's 100% accurate.

I have a question about that. So... over 60,000 emails and only 2,000 of them have this happen. But to me, it feels like it happens to me a lot. And so I'm wondering, since we're city council members and the majority of people that are emailing us have not emailed us before, and they also don't have a city email address, are we kind of targeted with that dark trace more often than maybe a department head who's emailing their employees?

Well, I think you're right to suspect that dark trace uses behavior And, you know, people that we frequently correspond with, we frequently do business with, it will score that as, you know, usual activity. So in that regard, you know, you could get an email from absolutely anyone at any time on any subject that probably does filter you out more so than the average employee. I think that is fair to say.

Shea?

Yeah, I know when I was speaking with Eric on your team, and thanks for all you do in regards to this, I know we were talking about how often private citizens' emails are Gmail, Yahoo, things like that. Systems are often hacked, and then often citizens will email all of us at the exact same time, which appears spammy. So also, I don't know if there's a different way we could work around where perhaps there's a city council distribution email address, and then it distributes to us. Maybe there's something functionally we could look at as well, where Citizens could email one email address that comes to all of us, and that maybe reduces dark traces.

Yeah, certainly I can reach out to dark traces engineers and talk about best practices, and I'm sure there's some sort of fine-tuning we can do.

Wendy?

Just saying, the number of times where I've happened to check my junk mail filter, I'm like, oh, there's an email, and it's from a resident, and saying, hey, I will reply back saying, hey, If you don't get a response back, it did hit my junk mail, so it probably hit everyone else's, and they might not see it. So if you don't get a response, you might just try an individual again. It's been dozens of times that I've done that.

But this is different. This is removed.

I've had it where I'm like, oh, like John Adams, and it's just poofed, and you think you are going crazy.

Yeah, the withheld is the strictest action where Darktrace is deciding that's got to be bad, so I'm just going to basically delete it out of your inbox for you.

John, can I ask you a question? Sure. Normally I bother you about this tomorrow, but you're standing there. Outlook has the ability to actually, in a certain circumstance, to recall an email. Does that ever happen? Somebody sends an email, and then before it's open, they can recall it? And would that cause it to look like it disappeared from, say, the inbox list or anything like that? I don't know how often that can be used or whether it's useful or not. But I know it's very hard to, I mean, once an email's sent, it's sent. But there's a little window of time where Outlook will do something like that. Are you familiar with that?

Yeah, I think in this case that would not apply because most of these residents are using third-party systems and free email and things like that. So I think once it's delivered to our system, delivered to your inbox, then it's certainly our spam-fighting tools that are removing it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Larry?

Yeah. Sometimes I will get an email and they will go to junk mail because the person sending it isn't on my mailing list or in my contact list. So if we have people that we deal with, we include their contact information in our contact list. Does Dark Trace compare that so that it doesn't shoot it off to... junk mail? Does it do some good?

The answer to that's somewhat, because the kind of tricky thing about dark trace is they really try and use artificial intelligence or programmed intelligence to read the email so There's really not a certain yes or no answer to that because Even if you whitelist things in dark trace, it'll still analyze it and it'll think well Maybe that email has been taken over by a spammer or something. So it still evaluates the emails and Even if you whitelist them, it'll perform some evaluation of the content.

Email from the same individual who sent me several emails as a result of a conference that I was at. And so he had my email address, but I didn't enter his name into my contact list. And so it ended up in junk mail, and I didn't realize that he had responded because he was a busy guy. And so by the time I got to it, some of the stuff was dated, and I was not able to access references that he put in there.

Yeah, I've been burned by the junk email box too sometimes. Somebody sends me something, and it was in my junk box. I didn't see it in time. Shea.

So just to summarize, are you willing to look into maybe if there can be like a centralized like email all your city council or email address or look into seeing if that would help trip dark trace less often?

Yeah, I'm willing to meet with dark trace, do any sort of fine tuning that's beneficial.

That'd be great. And then in the meantime, if we feel like, Yeah. Yeah, I just wonder if it makes sense to like, if that would work if like to publicize that more give the public that email address more than people always go to like our web page, and that has all our individual email addresses. So I think, I think dark traces constantly grabbing them because people have emailed six or seven of us at once. But then the second piece is, if we feel like an email has been taken, who's the best person on your team for us to reach out to this to evaluate getting that released?

The best thing to do if you're using email is to email support at bellavista.gov because that will create a help desk ticket in our ticket system. Eric and Ashton are the primary help desk workers, and one of them is almost always on duty looking at the help desk tickets that come through. So that's the best way to do it, but you're welcome to contact any of us at any time.

Okay, great. And then I think lastly, there's like a 30-day timer, just so everyone knows that too. And so if you don't catch it within, I want to say it's 30 days, then the email is unretrievable at that point. So also be sure you're taking action quickly.

That's true. DarkTrace doesn't keep them forever and ever.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Thanks very much, John, for coming and staying. And I appreciate you bringing that up. So I think that's it. Unless somebody has something else, we'll adjourn and see you next Monday at six. Thank you.