City Council - Regular Meeting

See anybody rushing to sign up? So with that, I will call us to order. Welcome to the June 23rd, 2026 Bentonville City Council meeting. I don't see a, we don't have a Boy Scout, I think in the, okay. So if you will join me in the Pledge of Allegiance and remain standing for a moment of silence for our military, please.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Sanchez? Yep. Patterson? Here. Acree? She's online. Seba? Here. Suter? Here. Grover? Burkhart?

Here.

Hook?

Here.

We can get a motion to approve the minutes of the June 9th, 2026 Bentonville Council meeting.

I'll move.

Second. Second.

Motion and a second. Roll call, please. Patterson? Yes. Deba? Yes. Souter? Yes.

Burkhardt? Yes. Hook?

Yes. Sanchez?

Yes.

With that, can I get a motion to adjourn from our city council meeting and go into committee of the whole?

So moved. Franklin?

All in favor? Aye. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris, your chair.

OK. We'll open our committee of the whole. Are there any items for discussion from the council? Anything?

I would like to discuss, and maybe it'd be better during the open council meeting, the items for discussion on the amendments to the contract, the draft TILIS, those couple of things, if I could, please. So that would be three, two, three.

Utility Board 2 and 3.

Yes, make sure that. Thank you for your patience.

That's the only one.

Yes, that'd be correct.

So you would like those not to be on the consent agenda? Yes, please. Anything else? OK, we could entertain a consent agenda for new business number one. 2 or 5. Well 13. And then you tell the board number 5.

I'm sorry did you see a new this new one new business one.

In business. Number one. No, sorry.

He's actually here.

I apologize.

Okay.

How about 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and utility board number 5.

And I don't think we have anybody signed up to speak on those, correct?

Yes.

Is there a motion for that? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor?

Okay.

Okay. Motion to adjourn from the committee.

We have two informational items under the committee. Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry. Item three, but I think it's okay.

Now we'll do the informational item number one. How about that? Sorry, Shelly.

You're like... Good evening. I have just a really brief presentation for you. I want to kind of introduce a topic to you and get some feedback from you on what direction to go with this. So the Tree and Landscape Advisory Board mentioned really about a year and a half ago about having some type of path forward for people who wanted to do some natural landscapes, specifically pollinator gardens, those type of things. At the time, we were working on the community code and we said, hold off, let's get the community code adopted. So almost to the month that we got that adopted, they're like, okay, we're ready to bring this back again. So in doing that, we have looked at a couple of different options. We've done some research, looked at some other cities. So I just wanted to share some of that with you tonight. So talked a little bit about that. The issue that creates a little bit of a challenge for people who want to do this is that we've got grass and weeds have to be under eight inches. And that's essentially what they're talking about requesting some type of exemption from that particular requirement for those type of lawns or landscapes. So You can go ahead and. So I just, a couple of little bit of data points here as far as there is increasing trends and interest in pollinator gardens, more native lawns, those type of things. So we're really trying to kind of get in front of it a little bit. Pollinators are really critical to our environment, to our food supplies. And there was a study done, National Gardening Survey is finding that about 28% of U.S. adults are looking for pollinator plants to put in their yards. And about 12% are actually trying to convert their lawns. So this is something that we're starting to see. The challenge, particularly in regards to pollinators, is that over the last 25 years, those are decreasing. So with more turf lawns, we're seeing a reduction in the habitats for that. And so that's why a lot of people are interested in it. Next slide. But with that does come some other concerns. And that's one of the things that we're trying to balance with any type of ordinance if we go that direction. So first off being the aesthetics. Sometimes the native lawns or the pollinator gardens don't have the same appearance as your typical turf grass. And so that presents some issues in regards to aesthetics. There's also some concerns that they really have to be maintained to make sure the weeds specifically those that are invasive or not getting into those gardening areas. There's concern about reduction in property values because they can have an appearance of not being maintained. And then just that sometimes if you're letting taller grasses and plants grow, that it may attract more pests, animals that could impact some of the neighbors and the rest of the neighborhood. So Next slide. There are some other cities in the region that do have some of the ordinances. Fayetteville has had one since about 2009. Bella Vista's is relatively recent. And then Springdale also has an ordinance. So the details of those exemptions vary from city to city. But we did look at that for kind of reference, just to give you an idea. There are some cities that are doing something. So in looking at those other ordinances as well as some model ordinances nationally, there's a couple of things that can be applied within an ordinance specific to the design of the landscape itself. One of them is requiring some type of minimum setback or border within those planting areas. A lot of them are about five feet. from property lines and around any planting bed. Some of them include some type of pathway through the area or special features that at least give the appearance that it's looking maintained. They get pretty specific. Some of them get specific about the type of plant materials, that they have to be either native plants or pollinator plants. um and then they still prohibit those noxious and invasive weed species so um and then uh i believe bella vista does this i didn't see it some of the other ones some of them establish a percentage of the property that is limited to that type of landscaping so so um most of them had some type of registration or permit process so if they were intending to do this they would register with that city let the city know what it is that they're doing. That may include a landscape plan, the type of plants that they're going to put in there, what their plans are for maintenance. Usually they include some type of sign so that people know that this is an area that has been reviewed by the city and is being maintained. And then they include some type of enforcement and penalties. So if you've applied for this and you're not maintaining it, the exemption goes away and you still have to meet that Hayden's requirement. With adoption of any such ordinance, there are some things that, as we're talking about, I want to make sure that everybody kind of keeps in mind. It's not as simple as just, hey, just let us know you're doing this and we'll kind of give you a pass. We want to make sure that it doesn't create some type of loophole within the system. We still want these properties to be properly maintained. So we don't want it to be misused for any reason. We are a little bit concerned about what impact it may have on staff workload because if you go this right, you're talking about some type of management of a registration or permitting process, inspections, making sure that it's being followed correctly. The code enforcement already deals in most of their cases are tall grass cases anyway. So an ordinance like this could increase their workload. But one of the things that in doing so that we're a little bit concerned about is that code enforcement existing staff doesn't necessarily have the knowledge base to know what plan is native and what plan is invasive and some of those types of things. So it could require additional training of staff if we go that direction. One of the other things that came up was how this compares with restrictive covenants. As with any of these kind of property maintenance regulations, if a neighborhood has covenants that are restrictive, those are going to supersede whatever the city's is. So if a neighborhood covenant does not allow them, that's going to supersede that, but it will be up to that HOA or POA to actually enforce that. We will still continue to enforce our 8-inch regulation. There are also some things to keep in mind as far as fire risk. So if some of these especially a lot of the pollinators are really tall and so if they are right up against structures and then if they're not being maintained and they get dry and then they catch fire it puts the structure at risk. So that's where some of those setbacks come into place too is to make sure that we're still maintaining the safety of those structures. So I just wanted to share with you some of those considerations. We have, of course, Tree and Landscape Advisory Board is the one that has recommended or made the request. We did talk to the Great Neighborhoods Council about it. We had one member that was in support, another member that was concerned about the overall appearance of that. And then, as I mentioned, we have been talking with the fire department in regards to any fire safety concerns that an ordinance like this might have, so. The next are just some images of, I think the first few are ones here locally, and then there's a few just nationally, other examples. So just wanted to give you an example of some of the ones that we have right now that we are aware of. This is one of them. This is just beginning. So when they're starting out, they can look a little bit rough because it takes a little while to get everything to grow and to get things kind of ready. weeded out and under control. You can go to the next one. This is another one. This one is the area behind the landscaping up there at the road is actually mowed. So it is just a strip there. Go to the next one. Yeah. So I just wanted to give you an example so that you could kind of visually see what some people are doing with this. You can go to the next one. Um, that is another one. Um, as you can see, a lot of the plants get very tall, um, which would be against our, our, um, eight inch, uh, requirement. And so, um, this is essentially something that, um, the tree and landscape advisory board is looking for. So wanted to present it to you, see what kind of questions you have, um, and really get a feel for what direction you as a council would like, um, this community go when it, when it comes to, um, native landscaping, pollinator landscaping, those type of things.

Can you clarify, currently pollinator gardens and designated planting beds are allowed, correct?

They're not specifically called out in the property maintenance code. But if there are plant materials inside planting beds, if they're being well-maintained, we don't apply that 8-inch rule to those plants.

Okay. I think I got confused. So the screen before that one, can you go back? Did I misunderstand you? Did you say this would be against our, or it wouldn't?

This right now, we do not have a complaint on this right now.

It's behind landscape. I thought you said that it would be against. No. She said native plants grow tall

usually and so therefore they could that particular yes exactly um as you can see this is something that is actually being maintained um but again but again yeah right um but there i will say that it i see all the confused well it just seems like there's a big difference between pain to a bed and a lawn that looks like it's just full of wheat it could be like that just seems like there's two very different

Exactly. Can you go back to the most recent, the last picture? For me, I mean, we're talking about that's just a landscape bed.

That one essentially is.

I mean, I'm just wondering, so I don't know if that's an example of what you're trying to say.

That's a designated planting bed, and it's already allowed. But I see this is where the confusion is on the 8-inch. And so I am, I mean. That wouldn't be a problem.

My understanding from the tree and landscape meeting, their examples were more full lawns, like not.

land we'll call this like with pavers and stuff like it was like full on like you have a picture of what she's describing not an early one like you do uh well yeah the if you go back that one is that the example well that one almost is not that one uh that one is so this one has a combination of like um low growing like clover and some things like that, which is not going to typically get tall enough to meet that 8-inch requirement anyway. And then you can see there are some areas that they're trying to grow some taller pollinator plants.

I actually drove by that today. They've actually made a bed in the middle. They've made a planting bed in the middle. I don't know. I have a picture from today. So they've done some things to

because this one is new and in process. So that's the point, is that to go from a fully turf lawn to be able to do a pollinator lawn, which people wanna do so that A, they don't have to maintain mow grass, It's very low maintenance. So for older people, for properties that people aren't staying at all the time. But another thing is that the pollinators, but another thing is the water. So can you talk to us about anything that you've heard about these lawns actually helping to slow water for drainage, those kinds of things? Have you heard?

I am not the expert on these. I've just done a basic amount of research. So, but yeah, I think the more you research, you could probably find some information about that as well.

And in code, you can do stormwater mitigation. It has to be approved the engineering process. So we do have that in code. It's primarily for new development, but if you're covering more impervious space, that would apply to that. And you can, you can, install that based on that code and it falls for mitigation towards that. But it does have to be approved through the engineer.

But that wouldn't work for a rain garden. Like if you want to put a rain garden in your yard, you don't have to have an engineer's approval to do that.

The way the code is written, and I will, oh, okay, I thought maybe Dan was here too. The way that code is written is it is designed as a mitigation measure. So if you're doing an addition to your house and you're creating more impervious surface, you can put in, use some of these measures to mitigate the runoff. A raid garden is one of them, and it does have to be approved by engineering if it's part of your mitigation process.

It's specific to that. If I want to do a landscaping project in my yard and have a garden that sucks up water and it's not part of a mitigation process, I can build a landscape bed with native plants and to create an area that I want to capture water and not have it run off. Not part of a cistern system or a mitigation system, but I can build those anytime I want, right?

Like I said, the pollinator gardens and designated planting beds are currently allowed.

What was being referenced a second ago is the rainfall mitigation worksheet, which is what we require with new development activity like building permits, housing additions, those types of things. And then there's the calculation for like a rain garden or a... Or not for pollinator gardens, but for rain barrels, those types of things. But you're right, Bill, if it's like in a designated planting bed or just through landscaping, you wouldn't require a separate permit for engineering.

But what I'm saying is that we have certain areas of downtown specifically that are experiencing runoff. and drainage issues and all those kinds of things. So we need to take into consideration that someone that does a lawn like this is actually helping that, is helping to slow down the water so that it isn't taking out new pathways through people's properties. And so I just want to consider that that's a positive to being able to have some of these throughout town, especially when we see other properties going to hardscape, which is absolutely.

I think, I think what we need some guidance on, because it sounds like the pollinator garden or in a bed is like, I think we can agree that we agree with that. I think it's going to be the, you just referenced it as a pollinator lawn where the whole thing can be However, high up against residential in particular. I will say there are some areas, too, in town where they have had to go cut for line of sight and some of the things. So how we would figure that piece of that. That would be required to maintain those lines of sight for safety. The biggest thing we need to understand from Mule, are we trying to change them because I think we already can do the pollinator gardens and designated pet planning but are we looking at a more of a pollinator lawn and and then how behind for our team how they would enforce that and I will say That's where I'm feeling challenged because we do have some complaints and I think maybe specific to this yard. So you need to understand we've already got that side of this coming at us to with complaints. And so now if we go And I also think we have to come up with something that code enforcement can look me in the eyes and say, yeah, I can enforce this and understand it and make it very clear and consistent for everybody, for the homeowner, for those that have to enforce it. So that's where we're looking for some guidance.

I feel like I'd like to get some public feedback before we go changing to allow for something like that and kind of see what like six, eight of us deciding that now someone can do this next door where you're maybe our residents are working hard to keep their lawns yard free. And now the city has said someone next to you can just as tall as they want. Like, I feel like we need some community input before making that change.

So I sit on...

I don't think that we're just saying that in doing this, that we're just going to let anybody go hog wild in the yard. I think that there are cities that have created ordinances that are working that give some flexibility to residents. And so I think we should research everything that we can to be able to say, like, hey, this really works. There has to be certain paths through it. There needs to be, you have to pull a permit for it so that we know, like, yeah, if someone's going to bother going to pull a permit, in my opinion, and get all the information of, like, this is what we allow, that's not someone that is just lazy and doesn't want to cut their grass.

that there still has to be protections for the neighbors though sure so one of those things that was mentioned were setbacks from the neighbors right i mean i think i like the border i think a nice five foot border all the way around so you don't you have that gap to other lots i think is a great idea but i do i agree with you that i think there's a way that this can be put together and we don't spray our yard for the same reason because the first thing that comes up is the dandelion flowers And we need the bees to hit those immediately. So, yeah, people don't like the dandelion flowers in our yard, but, you know, too bad.

You can just mow the grass.

So I just, I like the idea, the green building program. We've talked about that does have a certification process in that for these garden types. We're not also talking about the ground, the use of water. It doesn't require as much water. We'll save the city money. Now, we make money on water, but overall, we're paying a lot of money to get water.

So it also... Money savings, though, and someone's going to have to be going out to all of these lawns and figuring out, are these invasive or are they native? And did you pull a permit? And this one, it actually sounds expensive to me.

We allow them to do it. We don't have to make it so punitive or so difficult to grow a pollinator garden. Why are we making it so difficult?

Because if someone's not making sure they're following the rules, then it's just a lot of weeds.

It only works if- First of all, I think the amount of citizens that are going to go in this direction is not going to be an exorbitant amount. There are maybe more here. you know, Fayetteville has a lot. We may get more, but I think that it's, it's not going to be an excellent.

We have one in my neighborhood where it's like the little spot between the sidewalk and the street. And it's like grass, grass, grass, grass. And then there's one that has, you know, tall wildflowers. I love wildflowers, but I mean, it looked, it's very, it, I mean, it just, it doesn't fit. Like there's one house with tall weeds in the front and it just sort of, I just feel like, is it fair?

Any covenants to maintain that force them to do something different?

Yes.

Okay. Well then there's your.

Covenants don't have a lot of teeth. You know, our code enforcement has a little more teeth than your average HOA does. You know, they can kind of give you a violent warning, but there's not really much they can do to kind of protect the other homeowners from

Well, if I own a piece of property here in town, it's a private property, right? And I want to grow a whole pile of wildflowers in my front yard. I want to do it. But the people next to them have property rights too. I don't like all their shrubs. I don't like necessarily what they planted. So how are we going to go around and control everybody.

Now this sounds like it's turning into a free-for-all instead of a controlled program, which is like really...

I don't want that. I'm just saying that when these objections are coming up, that I can say the same thing about this ugly bush somebody has, and I can't believe they planted it. So, I mean, it's to each their own within limits. And I think that some of the controls that you've mentioned, I think would be very helpful. Percentage would be helpful. A border would absolutely be helpful. There are benefits to this, not including the pollinators that we desperately need, but also you can save water. There's a whole lot of things that we can do. So it's worthwhile.

But I think that what we need a little feedback on, I think we're all sort of in agreement that some pollinators are good, right? What we need feedback on is, do we expand it from outside of planting beds? Because that is very clear. I feel like code enforcement could look me in the eye and say, I can know this is a planting bed. And so I think that's our question.

I think the issue.

And then what does that look like? Is it five feet? What is it?

So as long as someone has a path through things, they can be considered planting beds. As long as there are paths and rocks.

It could require some type of edging for that area, like you said, rocks.

But if we had a percentage, you have a yard, it can't be 100% bed, flower bed. It has to be 70%, 80%, whatever. because otherwise people are just going to do curb to house to lot line as the bed.

I agree. So I had, I sit on this committee and so I did have a botanical expert go out and look at this particular yard. And this is my question. So a lot of what they're, what is there now is non-native grasses. So what is going to happen? Like, because my understanding is these are more for like native landscapes, things like that. So this non-native grass that is in this yard, according again to this botanical expert, like when it gets over eight inches, we have a lot of weeds.

It depends on how you write the ordinance. If you're going to write the ordinance to require only native plant materials, yes, then you run into an issue, but it depends on how you write the ordinance.

And what their research or what they gave back to me is the best way this is handled in most areas is to have a botanical expert on staff. And that can possibly be grant sponsored, but it is a percentage. And I mean, those are the things that they have found through two or three years of trial and error of figuring this out. And so I feel like there are some case studies. There are some people that have done this and they've learned that there definitely is some concern to neighbors. And one of their biggest things that they found was wildlife being in it. And I mentioned to Shelly the other day, I was walking my dog in the neighborhood, the landscaped area, was very high, but it was behind a border. It looked nice. But as soon as that armadillo came out onto the nice lawn, I saw it and had that lawn not been mowed or nice, like my dog would have taken off with me behind it, you know, if we totally couldn't have seen it. So once it came out of the landscape, area and got onto the grass, which was well-maintained, you can see the live animal or whatever is

there so so i'm hearing border and percentage yeah and the other concern that i think we should look at is we have some really nice examples on northwest fifth street with new town homes they've done native landscaping and i have no problem with it at all but they've also planted between the sidewalk and the curb i think we as a city might want to set this expectation that maybe that ought not be planted in because what if you park on the street And then the side of the street, you get out of your car, you can't get out into the wildflower. The sidewalk to curb might be something we should look at because for clearance, for visual clearance, for lots of different things.

Like on Sunday.

It looks nice.

It's just maybe not going to work. We're going to regulate because you have to be able to see. There are some... Things out there where they've had to go cut areas because there's been some issues around them. We will still regulate that piece of it. For me, it's understanding do we work off what we currently have where I think they're allowed in designated planting beds, which could be a large portion of your yard, or do we go down the path of trying to figure out what is a

percentage or amend what we have to include a percentage?

I think that's what we're looking for. Is this something you would like us to pursue? Doesn't mean you're saying yes or no to anything at this point, but is this something that you would like us to present a proposal to you as far as what ordinance like this might look like whether it's and and maybe provide a couple different options um what that might look like and what we think it would entail as far as like enforcement and some of those type things we just didn't want to head down that path if there's just no appetite for it but the other piece to look into it we will the other piece i'd like some clarity on because we do have this one that has complaints around it and we're kind of

Putting that on hold, and maybe there's some others. That's the only one. We have one. I don't know what we come up with would exactly fit. This, to me, is a pollinator lawn. And so what we come up with may not fit this exactly. I just want to be very clear with those, and I think maybe the members of the audience, of pollinators. understanding of that, that we're not creating an ordinance to try to fit this when we have complaints about it. You know what I'm saying? Because the people that are complaining are going to... Sure, sure.

And that's why I wanted to mention that this is something that the Tree and Landscape Advisory Board has been talking about for a couple years. This isn't based off of one property or one complaint or one case. They've been talking about this for a little while.

We have not had them go mow this because we've been trying... We are complaint driven and we do have those and we're not enforcing that because we're trying to figure it out. And so I just want to be real. We just need to be transparent about that piece of it.

Yeah, I just want to make sure that we are not trying to regulate property owners based on personal preference, for one thing, because there are lawns that I like when I drive through town and there are lawns I don't like when I drive through town. It's not my business. The other thing is that if there are three complaints out of 60,000 residents of Bentonville, then I don't think we should be complaint driven like that. And I'm sure that there are a lot of, as this has been a discussion for years, people that care about tree and landscape care about figuring this out because it's a net positive for the city if we have some of these sprinkled throughout town. So I think we need to make sure that we're not just saying like, oh, well, in the process of this happening, and sure, if this goes on for four years, that's not progress. I think if you went out there right now, it would look completely different than this picture does right now because the homeowner is working every day in that garden. And in a spring of crazy rain and early summer of crazy rain, she hasn't had a chance really to get this under control.

But this is actually currently, and she has created a bed right there. And there is actually a bed that's been created.

But it takes a minute. It's not an immediate. And the reason for that is because there's no, she's not using herbicides. She's not using full scrape the lot so that she can go back from, because she doesn't want to She wants to do it the right way. And so I think if you, we have to give people a chance to do the right thing. And that's why I think if someone is going to come along and write, fill out a form to get a permit, even if it's a fee for a permit to help Some somehow to get a permit and is willing to get inspected. They're not just some lazy person not wanting to go their lawn.

So that's Yeah, and I wouldn't be very clear. That's never anything that has been said from anybody up here about that. And what we're trying to get, what I'm trying to get to is something very clearly you could go look at and know from an enforcement standpoint that this is, like I said, if you look at it now, there's a bed that's been created. It's very clear that it's in that bed. Now, there is stuff, you know, there is stuff around that. And that's the real question I'm asking you guys to help us answer because that is where, for us, when I talk to code enforcement where the their ability to kind of delineate that is going to be challenging. So I don't know that we solved this tonight. And what you can do is give us some feedback. It's just an informational item. We appreciate all sides of this equation, in my opinion. And we're trying to figure out something that we can come together on. And the public can trust us in how we got there and how we looked at it.

We should definitely look into it.

Hey, Octavia, what is it? This is my opinion. Pollinator jars are good. They have to be regulated because we live in a city. Neighbors not necessarily are in agreement with our decisions. Therefore, we have to create a set of rules that give the ability for somebody who is interested in it to create a pollinator jar, giving them the freedom with whatever they want to do with it, within limitations. And the neighbors to be absolutely in agreement that this is for the good of the city. Not just the city in that particular parcel, but the city as a whole and even more than that. Because pollinators not only live in Bentonville. Bentonville pollinators sometimes move to other places. And so it has to be regulated. One thing that seems very clear is the concern about the fire department, about the separation between the vegetation and the houses. That has to be absolutely certain. There is another concern that was mentioned earlier that has to be included, which is the separation between the sidewalk and the street has to be grass. only grass. There is no other element but grass perhaps, whatever else, but no tall plants. And there is, go ahead.

Sorry, go ahead, finish.

Okay. So there has to be a separation between the property and the I mean, the pollinator garden cannot go all the way to the end of the line, the property line. It has to be a separation, five feet, three feet, whatever it is, but it has to be a separation. There has to be a permit to indicate the decision, the strong... firm opinion of the person who is willing to do that. And it can be a permit that perhaps cost $20, but it also includes a sign made by the city that says, this is a pollinator garden, et cetera, authorized by the city, been to build, et cetera. And that is planted on the yard of the house. In this particular instance, what I mentioned about separation, It has to be in the front of the house, from the house, and also from the neighbor on the right of us. It doesn't need to be on the driveway. It doesn't need to be on the street, because there is no sidewalk over there. There is nothing. So the jar could go all the way to the driveway, all the way to the house. street separated from the neighbor on the left, separated from the house and with a sidewalk or something in between with some, perhaps some ornaments, perhaps some statue, perhaps a fountain, perhaps some decoration that will indicate this one. Now, when the person is requesting a permit, the person will have to pay $20 or whatever the amount it is. And the person has to present a diagram, preferably color diagram, color made diagram of what it is, perhaps the final result, the expected full development of the property of the garden and sometime intermediate. Those couple of pictures could be attached to the permit. So when the court enforcement personnel goes to that particular place because of a complaint, he'll look at it and he says, no, it matches what it is on the permit, so it's okay. Or he may say, no, it doesn't match based on the picture. And the picture is presented to the city when the permit is requested. And this is done by the person who is imagining what they want and then putting a picture in between, perhaps, to say this is Six months from now, it's going to look like this and a full development is going to go like that. Based on that, everybody should be happy.

There's one question. Go ahead. I think colored pictures on a, if you think a pollinator of natural grasses is going to be, unless you're going to hire a very expensive landscape architect to do a conceptual, just tell them what they can plant. What pollinators, it's a pollinator garden. You have a list of pollinators, just like we have a tree list. You have native grasses. You can get that online at the Arkansas Game and Fish. They actually have seeds that you can plant that come with it. I don't know if we would go down that far to make them do color renderings. I think you just described what they can be. I'm also concerned that if you describe that there has to be a separation between vegetation and your house, are you going to what do you do about all the big evergreens and all the big shrubs that are overgrown against everybody's house? Are you going to pull all those out? No. Okay. So those have just as much risk as anything. Every bit of your landscaping that's in front of every house has just as much risk as anything else, especially the dead boxwoods or the whatever it may be. So I want to be cautious saying that just the pollinator or, or, or those flowers you can't have, but you can have all these other shrubs, any kind of shrub. Any kind of long as it's in a bed, it could be piled up against your house and up through your roof and on your roof causing problems, you know, it's so I just want to be cautious in some of the language.

Thank you for the idea. I think we can write it in the sense of it is strongly recommended not to go against the house, but you can do it if you want to.

Or the utility box.

If we have a list point what you just said, though, because you say that, that when I The people that we're going to ask to enforce this, if we can't give them clear that that's not it's not helpful on the back end of this and that's why we're looking for some very clear guidance to be fair to our people that have to take. And we are the code enforcement, we are. we are complaint driven. We're not just out there looking for yards that are over. We have way too many complaints about tall grass right now that they are trying to deal with. And it is a process, right? And it takes time and resources. And so in my mind, we have to give them very clear direction of what to, if we get a complaint, what to look for so that we can be clear to the homeowner and whoever has the complaint and here's the code and here's what we're enforcing.

We're going to have a list of say, you know, allowed grasses. How is that? I mean, are our code enforcement going to become botany experts? Are we hiring a botanist? Like how, how do we know if that's being adhered to? Like, and it's not just invasive, you know, like to see a proposal from it. That's kind of what we're asking for.

If you'd like us to spend some time putting something together, taking into consideration all the concerns expressed, the ideas, the thoughts, processes that you all discussed today and see if we can't come to something to at least start the discussion.

And I think costs, like a real, you know, a realistic, like what would this cost to actually...

Yeah, right, right.

Like, we are definitely going to have to have someone that knows grass.

You know, it depends on how you write it. It depends on how you write the code.

You could do it such that they have to sign off on an L.A. or hold their list on the application process. What would you want development? I don't have an L.A. on staff. insuring things, but we know enough. We have a horticulturist on staff.

Not in our department.

But we have a horticulturist on staff.

Well, we're trying to hire one.

But I don't want to make this so expensive that you can't do this. I mean, if you get a landscape architect to draw a picture up and you want them to stamp this, certify it, re-inspect it, you're talking thousands of dollars. And that's not going to do it.

You can do a I don't think we need to have something that's so in-depth. You can do something with AI that shows this is the general idea. This is where my paths are going to go. This is where my beds are going to go. This is where the tall is going to be. This is where the low grow, whatever. I don't know what non-having-to-be-mowed grass goes. We can do that pretty simply. I would say before throwing the whole thing out with the bathwater, give them a chance to... say this is this is the idea and this is where i am now this is where i'm going and we on the other hand i

There are many things in the city that are out of the code, out of compliance. It was mentioned dead box bushes are next to the homes and nobody's going after those. And we don't have the capacity to do that. In the same way, we will not have the capacity to go after checking that the separation between the the pollinator garden is exactly three and a half feet from the home we are not going to be measuring that that's what i said and to me in my mind it is absolutely clear that you said we recommend that you keep a separation of three feet or five feet or whatever but if you want to do it do it or something like that in whatever legal terms if you have a legal term that says you have to maintain a five foot border between you and your neighbors

We'll get a complaint if it's not.

Yes.

And we don't have to send code. We'll get a complaint. If everybody knows that's the rule, I think we'll get a complaint certainly from the neighbor if it grows to two feet from the border.

It just has to have, yeah, some protections for neighbors.

And now that this has become a topic, we are starting, people are starting to express opinions. Like I've gotten more emails just in the last two weeks because people are like, have an opinion or they're looking into it or they're thinking of doing one, things like that. So I think a lot of it is awareness in our community that, hey, this is what we're looking at, getting input, things. I mean, we've got experts. I mean, I didn't take me and I didn't have to pay one. I just.

The Illinois Watershed has great experts that can come and share with you all your native planning and all of your, they have rain garden grants. They have all sorts of things that they'd be more than happy to come up here and visit with us about this and give us any input but i i there's a lot of people that we could ask for help that wouldn't cost they would they'd love to last question what about vegetable plants yeah we regulate that if you want to plant tomato plants in your front yard we do not specifically regulate against i'm

And then I heard a comment about hardscape. If you want a hardscape, you want to rock your whole yard. We don't, that's not prohibited. Is that right?

Nope.

Which is a bigger problem then.

Even though maybe it should be, it's not.

Pollinator garden.

We don't have like a SEPCA.

We don't have any other ordinance dictating other situations or conditions. I don't know what you're.

I just wonder if, like, while we're looking at things, is that a concern? Because I do notice a lot of houses are rocking their whole yard.

Water can get through the rocks. It's not paved. It's not paved. It's not red. I didn't know.

Is that an issue? Do we get complaints about that? Do people not?

I'm not aware of any complaints in regards to people rocking their yards, but if they're not keeping the weeds pulled, we will.

It's their own problem.

The concern we're going to get is when it buds up to the neighbors and I think it's going to be the big concern that I feel like we're going to hear. We can put together a proposal. We do currently have, and like I said, you can currently do a pollinator garden in a bed. It's very clearly identified and it's very clearly identified for our code enforcement in my head. So that's where I'm feeling the challenge for them.

Yeah, I'm looking at the different cities like Bella Vistas. It must be within a landscaped area that has a well-defined border, must not be in the right of way, must be native pollinator. So it seems like the other ones have the same, like that seems, I don't think anybody has a problem with it.

They actually have a percentage too.

Like within a well-contained landscaped area, I don't think anybody has a problem with it. with that so this regulation is only from the front only for the front yard correct the back jar is free so in bella vista can you just have a free lawn like it seems look reading the regulation it does not limited to one percent in bella vista one one that seems really small

Yeah, I didn't write that ordinance. Oh yeah, I see 1%.

They rocked their whole yards and there's a lot of things going on. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of houses.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, I didn't think a percentage, but it does seem like it's not, you know, it does seem like the other city. How about this? We've heard you.

How about we go back, we work with our code enforcement, see if there's some things that they would be comfortable with that they could clearly identify and we'll put it into something and bring it back to you. Does that sound good? Great.

And I do think that your comment about the covenants, there's a lot of neighborhoods, this won't happen. Not a one of them that I've done. This won't happen. The POA will not allow it to happen unless they get a board change in their mind. I mean, they're fine ready.

So I don't see this as... One of the photographs was in Hanover, and it's not prevented by the covenants. And they have a lot of turf, too.

It's not all... Well, they can change the covenants, too. But their neighbors are complaining because I actually walked that...

It wasn't in the covenants 35 years ago.

I do want to say, we have not received a complaint on that one.

I'm not going to. Thank you, Shelly.

Thank you, Shelly. Thank you very much. I'm here for the next one.

We have a couple of folks to visit about this from the public. So unless anyone has any issue, we could let them speak now. It's not really on the agenda.

I just want to remind everyone that we don't typically allow public comment during Committee of the Whole. Just flagging that because it is on. You requested that we add it to the agenda. We've added it to the agenda. Just flagging that.

They can ask you something is that against our policy that we stated because yes, it is it is in our resolution for the City Council, the policy that we established the first correct, yes.

It's not on the agenda, but on the agenda.

It's on the committee, the whole portion if we wanted to open for public comment and he's been the City Council portion and that is in the resolution that we adopted in January. And then in the first meeting we did in 4-6, it wasn't on the front page of the agenda that gets published, but we did add that to there.

We all did agree to that. I remember. Okay. I can't keep up.

yeah all right so we'll move on to something less controversial the um amendment to the noise ordinance i like your i like your comedy you're getting up ready right that's that's an easy one you all get pretty nervous when you see me you can combine the two and you're great to show up oh well it's something spectacular when you

Well, I appreciate that. So this is actually doing really just a brief presentation on this. This is a follow-up. We did a presentation to you all back in February with some options as far as how to manage and handle some of the noise issues that we keep seeing. So the main things that we're seeing is amplified sound coming from like concert venues, outdoor venues, bars, restaurants, those type of things, late night. Construction noise continues to be a little bit of an issue. And then the other primary issue is really the best way to enforce noise. is really what we're trying to get to. So you can go to the next slide. We presented to you four options. One, to amend the noise regulations, tweak those in a way that will help us better enforce the regulations. The second one was to revoke the business registration, which the business registration doesn't have a lot of T's, so revoking it doesn't really do anything. Another option was to convert the business registration into a business license. And then the last one was to work with ABC on revoking alcohol permits for those establishments that do have an alcohol permit and are violating the ordinance. So if you go to the next slide, at that council meeting, city council was supportive of amending the noise regulations and then kind of leaning on ABC. for their permit. So what we wanted to present to you now is, if you go to the next slide, is a couple of things that we have discussed, and this has been discussions with our staff legal police. They're the ones out there actually doing the enforcement in this. So we've just been kind of trying to pull everybody together to look at what the options are. And there's really three main things that we've talked about. One being right now we have these decibel limits by by districts, and hours. So one option would be to eliminate those, but that would be looking at some of these other options. The second one is to establish a plainly audible standard. This is something that is common in Rogers, and they use this particularly when it comes to, like, the amp. They use this plainly audible, and then it's combined with the third item there, which is shutoff times. At a certain time, amplified sound has to go off. construction noise has to stop. So if you go to the next slide, I'll just kind of talk those a little bit. So these are the decibel limits that we currently have. They can provide, they can be a little bit cumbersome when it comes to enforcement because they have to carry around the meter. It has to be calibrated. Like we've got strict regulations within the ordinance itself about how they have to be calculated, how often, how they take the report. So it does become a little bit cumbersome when you're out there And people just want the noise to stop. So it does create a little bit of a challenge there. It is expensive. The equipment itself is. And then keeping the calibration. One of the other things that I think has been discussed in some of the complaints that we've received is in regards to the vibrations. That instrument doesn't capture vibrations. So one of the options is to eliminate this and lean on that If you go to the next one, the audible, yeah, if you go to the next slide. Yeah, the plainly audible standard along with the shutoff time. This is just the definition out of Rogers is clearly capable of being heard by a person of normal sensibilities using unaided auditory senses at a volume level above that of normal conversation. And then this would also include if you can feel that bass. would fall under, or the vibration would also fall under that plainly audible. And then that essentially would apply to the shutoff time. So if you go to the next slide, slide because these are the two issues that we are that we hear the most about is the sound amplification and the construction those are the two that we're looking at potentially establishing those for if you go to the next one and these are essentially what we're proposing these times are up for discussion if they seem appropriate. But this is comparable to what Rogers does. And this would basically be at 8 o'clock every day in residential districts or within 500 feet of a residential district. That amplified sound has to be turned off. And then in non-residential districts, it would be the same except for Friday. I'm sorry. Through The week, I believe it was 10. I may not have had this on the slide. But on Friday, Saturday night, Friday be 11 o'clock and Saturday night being midnight. So these were just, these were some times to kind of get the discussion out here. If you go to the next slide, it talks about the construction noise with cutoff times of 8 o'clock. in those residential districts and nine o'clock in the non-residential district. So right now the construction is based on certain days of the week and certain times of the year, and it's really confusing. So we need to, one way or another, we kind of need to clean that up. So it's very easy to enforce. So if you go to the next slide, there's a couple of things we would just need to update because we adopted the new community code. We've got new zoning districts. We've got some new terminology. And so we need to make sure that they're aligning with the new zoning code. And then if you go to the next slide, we would need to clean up some definitions. We had this in there before. We're recommending probably putting it back in. It's kind of a general statement, but it does give us a little bit of opportunity when there is noise that is really disturbing, it's unreasonably loud or unnecessary. that's one other option and then right now we don't we're not real specific about what the process is if you are caught violating this ordinance so we we feel like it's really important to clarify exactly what those what happens when you're in violation so we want to outline that as well so I think there's some different thoughts and ideas on kind of what we want to keep, what we want to add. You could keep all those decibel limits and simply just add the shutoff times. That would make it really easy for officers on the field to be able to say, oh, it's 11 o'clock, you need to turn off the amplified sound. So just wanted to talk to you about some of those options and see if there's a preference on this so that we can make any revisions if that's what you'd like to do so that we could bring a proposal back to you.

It looks very much advanced compared to what we have today, that it is difficult to enforce and difficult to maintain, etc. The idea that you have there about audible noise at a certain distance, it is precisely what one of our citizens sent us an email earlier today, and I made a copy for you. and it says this particular city prohibits amplified sound that is louder than average conversational level. at a distance of 100 feet or more from the source. And that is a key ingredient. Somebody is hearing it. Somebody is sensing it because it is shaking his whole body. Then it is obviously a violation of the code because it is clearly audible for a person of natural common sensitivities. This is one. The time in this particular city ends at 10 PM, no matter what, 10 PM. And it is a large city in the Northeast. And that is one observation which matches precisely what you have. The only one concern that I got from a citizen is, does it mean that the person can make as much noise as they want or accompany as much noise as they want during the day?

The one way to address that would be to maintain those decibel levels that we currently have so that if you do have somebody being very loud during the middle of the day, we can go out there with that reader and actually read the decibels. And if it's exceeding that, then they're in violation.

could it be the same criteria instead of applying the decibels parameter? Forget about the decibels. Sorry, not decimals, decibels. And use only the hearing of the person who is doing the inspection?

Because if it is- I don't think that's going to be possible.

No, I'm not talking about natural noises. I'm talking about a company that is over here that is making gigantic noises as if it'd be a party at 10 in the morning because they have a music system that they just want to disperse all over the city. And people are sleeping. Some people are sleeping at 10 in the morning or 11 or noon. And so that is the noise that I'm referring to. If the criteria is, if it is audible 100 feet away from the source, then it should not be permitted.

I disagree.

That is an option if that's the direction you'd like to go. Yeah.

I'm sorry, you say?

Well, with respect, I just, I, we are now turning from something measurable to something subjective. And I think that is going to cause a tremendous amount of, of misunderstanding across the board and a lot of conflict. If you don't have a way for somebody to say it's plainly audible. Okay. Is it, is it not? I mean, are we, it's going to be, it's such a subjective definition in itself that in during the day, you've got so much during the day. that causes noise more than 100 feet. I mean, all day, every day, people walking around laughing. And that if you try to talk sometimes walking down the square, you're going to have conversations that you can't carry on in conversations because there's so many people. It's loud. So I mean, I don't think you can. I mean, I know what you're trying to, and I appreciate it. I really do. I know that we're trying to make sure that nobody interferes with somebody else's personal space. I got it. Our entire, the sheer activity of the experience of our town creates that noise louder than what you're talking about. And you won't be able, even sitting outside and furniture outside with tables outside and people laughing and you'll be able to hear them 100 feet away. So I think we just And I think we need to keep it very clean. I think if you want to do a shut off time instead of decimals, I like that idea better than about anything that there's no more amplified music after 11 o'clock. Keep it simple. Keep it clean. And they're either violating or they're not. I like it that way. Now, I don't know how we'll work out where you have the 500 feet from residential because most of our districts are butting up against residential. So I don't know how you're not going to have any sound coming from them during the day. Or if you have a daytime event, we have a lot of outdoor events that goes on during the day. And there's residences across the street. We have brand new parks we're building all up and down with amps, with the amphitheater and a whole new boardwalk system. It goes all along houses. And so we're going to have music out there. And so how are we going to address that if I'm concerned about the plainly audible definition that it just, you're going to put our police officers and our enforcement officers and the persons involved, whether it's the one making it or the one listening, in a real conflict argument right there on the street, saying, well, I can hear it. No, you can't. I can just hear it. It's not measurable. And I'm concerned a little bit about doing it that way. If we could clean it, just make it definitive. You're shutting off this time. Now, the hours will be debatable. I think that's a clear discussion. I would rather go for me, personally. I don't want our officers getting in that kind of argument with everybody standing around yelling at each other that I don't hear it, but you hear it, and you know what you're saying this is subjective. I can agree.

This is the same argument in the top before like we need to give very clear direction of those that we asked enforcing in a very clear direction to both those that may be depending on it and to the public who might be sending a complaint. This is also another one that is complaint driven. I will say we're we're not we're not going out and taking our northerners out into your neighborhoods and checking you. These are complaint driven. So that's why we're trying to figure out how to address them because they are complaints coming in.

So Sunday through Thursday night, what that said is eight o'clock, if it's within- In residential. So would that apply even if somewhere has a conditional use? I mean, this would supersede that or- Like the momentary, for example, that had a show on Sunday night.

So as is currently in the ordinance, that would stay. Those that were designed for that type of event, that were designed with some level of sound attenuation, that still applies. But the cutoff times would apply to those establishments in a residential district.

Or 500 foot from it.

Or 500 foot.

That's the example that we, all of that would be in. But that's what I'm saying. Like if it's within, it's clearly within 500 feet of a residential.

You could also change it. I mean, if you feel like that distance is too far, you could, or you could simply say residential district, it's this hour and commercial district, it's this. But I don't know that that's going to stop some of the complaints.

Yeah. To have a specific measure, you'll be nice. We attempted that with the decibels, not decimals, the decibels that we have today, but they are not proper. They are not working because there is another type of noise that is not detected by the measuring device that we have, precisely the bus. So it is going to take us back to the same problem that we are experiencing today in the sense of having this type of noise that it is not detected by the devices.

We're adding shutoff times, which I think clearly when you have some places that are running until 2 o'clock in the morning and they're jamming out inside there with amplified and you feel that bass and you're keeping people from sleeping, it would stop that. Because then they can just drive up and say, 1101, turn it off. And if we set enough the criteria for the penalties where you get enough, we're making a phone call to somebody and saying, hey, we need to have a discussion about their license or whatever. I mean, I think if we could do both, keep what we're doing and have a shut off time to eliminate those concerns in dark after that period of time for people trying to sleep. I mean, I'm a person that, you know, I used to love fireworks. I can't stand them anymore. And we have an ordinance. We're not supposed to shoot, but it starts three or four weeks now in front of July, and it runs way after. My dogs and animals are just all on my skin. So, I mean.

I will say what Bill is suggesting is, I talked to at least a few of our HAB-Masyn Moyer- Boys about today is keeping the desk a little so that during the day, somebody can't go crazy just HAB-Masyn Moyer- By having those shut off times that gives them a very clear enforcement. And I think that is a good step forward that is coming together to find something that would work better for for the public. HAB-Masyn Moyer- I would also say that HAB-Masyn Moyer- At our North, we pulled the noise ordinance and our ability to One of the things y'all talked about was if it's a repeat offender, could we like charge more for the citation and different things? And I'm going to ask David Bailey to come forward and kind of, as we looked at the ordinance, how we can, we can amend it. Well, actually, I think it's, It might work for us.

So, yeah, I take a look at the, uh, the noise ordinance for your start. Let me remind you the last time we discussed this idea, I recommended the city to add two or three extra zeros to the fines that we have.

Yeah.

So. Yeah, obviously, whatever we come up with penalty-wise, we need to make sure is within state law limits. But currently what we have, I do believe is within state law limits. And it's actually higher. The good news is it's higher than I thought it was. It's, you know, we don't deal with, as a prosecutor, we don't deal with this every day, thankfully. And so I have to kind of brush off the law every once in a while, reread it. But the current noise ordinance, basically the penalty for it is found in what we call the general penalty, which is like section 1-8. And it's up to a maximum of $500 for one specified offense. which is about double what I thought it was. Cause I was thinking it was around two 50. So it's $500 maximum for the first offense, but it says, or double that sum for each repetition of such violations. In other words, your second, third, fourth, et cetera, would be up to a thousand dollars. No offense. Um, so it's actually a little bit stiffer, stiffer than I thought. Um, So that's the good news, and I just informed the mayor of that this afternoon when I dusted it off and read it myself.

Can we amend those if we choose to? I mean, we could sort of...

So we'd want to research what the state law maximum would be. I'm not prepared to answer that tonight, but I know there is a limit we'll have to keep it under. I mean, we couldn't say a million dollars or whatever.

I'm not talking about also breaking a company either. I could see if the first one's 500 and then it doubles for the second one and then it doubles again. So if you're going 500, 1,000, 2,000, sooner or later, you need to stop.

At some point, I think the state would probably step in and say- But you stopped.

Well, yeah. Could you also clarify, because this is another thing we talked through, because it has been challenging, I think, from an enforcement standpoint. If we keep the decibel of reading- where that's taken based on a complaint coming in and how we talk to make sure law enforcement or enforcement

Under the current ordinance we have, there's two ways to measure. It depends on whether it's complaint-driven or whether it's just a police drought monitoring. And so the way it reads currently is if it's just not a complaint-driven but the police drought monitoring, it's actually measured from the property line of the source of the noise. I'm going to use a bar as an example. You're outside the bar, you're on the street, you're on the property line, you got your meter, you measure it. And that's one standard. versus if it's complaint-driven, it's measured from the property line where the complainant is, usually the residential area, right? And, of course, that's a different, that's a lower standard than it would be per the ordinance.

So, it's... Did we change that, David, to make it always from the property line of the...

The complainant? Or...

Like from the public right-of-way?

You could, yeah.

The public right-of-way where people are walking or whatever, maybe you could just measure it in the public right-of-way.

You certainly could. I think one of the, and I thought about that too, and I guess one of the, I guess, upsides of the way we have it currently is, and I'm trying to find the... Here it is, that little table. So there's a table, right? So residential, and we'll just kind of talk about right now it's 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. are the nighttime hours, and that's pretty consistent throughout. Well, for residential. So residential, 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. is 55 decibels, right? But that same time spot for commercial is 65 decibels. So the idea is if you're measuring from the say the bar, restaurant, whatever, property line, during that time period, they have to be under 65 decibels, versus you go out a couple blocks down the road to somebody's house, it's 55. And I think the argument in favor of keeping it the way we have it is, what if you have somebody that's in between that? What if you've got a neighbor, let's see, a residential, you can be up to 55, but let's say it's measuring, I don't know, 56, But if that's your neighbor doing it, and I'm probably not articulating this very well, but I think there was some thought maybe behind the two. Because at first that confused me, too. I was like, why would you have two standards? Just measure them in the same place. And to your point, I think we can do that. But I think somebody apparently thought that was a good idea, and maybe they're right, to have the two different standards. Because, again, we're usually complaint-driven, right? Maybe the people that are closer to the restaurant bar are not complaining.

But won't the shut-off hours involve that? If we issue a citation, we have to be able to prove that in court. And so we have to make sure we've done all that right, right? And so that needs to be very clear from the enforcement standpoint, because if we actually issue that citation, we've got to be able to have the backup for it, right?

And here's what I like about it. The shut-off hours, though, is really going to control the bulk of our complainings.

I think the shutoff hours are going to help as far as like the base and things that the meters can't catch. Where I like the meters, again, this is what it's worth from a prosecutor standpoint, where I like about the meters, and I know there's drawbacks to it, it costs money, it had to be calibrated to And I get that. But here's what I'm going to analogize it to. Drunk driving, 0.08. If you take a blow test, it's 0.08 or higher, you're guilty, right? It's an easy standard versus if someone doesn't take the test, I can still prove, oftentimes, can still prove guilty of DWI, but it's a lot harder, guys. It's a whole lot harder. And so if I've got a meter and it says the person was offending it, you know, the cutoff was 70 decibels and they were at 71 or higher, can they still challenge the meter? Can a good defense attorney still challenge? Absolutely. Do they challenge the BAC machine? Absolutely. There's defenses to everything, right? But nine times out of 10, you're going to win that as a prosecutor.

It's imaging with a plainly audible device. then you could challenge that all day long.

Absolutely you can. It's like trying to prove someone's guilty of DWI without some sort of ascertainable test, right? Blood test, breath test, urine test, something with a standard in it. And you can certainly do it, but is it more difficult from a prosecution standpoint? I would say 100 times out of 100.

So I think what I'm hearing is the shut up times. We think we could at least try to move forward with that. So we'll bring that for you. Leave the decibels in place. See how this works. If it helps to address the concerns better, we can always revisit it. I do want to also be very clear. We do have live music venues that are specific in our code. that they have, as long as they have in place the continuation process for that. And I think that's a little bit, you know, you have to have that documented. I want the public to understand that doesn't apply directly to them.

We bring the list of when it comes back, can we review the list of exemption?

The venues we're building as a city.

We'll have to also make sure that, you know, that's part of this because we all opted to build this thing. And if we're not going to allow them to play music there, it seems a whole lot of waste of money.

Yeah.

And that's what I'm saying. And I think for us, our shutoff times will probably be even ahead of

what we're bringing to you, but still be super respectful of that.

But that is a concern for us because we're getting ready to open an amphitheater, right? And we will have music activation over there, right? What I hope you've learned from these things is they're super complicated. They're not so just black and white on both of these two issues. And we hear from both sides. But I think we've got some direction from you guys. If you think of anything in the process, let us know. And hopefully that gives you some direction to work on something and bring back.

I have you completely set aside the idea of transferring from a registry to a license to give this a little more teeth.

My personal opinion?

Well, it just, we kind of, it looked like we sort of put that aside.

So that's one option, right? I don't, you know, I think if we were going to do that, we would definitely have to re, we'd have to make it a license. Right now, our registry is more voluntary.

Yeah.

In the sense there's not a lot of teeth to it. So, so you, okay, you have an offending bar, restaurant, whatever, you pull their registration, they're going to continue to operate.

Yeah. Restriction is required by ordinance, but we have no enforcement mechanism to it. So I just want to be clear about that.

Yeah, good point. I guess it's technically not voluntary, but if there's not a lot of teeth to it.

But if there's no enforcement in it.

Can you shut down the business without it? Or can a business operate without it? I mean, my understanding is not supposed to, but they can. And they are.

And we also have the... ABC opportunity as well.

I think that's- If they keep violating the law, then that's part of their license.

Yeah. I have a question about that. How does that work? revoking their life through the ABC, and have we done that? Is that easy? I'm guessing that's hard, right?

Well, we can't do it directly. It would be up to ABC. We could certainly make complaints, I think. There's a procedure, and I'm not an expert on it. I don't work for ABC, but as I understand it, there's a procedure whereby if they get enough complaints, they can perhaps remove someone's or revoke someone's liquor license. But, you know, ideally, if we make some tweaks to our statute or our ordinance that we currently have, and I think what we currently have is not bad. The good news is I think it's pretty good. But I think we do need to make some tweaks to it, particularly in light of the new zoning regulations. We have new zoning districts we didn't have back when this was passed. So I think we need to do some cleanup on it. But once we do some cleanup on it and we start enforcing it, My hope is that the problem goes away. If it doesn't, then we can get with ABC and say, hey, this person's been cited five times and they keep paying the ticket because it's cheaper to pay the ticket than to, I guess, turn down patronage.

What would be the advantage of the ABC? I mean, what would be the incentive to make them pull their license?

Well, ABC can pull your liquor license. And again...

I know, but... Like, but do... Yeah, but you can't run a bar...

No, no, I understand that. But, I mean, I don't know that they would, like, do that for us. Just because we're complaining.

One of the things that they will ask to look at is just their pattern local.

Okay, so they do look at that. Yeah, they do look at that, yeah. That's interesting.

I can't give you a specific number. Like, if a business were to get, a bar, for example, were to get four then they're going to pull it i can't give you that cutoff number i don't know if they even have that cutoff number but to tyler's point i do believe that's one of the enforcement mechanisms they have which certainly for that type of business is the the biggest hammer that you can wield i mean if you if you make your liquor make your license or your your living selling booze and you lose that license you're done you're going to put it'll be a for sale sign in the window next week right and that's how it works i mean it'll become something else we hope it doesn't come to that i mean we want to encourage business we want to encourage sales tax things like that but we also want people to be able to sleep at night and find that balance right so if they look at it and i think you should pursue it i don't know if there will be any more discussion about the exact hours

Yes, they should be.

But I think we're good to, in my opinion, we're good to continue down this road.

Come back with the proposal, just like the first one.

Good to see y'all. Thank y'all.

And now is there a motion to close the committee? Second. All right. We will go back in.

open back up for new business. And our first agenda item is a resolution to recognize Detective Purple Jason Beeler and apologize to him that he had to wait through committee of the whole. So hopefully he's still here.

Point of order. Were there any preliminary motions we wanted to make for city council this evening? Thank you.

Well, yeah, I gotcha. Thank you.

I make a motion to suspend the rules requiring ordinances to be read on three separate days and further move all ordinances and resolutions to be read for their title only.

Deva? Yes. Souter? Yes. Burkhart? Yes. Cook? Yes. Sanchez? Yes. Patterson?

Yes. You didn't want to read that.

Well, no, but last time, because we got involved with other things, I forgot to announce our new chief to you. I shouldn't have. He was standing out there until the end, so I apologize to him. And we may need to figure out how to get these resolutions before committee of the whole. So y'all don't have to hang out. But with that, I'd like to read the resolutions. It gives you a good synopsis of their career. And so, although I am going to change to where I don't say Corporal Jason Wayne Beeler every time, I'm just going to say Corporal Beeler, if that's okay with you. Okay. Okay. So, Corporal, Beeler was born in Harrison, Arkansas, and graduated from Farmington High School in Farmington, Arkansas, in May 1991. He attended Crowder College in Neosho, Missouri, where he earned an Associate of Arts and Sciences degree, worked in the private sector from 1997 to 2003, and subsequently earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from the University of Arkansas in 2003. Whereas Corporal Beeler began his distinguished 22 year law enforcement career with the Bentonville Police Department in 2004 as a police officer, where he served with dedication in numerous roles, including field training officer and later as manager of the field training program, bike offices, school resource officer, and law enforcement instructor in firearms, chemical, and munitions and vehicle close quarters battle. And whereas Corporal Wheeler further distinguished himself through 19 years of service on the Bentonville SWAT team, ultimately serving as an assistant team leader and team leader leading numerous critical incidents in search war. And whereas Corporal Wheeler earned the assignment of detective in the Criminal Investigations Division in April 2020, where he specialized in crime against persons with a particular focus on crimes against children, where he faithfully served with the present rank of Detective Corporal until his retirement, and whereas Corporal Beeler throughout his career has demonstrated exceptional dedication, professionalism, and service, providing immeasurable contributions to the Bentonville Police Department and the citizens of Bentonville. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the City Council of Bentonville hereby commends and congratulates Corporal Beeler for his 22 years of dedicated and distinguished service to the Bentonville Police Department and the citizens of Bentonville. And we extend their sincere wishes for health, happiness, and continued success in all his future endeavors. Do you have it?

Okay.

I did forget my glasses.

Good 22 years. Good 22 years. I was in the corporate world for quite a while, and I missed being a college athlete. out, son. Come on out.

That's a great story. Thank you.

I will say, before he runs off, Corporal Beeler, he's been around for quite some time. If you want to ever hear good stories, he's very animated when he tells them. It is impressive, but he has been a major asset to our agency for 22 years. We've lost a lot of institutional knowledge here recently. Corporal Beeler is one of those that we're losing. We're replacing these guys with young guys that are trying to figure out how to do this job. But it is a loss losing somebody like Corporal Beeler. So he has served us well in our city. So thank you, Mr. Chase.

Thank you.

OK, we will go to consent agenda items 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and utility board number 5.

I don't think we're doing 3. 2, 4, 5. 2, 4, 5.

Did I say 3? Yeah. Sorry. I didn't have it circled, so I was thinking of it.

All right, new business item number two, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into a grant agreement with the Bureau of Justice Assistance for the purchase of bulletproof vests in the amount of $39,499.93, adjusting the 2026 budget to recognize and appropriate said grant funds upon repayment and for their purposes. New business item number four, appointment of William Akins to the Bentonville Utility Board. New business item number five, appointment of Alexander Bryce to the Bentonville Utility Board. New business item number nine in the City Council for the City of Bentonville, Arkansas. New business item number 10 in the City Council for the City of Bentonville, Arkansas. New business item number 11 in the City Council for the City of Bentonville, Arkansas. New business item number 12 in the City Council for the City of Bentonville, Arkansas. New Business 13, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into a supplemental agreement number one to Burns and McDonald's contract for the Greenhouse Road Improvements Project in the amount of $267,774. This expands the scope of work to include environmental clearance documentation, traffic design plans, roadway design, including Kimmel Road, RCB, and greenhouse typical sections, bridge design plans, and further purposes. Utility Board item number five, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into an agreement approving amendment one for the 2026 sewer model expansion shell basin interceptor with Olsen Inc. in the amount of $977,277 to amend the current model expansion contract to initiate concurrent design services for improvements with the lower shell. And move.

I'll move. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Okay. We'll go to item number three, which is revising 2019-148, creating the Bentonville Utility Board.

New business item number three, an ordinance revising the Utility Board creation ordinance number 2019-148, requiring in-person attendance for board members and for other purposes. I'll move.

motion and a second in the other discussion just a question is is there any additional is there any qualifications for members of the utility board like institutional knowledge of infrastructure or things like that or is it just generic so really what we now because we get we can get lots of baskets for things we kind of they kind of whoever's the chair

Internal employee chair of that department, they'll have some things they're looking for to try to have a well rounded board is kind of how they look at it.

But as far as in the bylaws of that six board. I don't know that there's anything specific in there, but they do look for certain things. Thank you.

I'll make a motion to approve.

I think we have a motion in a second, right? Souter?

Yes. Yes. Hook? Yes. Sanchez? Yes.

Patterson? Yes. Seba? Yes.

New business item number six, an ordinance vacating access easement located between lot 74 and lot 169 of original town of Bentonville subdivision of the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, Benton County, Arkansas, BAC 26-0007.

This time I will open the public hearing. Is there anyone in person or online to speak on this item? I'm not hearing any. I'll close the public hearing. I'll move. Second. Second. Any other discussion? We'll call, please.

Hart? Yes. Cook?

Yes.

Patterson?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Item number seven is a public hearing in ordinance vacating right away. You want to read it and then I'll open the public hearing.

New business item number seven, an ordinance vacating right away located at Crooked Road in the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, Benton County, Arkansas, VAC 26-0014.

At this time, I'll open the public hearing. Anyone online or in person to speak on this item? Seeing or hearing any, we'll close the item.

Second.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

New business item number eight, an ordinance vacating utility easement located at lot 16-18 of second east side addition of the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, Benton County, Arkansas, BAC26-0029.

Time will open the public hearing. Is there anyone online or in person to speak on this item? Seeing and hearing none, we'll close the public hearing.

So moved.

Second.

Yes.

Yes. Patterson. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

And it's 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. We're on consensus of this. So we'll go to utility board item number one, which is an ordinance approving a waiver of bid and reserve slots for three substation transformers.

Utility Board item number one, an ordinance approving a waiver of bid and reserve slots for three substation transformers from Prolec-GE in the amount of $450,000, amending the 2026 budget, providing for the emergency clause and for other purposes.

I'll move. Second. Any other discussion? Roll call, please.

Sanchez? Yes. Patterson? Yes. Seba? Yes. Souter? Yes. Hart?

Yes.

Cook?

Yes.

And section for emergency clause, the need to make this purchase is immediate and an emergency is hereby declared to exist. And this ordinance shall be in full force and effect from the date of its passage and approval.

Second.

Second. Any other discussion? Patterson?

Yes.

Deba? Yes. Souter?

Yes.

Burkhart?

Yes.

Hook?

Yes.

Sanchez?

Yes. Number two is a resolution authorizing a contract amendment to the water and wastewater capacity fee analysis.

Utility Board item number two, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into a professional services agreement amendment with Raftelis Financial Consultants, Inc., Raftelis, reducing the contract amount by $16,200 for a revised amount not to exceed $43,400, extending the contract time to December 31st, 2026, amending the 2026 budget and for other purposes.

Motion and second. Any other discussion?

I know it's unusual since two and three are similarly where you're adding and subtracting. Can we just visit about both at the same time? Is that all right to do that? Because I don't want to have to just go through it again. Can you talk to me a little bit about the contract deletion and the addition of the same amount for number three? And I would like to have a little more information about the water capacity fee that you're looking at. What is their scope on that? And where are we at in the stages of that? And what does that look like in general? Certainly where we have our own models that we're working well with and reducing some of our capacity needs. I would like to know where we're sitting on this. A, the budget reduction and the addition in one. And also, but more about, I'd like to know what the scope of the water capacity fee, where are we at in this process and what's going on? Just basically update me because I don't have an update on exactly what you're doing and what's the plan.

A year ago in May, you had awarded the contract for a raft list to do a water and wastewater capacity fee analysis. And as you remember, last fall, we chose to have Utility Financial Solutions develop the wastewater development fee based on a wastewater study and the loan associated with the interceptor upsizing. So the wastewater capacity fee was developed through that process and so is not needed to be performed by Raftless through the contract that you awarded a year ago. That was a year ago. That was a 12-month contract, and we need more time to finish that study. And part of that is because of the work that was necessary with the rate analysis and review. So, if you remember, the rate We entered into a contract for a rate analysis. We determined that the need for the rate was a very large increase. There was a lot of unanticipated engagement with the consultants based on reviewing FAQ lists and documentation, a lot of publications they assisted with us. There was a lot of unanticipated additional man hours that was associated with that rate review and that recommendation for that water rate increase. Also, part of that, at the end of the year, we went through the wholesale contract agreement with Bella Vista. Based on the engagement with city council, there was a lot of unanticipated engagement with the consultant, and I was associated with that. We actually went, you know, had to do an extension three months into this, earlier this year to finish that work. So when we entered into the rate review, we didn't anticipate a lot of these additional engagement needs that we went through. So since they're not performing the wastewater capacity fee, they proposed to pull that $16,000 out of that contract, add that to the rate analysis, because we owe you a water rate review. We have started that in May. But based on the gains that we've made with our purchase of water on account of water loss, we have tried to revise and relook at some of the water capacity projects and revise some of the timing of those. And so that rate review, because that debt is tied into that rate analysis and the timing of that debt, we are still working to finish that rate review up for the water rate. So in order to finish that work, they need another $16,200. We're pulling that out of that capacity fee study because, one, they don't need to do the wastewater capacity fee. They need to finish the water capacity fee. Part of the reason that's not done is because we are changing the timing of some of the water projects based on the reduction in our purchased water. And maybe the timing that we had a year ago is not the same appropriate timing that we might see based on the reduction in the water. So that is the need for the extra time and the capacity fee and why they couldn't get that done in the 12 months. We are a little hesitant to reduce the capacity fee study just into half because we're not sure about the time and the interaction between them and you to see if we move forward with the water capacity fee or not. Their task right now is just to develop that fee. We will bring that fee to you, and then there will be a decision by this board or city council on what we do with that fee. So right now, we just need to modify the contracts and amend these so that we can finish the work that we've already signed up to do.

Thank you for a great explanation. So we're finishing the rate water analysis first. Yes. We have to make that adjustments first before we can do a capacity analysis. And so the rate Water rate.

Yeah, it's tough. Water rate analysis will be done by approximately when? Yeah, so we're going to have it to, you know, we're going to extend the water rate review. We'll get that done as soon as we can. So I would say, you know, within the next month, six weeks, we'd have something for that review back. Then based on the timing of those capacity or those big capital projects and water, we would also use that timing and that debt coming on board to help us develop the capacity fee if we choose to do that with the water. So the timing of the capacity projects, the water projects, is really kind of driving everything. And so thankfully, that revision is needed just based on the drop in our purchase. So it's given us a little bit more time to do some of that.

And the scope of this, are you going to make a projection going from wherever we're at, whether it's 50% or whatever it is, or 47% loss, are you going to make that projection of those gains down the road to make sure that we're not applying those to any fee payer. We actually make sure that that's because in the past, that wasn't the case. They were all applied to residential users, residential homes. All the loss was applied to residential in the past water fee and sewer fee that we did in the past. There wasn't any loss applied to anything else. So if you remember the original impact fee, When I had that question on the council, I showed the losses and I said, how can you be applying that to the residential only? And that's just the way it was. So I want to be very cautious of applying our losses to any of the fee structure if there is a fee structure. And I will remind everybody here that in the most average projects, we just increased a million in fees on top of existing fees. on top of the inflation. Our inflation in this city is well above national inflation. And so I want to be very cautious adding another heavy layer to a single industry that can't absorb that pricing because the constituents and the buyers of those cannot afford them. And we've priced ourselves out of the market both in rent Your tenant spaces will be too high to rent for brick and mortar. So I just want to bring this up again, as we move down this, do we, I want to keep that in mind.

Yeah. I just want to remind everybody. We wanted to look at this when we did rates, you told us not to do that. And you came back and told us to go look at this capacity fee for development on water. So we have, We're doing this based on what this council has given direction on. But I hear what you're saying, and I think you're making good points too, but that's why.

First, we need to get the data. We need to get that analysis done, bring something before you as a presentation on what we feel is appropriate based on just our projects, and then you guys make a decision on what we do with that.

I would like, as part of this, a plan for set-asides. I've said this for over a decade, and you've heard it here constantly. If we put money away constantly for what we know has to be done, it will be there for us. $2 million or $4 million at buy-through exchanges allowing to fix things, we have The assets that we have, we must maintain both past, present, and future and be ready for future. We have to budget for that. That is our responsibility for our legacy cost. And to our, that is as much failure of mine as it is anybody's that we didn't do this. And I do not want to duplicate this and just try to pay fees We can't fee our way out of this. We have a billion and a half infrastructure cost, if you look at it as a whole. We must change the way we're budgeting for infrastructure. It's as clear as the scar on my nose that if we don't do something, it won't matter. We can't fee to a certain point that it You can't do it anymore. And we still end up with no money. So I'm just suggesting that as we're reviewing capital improvements and we think about all the things, we have double digit gains. We need to make the sole purpose of our purpose is public safety and our infrastructure. Outside of that, We have to be such stewards of our money that we can make sure he can maintain this system and keep it up and running and grow with our population. We're only growing at what, I don't know what rate now, anywhere from four and a half or four or five percent. And we're growing our budget at much greater than that in some instances. So I just, before we go down this road again and think that a single fee is going to change a thing of our projectory, It won't until we change the basics of our financing.

Bill, I totally agree with you. And I have said a time or two in this group that we need to be ready financially to face the future. We cannot be dependent on loans or grants or anything. They are good, but we should not be relying completely on them because they are unreliable. We need to have our own sources of financing for ourselves.

But isn't that what this analysis and financial plan will kind of tell us, give us that direction?

Well, if the financial plan had other, look at other alternatives at the same time, that'd be great. But it doesn't. It only looks at capacity fee for developers. It doesn't look on how to pay for the system overall with all the options. I would much rather have a consultant look at all of the sources for financing give us a financial plan that may include capacity fees. But we seem to always focus on one way, and we focus that. I would rather have us focus on, can we get a financial opinion on what we have to do, what changes we have to make in the budget, what are all the sources to finance this with, this being one of them maybe. But I would like to have that as a consultant. versus simply a consultant year after year only talking about a capacity fee. I would like to have one that talks to us. I'd love to sit down and have, let's see how we're going to finance this over the next 20 years and see all of the parts that it can be used. And we've done that with people talking about that. But I don't see that as we move forward in these discussions, we don't have consultants bringing us those ideas. And I'd like to see those ideas. As much as we want to see this, I would like to see the whole picture and not just one. But thank you for your explanation.

The specific that you want us to look at, but I will say we are pursuing grant. I mean, I don't.

Loans, rates.

I mean, I think you need to.

My ask would be, I agree with you. Let's get through the analysis that we've got currently in front. We get through those two analysis. We'll see where those end up. You know, we know capacity fee is just an option that we may choose or may not choose not to do. It may be a piece of it. It may be none of it. But we also need to understand the rates and where they're at based on the increase. And so let us get through these two studies and we'll have all this discussion based on once we have something in front of you. It gives you kind of an idea of where we're sitting.

I appreciate your explanation quite a bit, and I agree with you. Information is good, so thank you.

Thank you, Bryson.

That's all the questions I had on both of those items, so thank you for your patience.

Is there a motion and a second on three? On two. The resolution and contract amendment, wait, what is this item? OK, sorry. Item two, resolution authorizing a contract amendment to the water and wastewater capacity fee analysis. You have a motion and a second. So all in favor? Item three is a resolution authorizing a contract amendment to the water and wastewater rate analysis and financial plan.

Utility Ward Item Number 3, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into a professional services agreement amendment with Raftelis Financial Consultants, Inc., Raftelis, requesting the contract amount not to exceed $16,000 due to an unanticipated additional meeting and increased levels of engagement and for their purposes. Motion and a second.

All in favor? Aye.

Any opposed?

Item number four is an ordinance adopting revisions for the 2026 Water Utilities Department specifications update.

Utility Board item number four, an ordinance amending the Bentonville Municipal Code to update the Water Utilities Department specifications and for other purposes.

Second. Motion and a second. Any other discussion? Roll call, please.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. I didn't reply with on consent agenda. So we'll go to planning item number one, which is in order to change in real estate in the city of Bentonville, Arkansas from present classification of R1 to T4.1.

Planning item number one, an ordinance changing real estate in the city of Bentonville, Arkansas from its present zoning classification of R1 suburban single family to T4.1 neighborhood general and for other purposes. Project number RZ26-0026. I'll move.

A motion, a second. Any other discussion? Souter, please.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Patterson? Yes.

Item number two is a rezoning at 5036 Southwest Shell Road.

Planning item number two, an ordinance changing real estate in the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, from its present zoning classification of R-1, suburban single family, to T3.2, neighborhood transition. And for the purposes, project number RZ26-0027. So moved. With many observations.

Doan Nguyen, Go ahead, I can read discussion.

Doan Nguyen, One tip to so first, though I the planning Commission meeting, you could not hear. Doan Nguyen, Okay, I couldn't hear any it didn't pick up the MIC for the residents like you could hear the planning Commission members, but I thought Mike wasn't picking up. Doan Nguyen, The.

HAB-Juliette Boone, The comments, most of them did send in their thoughts I least there were a couple three. Objection. Yeah. And I could read them, but...

So yeah, I was kind of hoping for maybe a recap of anything that wasn't in because I don't know what went wrong this time, but you were only hearing them what you were picking up on these mics. So for some reason it wasn't recording. So it was like nearly impossible to hear what everybody was saying.

It sounds like most of the objections were the usual suspects, but I do have a question. Is there anything... planned. The concern, the biggest concern I have is getting out from Shell Road to the airport. And if I don't know that this is going to significantly increase, but it's just already a problem of getting out there. And I don't know if there's any thing that can be I mean, obviously, it can't be a light or I just don't know what the answer for that area is. But it's very challenging. As a real estate agent, that's the first thing I bring up to people that are looking out there.

Dan mentioned to me earlier that this is on RDoT's radar, this section of Highway 12 on the STIP, State Transportation Improvement Program. Don't know exactly what that's going to entail long term and A development of this size would probably not kick it over the warrants for some major traffic improvements at intersection. Can't say for certain, but it more than likely wouldn't require something like a light. And even if that were warranted, it probably doesn't meet the separation requirements from the light further to the east. And it definitely wouldn't trigger the warrant for like a rapid.

But it is something that's being evaluated. Do what the road right there?

This is shell. This is rainbow farm road. That's paved all the way. All right.

This is page 257. It says this resigning requires enhancing enhanced review.

Correct.

And 1 of the items in the same page. Says there are sidewalks along shell road. uh yes to a degree beginning on brittany uh brittany lane perhaps all the way to uh rainbow farm there are no sidewalks neither on the on the north side of the street or on the south side of the street now this has been called uh what is this uh collector yes but it is collector in the future

They element here we would require half street improvements to show.

Yes, on on that portion, but it doesn't include the sidewalk in front of those empty lots because they don't even belong to Bentonville. Right?

Right. That was contingent on Centerton doing something.

Yes. So this, the sidewalks do not exist and they will not exist even if the property is, does the expansion to collector specifications. On the other hand, the Rainbow Farm, it is supposed to be a collector street, but it is a dirt road a few feet from the intersection. Going south, you cannot go much further than that subdivision because everything else becomes a dirt road. And you cannot go through with a nice car or anything else. It's just bumpy and et cetera, et cetera. Those are underdeveloped collectors. They are not there at the moment. The concern that one of the neighbors presented is that if the development goes as requested, the Blackstone Street that is near the center of the property extending west will go straight to the swimming pool of this particular homeowner. And so he is requesting some kind of permanent and solid barriers between the subdivision, whatever subdivision is being made there and his property in order to protect his property. That's another one of the concerns

The reason why these lines are drawn, we did in the past see the preliminary plat request, which is why these streets are drawn in that preliminary plat has since expired. They would have to resubmit and we would reevaluate where the street connectivity is. And I indicated that at the meeting itself.

And these are not going to be particularly high speed streets. These are neighborhood streets.

Yes. The person who is complaining about this situation is indicating that it may be somebody with a medical condition that goes straight to the privacy fence, that it is nothing, that it will not stop that person from going into this homeowner's swimming pool or maybe into his house, etc. So it is a real concern, even though it is a very small possibility that it could happen.

There's a lot of houses that have yeah, I'd like to have.

Not according to the plan that the preliminary plan that was approved a couple of a couple of years ago.

Right, but that's that's that was an old development. I'm just saying in general in every given neighborhood, there is houses that have had lots of them. All over town.

I'm not sure the account and created extra. barriers for every house that had a road that teed into them, I think we'd be, I mean, it'd be all over town.

All right. That's one. Let me see. This person who complained sent a large number of concerns. Among them, the lights that will go into his house because it is right, the street, as it is indicated in the preliminary or previous plan, goes straight to his house. That's when safety hazards from vehicles driving on that street, which is what I mentioned, et cetera. So those are the concerns that exist in my mind at this moment, mainly the capacity of the street in the sense of the argument that it is presented in the sense of walkability does not exist because there is no sidewalks.

Yeah, I agree with that, with the capacity of the streets. And it's hard to get out of there. Can you give us a little bit of history when they were referring to what happened in 2024? Like this was brought up and was denied?

Yeah, back in 2024, there was a previous request on this piece of property. That rezoning was to R2, which is a different zoning district than T3.2. R2 allows for, like, full-blown townhome development. T3.2 does not.

This is just duplex.

Correct.

I mean, that's... Family to family.

Can you bring up the proximity to the last... The one that was a couple months ago that we... It's right here. ...declined in this area?

Directly southwest.

So... Sorry, which one's the one we're voting on right now? So that's that, and then that long one is, okay. And what were they requesting?

At the time, it was R2. Because it was prior to adoption of the new code.

Both R2s were turned down. Correct. So they went back and rethought about this, but we don't want to do that again since they're being turned down. down, so they reduced their request in both density and housing type.

It's not the same applicant.

The preliminary plot was laid out as an R1 subdivision.

So my concern, and I'll kind of reiterate this, I feel like we're increasing density in almost all areas of our city. And with our new plan, we kind of said we need density. But If you have a single family subdivision R1, we are going to leave that in place and give you that predictability and give you that promise that the R1 areas with subdivisions will stay that way, but we are going to increase density in the areas where our plan kind of called for it. And I... So I have a hard time increasing density in these single family subdivision areas. One of the letters kind of talked about that predictability. We talk about predictability for developers. You know, I think we owe our residents the same. You know, we kind of said this is going to be a single family area. You know, that collector street that goes to nothing and except for what would be a very expensive bridge that will probably never happen. You know, there's not connectivity there. And I just, I kind of, I don't feel like I can, you know, the planning commission has, you know, their philosophy is if not here, where, you know, and they will approve basically anything. increase density anywhere, I feel like. And I don't agree with that. I feel like there are specific areas where our plan has said, this is where we increase density to add housing. And these are the areas that are going to stay single family R1. And so for me, I'm going to be consistent and say that this is an R1. That curve, the traffic is awful there. But I don't even think that's the main concern for me. I mean, there is no connectivity. It's awful, you know, very unsafe conditions, you know, the traffic. But, you know, also, so I don't feel like I can support increasing density in that particular area.

In this particular location, there is a big, I would call it cliff, because I don't know many words. There is a cliff between the pavement, but... probably five inches, between four and six inches, where many cars have lost their wheels or their tires because they go a couple of inches into the cliff, and they destroy their tires. And it is almost at the core. Well, it is on shale, and it is from the corner of Rainbow, maybe a couple of hundred feet into going east. And that is a bad situation. The street should be repaired as it is today on the north. I'm talking on the south side. Yes, I understand the improvements are going to be done on the north side, but this is the south side. And this is the south side, and you see countless number of vehicles that have been damaged because the street is totally inadequate the improper for any vehicle to go through because it is narrow. And as I said that the sharp leaf is right there next to it several inches deep.

And we saw you there. Oh, just checking. For my understanding, we have zero money for roads. Other than what's in the bond project, right?

Yes.

We don't have a plan to fund those roads, right? Okay. So We, the only people that are going to build that road is the developer, because that's the requirement. And that's how we're doing is by leapfrog with development after development, and hopefully it fills in. That's the goal. That's our methodology currently is that we're relying on others to build our roads. Okay. single family, only single family residents and one and two family has its own code because they're really both the same. One and two families really the same. We have it all over town where single families with duplexes, all over town. The only person that can do that is somebody that can afford to develop that because doing a single family there won't, they need some additional, it won't get a lot, but they'll get some additional density there to be able to make this project move forward. If we say that the corner down there on 12 is hazardous, then you're going to say no to anything west of there. If that's our goal here, that we're going to say there is zero development, no matter the density, west of that corner because it's too hazardous, then we need to make that perfectly clear, in my opinion. The road needs improvement. I agree 100%. How we're going to fund one that's already built on the south side and fix the road, that's going to be up to us because nobody's going to pay for that. How we fund the other side when people are wanting to develop that, that can be done for us. That is going to be a collector. There'll be thousands and thousands of rooftops out there in 10 years. There's nowhere else to go. I know that that we, I mean, think about when the new interchange comes in, there'll be another town segment, a regional center out there, and this is going to be right in the heart of it. So we're going to have to make some decisions of our own, how we're going to improve both North and South and fixing the road of what you're talking about. And that won't be able to fall on anybody but us if we're going to get ahead of it. Uh, but the zoning type out here, uh, Where do we draw the line? I get R2. We've turned down two now, R2. But in the transition zone of the three, it's exactly in that where we were hoping to stay and not go to your much higher density. There's a whole other code for one- and two-story homes other than the multifamily commercial. I support this zoning. I hope they can actually get it done. They can improve the road, improve the sidewalks. We need to do some work as well. But I don't think the density difference is challenging and nobody will know the difference whether they're a big home or two small homes.

And that type of home is so needed.

Yes.

Just telling you right now we need them. The only way our young kids are going to be able to buy a house is to be able to buy a duplex where they can live in one and rent the other one.

And the only way the rental market equalizes so leases aren't so high is if you build the supply. It's simple. You either build the supply or you don't. If you don't, rents are higher than our average working force and our young adults and older adults that are living on a fixed income can afford.

And Preston, can I put you on the spot since I did it to you earlier? Because I will say I was very concerned because we did a land use and we said we're going to build our utilities out to that. And so could you talk, counsel through what you talked to me through this morning

Yeah, it's part of the enhanced review, you know, so we look at these existing zonings and these proposed zonings and look at them and where they're in relationship to where they're at within our collection and water systems and see the necessary improvements and how it ties into what we had planned for. Joey and his team did an enhanced review on this and based on the location and it being very close in proximity to the 30-inch NACA line. There's not a lot of collection system that's impacted based on this increase in density. There's going to, of course, be a sewer analysis done to make sure we can get the flows from this parcel to that interceptor there. But that was part of the enhanced review that we did for this facility. I'm not saying that every enhanced review has this outcome. That's the intent of the enhanced review is for us to look at these individually and apply some analysis to it.

Is it possible, what could be done to address mainly the safety concern from the homeowner in front of the Blackstone Avenue? This one? Yes.

I'm looking, I was looking at that Octavia, what I would have them do, I would probably, what I would recommend they do is flip the layout. I would probably align this street Right here. And then you do a similar curve stub to this property here because there's already a stub right here. And then you have the connectivity, the north as well. Does that make sense?

Thank you.

You're welcome. And where's the road problem you're talking about?

On the north or the south side of Shell and in front of that property.

On the Google map, it looks like it's asphalt. So I was just wondering.

Yes, it is asphalt.

It just drops off on the edge because so many people have dropped off the edge. It's now a drop off.

It is a big drop off.

They put some base down through there.

So that's probably in the county, that partial.

The property on Shell, the south side of it.

It is badly damaged. South side where? At the intersection or in front of these houses?

In front of the property on Shell, the south side of it. From the, to the west of the street that comes out of that subdivision. So you're talking about that, just that yard?

That house right there. That's been there.

In front of that house, the whole thing. Oh.

I don't know that that's in the city limits is what I'm doing. This house is it is it is within the city, then we should fix it. I mean, if it's a hazard. I mean, we surely could play in there and good call. What about the sidewalks?

Where is the city line?

Anything that's not green or pink is city limits. So all of this is us. Actually, let me turn off the aerial. It's easier to see.

The pink areas are centered.

Everything in white is us. This kind of greenish color is county, and then the pink is Centerton.

And if the property to the east develops, Centerton also has a requirement, doesn't it? To do the curb and gutter?

To do Henry Street. There are a little bit more than five acres. Taylor, there are a little bit more than five acres on this property. What is, in general terms, the capacity to have how many single family homes with R1 could be built over there?

With R1, if you've got a 6,000 square foot minimum, if I subtract out. That's eight.

Typically in R1, you're lucky if you get 2.7, 2.8 units to the acre, when it's all said and done.

So if it is 2.6 times five, that would be 13 homes?

There is a transition zone between this and what they're wanting to go that would decrease the setbacks and stuff. There'll be R1.

So if it is 13 R1s, how many duplexes could be built on this same space?

13 R1, you'd be looking at 26 duplex units.

If you can fit them on, you can't fit them on 60 foot lots. So don't, you can't put a duplex on a 60 foot lot.

You can, but it's challenging at best. So it is maybe 20 instead of 13, right? 13 are once 20 duplexes. Is that correct?

I mean- That is an estimate.

Yeah. If Swope back here can design that thing to get 26, he will.

Yes, no, I'm not betting your salary on it. It's just a general-

So, Tyler, your possibility that you mentioned made sense, but it still feels very unknown, like whether or not that would actually happen.

So, what I would say... That's the most... What I would say, the code prioritizes having the streets line up.

But they don't always.

They should.

Yeah.

I agree. Okay. Is there any other discussion?

We have a motion and a second on this one.

So we'll call. Burkhardt?

Yes.

Hook?

No.

Sanchez? Yes. Patterson? No. Siva? Yes. Sitter?

Yes.

All right, can I get a motion to adjourn us from the voting agenda? Second. Okay, and we do have some public comments. So, Tavi and Rose, and if you could just state your name and your address and keep your comments to three minutes or under, we would appreciate it.

Okay, tell me. Tevian Rose, 804 Northwest 11th Street. According to a recent report by the Worldwide Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London, Earth lost over 50% of its wildlife throughout the last 40 years. That's a recent study. When one dandelion is sprayed with Roundup, you can kill over 100 bees. The flower doesn't die right away, so bees keep visiting it for days and carries the poison home. A few quotes from some articles I've recently read. Pollinators are also crucial to the diets and agricultural practices of humans. 75% of the food crops grown around the globe depend, at least in part, on pollinators. 20 states considering legislation to protect pollinator habitats and the 24 states considering legislation in 2023 to limit the use of harmful pesticides. Arkansas wasn't on either of those lists. Northwest Arkansas and Walmart has spent a ton of marketing material emphasizing this being the natural state. If we kill off the pollinators, things are going to change very quickly. Our property was completely remodeled after the 2024 tornadoes, and this spring I started working on the landscaping. After extensive research, the objective was to do as little harm to the ecosystem as possible, help the pollinators, and slow the water runoff that's happening. I have been consulting with master gardeners, master wildflower naturalist, and recently a civil engineer with EDA who specializes in water flow management. there is a substantial amount of water flow coming off of the road into our property. It is better for the ecosystem to overseed and choke out the grass rather than clear cut it away. I have applied over 10,000 beneficial nematodes to mitigate ticks and other unwanted pests. When something is under construction, there is grace with the mess because it takes time to rebuild or create a structure. The same should be true for a landscaping project when someone is trying to take precautions to protect the ecosystem and benefit the pollinators. If we don't make changes as a society to respect nature and to protect the ecosystem, we are contributing to our own extinction. We do not own this planet. We borrow it from future generations, and we are failing them. And I just want to say, so our house is the house that was the one that was the White House and it showed the whole lawn. That was at the very beginning stage. I would encourage you to come. I'm doing all the work myself, so it takes time. But I make progress every single week. And I'm currently within code as of today. I think the three complaints that were made were in the very beginning when we had substantial amount of rain and my lawn guys didn't get there and the backyard was horrendous. I do think that that is what happened, but I would encourage you to come and look and see what I'm doing because it, it does matter. Our pollinators were killing the whole planet.

Thank you.

Hi. Joe Sumner Knuth, 801 Northwest 11th. And I just want to encourage, and I also want to say how proud I am of our town. Man, the challenges. Where I'm living now, been there 20 years. Came here years before that. But one of the things I'm most recently proud of is our bragging rights in supporting diversification, because it is my belief that monoculture, agriculturally, socially, culturally is a path to extinction. And I see diversification even in our yards. We have a great viewpoint across the street. and the diversification is side by side. My corner neighbor has a gravel yard. I like it. I really do like it. It's different, but it's architectural, and it really blends with her home. It's nice looking. When she started it, it was a mess. It was terrible. Starting off, getting through it, it was a mess. It's nice. Right next door to her is this lady's lawn. And she's at the beginning of the process. And I've watched it. I know what she went through to get it done to where she is now. And I'm really enjoying the process of where she's going with it. So I see diversification there. And I think that is... ecologically something very sound and to be considered as a path forward for us as a city. It's an interest of our future, which you have to deal with every day. And I think it's worth investing in. I think setting your parameters, what will work overall, don't be too strict with it. This is growing stuff, you know? It's getting your hands dirty. It's investing in growing things. But set your parameters and then encourage it. You've got many paths to reach your people. You've got the wonderful publication that comes from the mayor's office. You've got the free giveaway every year that you can encourage us. Plenty of people. You have master gardeners. You have the county extension agency. You have peel gardens. You have people all over the place that can help you make this occur. But I, number one, thank you for considering it. Number two, I encourage you to go forward with it. It's a healthy, diversified thing to do. Thank you.

And the last person was Ramsey Ball, but I think he, I think that's all we have signed up for public comment. So we will go to.

I just have a quick question. About eight or nine months ago, we received a court document and we were all supposed to go to Fort Smith on June 29th.

You do not. We got an email, but we don't. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. I, I, I didn't, I may have overlooked that.

You remember that we were having to go.

Well, no, I, I remember because I had already told them I couldn't because I was, it's my 30th anniversary, but, and I apologize if I missed the email, but I'm just trying to check the boxes to make sure that I, that we are not supposed to be. That's great. I think that I didn't. Thank you. That's all I have.

too many reviews no i have um from the from visit bentonville the destination master plan from the oh yeah y'all attended everyone attended that's fantastic i appreciate it yeah there's one for you mayor this already has me so yeah just it's really pretty you know it's got everything kind of laid out really easy to follow. Kayleen said that, A couple of council members had reached out to her to want to discuss some specifics in there. So if that was you, she said she will be reaching out to those of you that had expressed interest in meeting with her to set up one-on-ones. If you haven't already talked to her, let her know any questions that you have about any of this. And she would love to meet with any of us one-on-one to kind of answer some questions. some questions. Lots of good things. No problem.

I was waiting for this to read through it.

They just came in yesterday. Thank you. But lots of good things going on. They've had, you know, just staying really busy. Lots of great events. We've had, you know, several new hotels come online here in Bentonville and they're just doing a really great job with all that they do.

And on page 21, it has a nice display of wildflowers.

That's good.

And on page 53, it has a nice picture of a bee.

There's the pollinator. Is that a real bee?

Destination for the bees. They're in the master plan.

They're in the master plan.

Okay.

So neighborhood one open house was last week. And I don't know if anybody else was able to stop by there, but it was really, it was very cool to see what's happening out at the airport.

So if you have not, so you got to see social media or I don't know, you can go out there.

I'm sure Paul or somebody would give you a tour. And then the art board met and we, Kind of a downer of a meeting because we still aren't even close on our America 250 submissions. We did extend that to high school, but we are going to go ahead and keep it open until the first couple of months of the school year. some of the art features and try to get some more of those commissions. And then we just rolled it out too late, I think, in the school year. So we weren't able to do that. And then the Water Tower Road roundabout, we had quite a few proposals. None of them really were, I think, what we had hoped and anticipated. We talked about shifting to a different roundabout in hopes that as NWAC expands all through there, that we can do some partnership with them for this roundabout and potentially gear it more in mind with that campus expansion. So we are looking at a couple of the other roundabouts to the west.

The hangers at the airport are amazing, which is what he was promised to us when we approve the lease.

They're so cool.

They are.

Finance Committee did not meet, so there's no report there. Just remind everybody that the grade of homes is this weekend. all over Northwest Arkansas, but there's a lot of communities in Bentonville, including one of the first condominium communities, which I'll speak up for myself. We decided to enter, but a lot of the communities that are in there are in Bentonville. I would hope that you go have a chance to go by and see them, support them. It should be, hopefully, with the rain. I mean, I hope it works out, but a lot of hard work went into a lot of these communities and homes, and I think I would really enjoy seeing. that people are doing in their models.

And Tree and Landscape met on Thursday. And Tyler has already left, but I think we are really close to rolling out or bringing the final tree canopy assessment. This was something that was a grant that we received after the tornado. They've really gone through it, come through it several times. And then, of course, the majority of our meeting was with the native and pollinator landscape ordinance discussion on that. The fall tree giveaway dates were set for October 10th. The free trees that were mentioned, that will happen on October 10th. And then one thing that everybody can do, it doesn't necessarily have to be this board, but be looking for some landscape nominations, usually at city council member meetings, We like to recognize those, and they need more submissions. There is a residential, and we also do have a category for commercial. We don't get a lot of commercial, but if you're out and about and see a commercial or a business doing a really nice job with landscaping, those can actually, right now, we're... in between, but Shelly can get it to the right person. Shelly handles, is overseeing these meetings right now. So if you were to be out, see something great, I know Mallory has actually submitted some, just feel free to send this in to Shelly and just, they'll put them out to vote.

I think we'll do 4th of July on the board, so Saturday, so we'll be up more, and then lisa we should be we'll do the ribbon cutting for the phase one of dave hill and we'll have a there's it should be the pavilion should be activated with orchestra and we are encouraging people to go buy a noodle from our local downtown restaurants and enjoy it a little bit of a 250th picnic They were wanting us to do potlucks, but we were going to do a picnic and we're going to encourage you to go utilize our local restaurant and bring it there. You know what time that is? It's four to seven. So we'll do probably the ribbon cutting right at four and then the orchestra stuff will start. And my understanding is hopefully the weather is good and DBI already has sort of red and white checked blankets and different things. If you want to get a blanket from them and you can Yeah, we also have a lot of great new seating over there too. So either way, so enjoy those. All right, thank y'all.

Thank you.