City Council - Regular Meeting

You get to enjoy it after that time. That's exactly right. He wasn't wrong. Try to turn down.

She's ready. I got six o'clock. Are y'all ready? Ready. All right, let's come. Let's come to [laughter] you. Brother Bradley, we stop word of prayer, please. Let's pray. Dear God, when you thank every God, our leaders tonight.

Amen. I aliance 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. Miss Lisa, would you call the role please? Baker Bradley here. King here. Ringinger here. Crystal Thompson here. Robert Thompson here. Uh, council got one thing to add a resolution for the TAP program that that we need to add tonight with your permission. So, uh, with that addition, appreciate a

what is it? It's the resolution for the TAP program. It's, uh, it's dealing with trauma assistance programs. Yeah. So, that'll be F on the agenda. Yes. F. I make a motion to add that leaker. Yes. Bradley, yes. King, yes. Risinger, yes. Crystal Thompson, yes. Thompson, yes. We have a motion for approval of the minutes. So move. Second. Second. Miss Lisa. [clears throat] Bradley. Yes. King.

Yes. Ringer. Yes. Crystal Thompson. Yes. Robert Thompson. Yes. Baker. Yes. Thank you, council. Uh, first item now is going to be the 2026 council rules here. minutes.

That That was it. Uh I don't think we've made any changes since last year. So the same rules without any revisions tonight would apply. So we just need to make a motion. Need a motion for approval of the minutes of the rules to adopt the rules. Make a motion to adopt the rules for Clarkville City Council.

Second. Okay. Miss Leon King. Yes. Ringer. Yes. Crystal Thompson. Yes. Robert Thompson. Yes. Baker. Yes. Bradley. Yes. Thank you, council. Uh 6B is going to be the committee list for 2026. All volunteers except for a which a couple of them got volunteered. [laughter] Inadvertently volunteered. I volunteered a long way. [laughter] Thank you, Thompson. Yeah. Thank you very much, Thompson. That's so kind to you guys. [laughter] Uh appreciate a motion for approval of the list. So move. Second. Second, Miss Lisa. Rice Singer. Yes. Crystal Thompson. Yes.

Robert Thompson. Yes. Baker. Yes. Bradley. Yes. King. Yeah. Thank you. Council Stanley, you want to come up? Um 6C is going to be we're asking to re reallocate 15,000 from our parks maintenance account to support Grill Wars, which a barbecue cookoff. um the America's 250th birthday birthday celebration in July and uh a Christmas celebration transfer to

when is the grill wars? September 26. It's going to be a partner with the chamber. all doing some concerts and some stuff on September 26. And the birthday celebration, when will that be? July the 4th. America's America's birthday is Do you need money for the triathlon, too? No, we've got it. Oh, we're sponsorship. Oh, that's right. Because AMP is Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How much how much of this would you could you apply to what we had in our account? Yeah. And then they gave us advertising.

There was five and they spent about 2500 for half of the time. We can if you if you'll if you guys will shift over the 15,000 we'll make all four of those things work. what he needs for tri. They've got some money in that account. What about and if we don't do the the Christmas and Klein music thing, we'll just we'll cancel that. But we're thinking that's what we need to pull all 25 Christmas for Klein. Could they use part of it in that?

Yeah, that's for the lights though. This was totally different. This was Yeah. Mayor, if if it would if it would be all right with the council, I would kind of like to table this till next month uh to where we can contact the county because I know the county is doing something as well for the uh Fourth of July celebration for the 250th. This is part of this is part of this is our portion of that. Okay. So, we are working in conjunction with the county and the chamber. And the chamber. Yes, sir. Okay. Is that the same one that is done usually by First Baptist Church?

No, no, this is totally different. Um, that's still going to go on. This is America's 250th celebration. There'll be guest speakers. There'll be It's a whole different animal. Whole different celebration. So, it'd be in direct conflict. No, no, it's part of that day. Ray, you want to come up talk a little bit what the chamber's plans are and Couple things and even even on the barbecue cook off deal. One of the things I'll say in your report we've already given you I think I hope y'all got the second page is the event schedule for the whole year. We had a meeting the other day and approved all that. So if you didn't get that out

okay good y'all got it. back to this point on virtue first. We're also going to support that with some sponsorship money as well and we're also planning on having a craft fair with that trying to get more and more people out there. So, we're working on that. Um, as far as working with the county, yes, we're helping the county and the county, you said you're going to come together to do the July 4th field. So, we're working on that with with Joyce at the county. So, and we won't do any any like fireworks that was going to compete with anybody else around. Not that I know of. Have you heard anything? You know, the fireworks actually my brother, but they're still they're planning on doing that at the church like Yeah.

So, it'll be everything leading up to that, but prior to guest speakers, maybe at the university or maybe at the courthouse or maybe at the mar I'm sorry, it's in works now. I mean, we're still planning some of it. So, yeah, it's going to be a different city. Okay. Well, I was going to say I I would like to see some stuff at the courthouse and at the levy to tie all of it together if possible. The plans are that if you look at when you look at your some of that you may not be able to understand, but if you look at it, we're planning on both. We're going to be doing things at the levy, things at the courthouse.

And then, you know, also the other thing the city has asked us to kind of help coordinate with the the concert series, which by the way, we're we're having like one band. So, we're about to get there. But anyway, we're we're going to help coordinate that, too, and try to add some things to it. Some of the things you see on the report there are going to be some of the things that the city's funding and then some of the things that we're going to find with some sponsorship. So, we [clears throat] really kind of laid out quite a few things. Yeah. And as far as

Y going on starting in July, a whole lot. So, as opposed to going to any other fund, we've we've got the funds in that maintenance account. We're just asking to shift some of that over as opposed to coming back and do a whole new budget thing. So, okay. That that was my concern. I just wanted to make sure somehow that we were coordinating with the county because I I didn't want us to look like we were competing against each other. Okay. Okay. Haven't done that since 2019, Rob. Not going to start now. So, we're gonna work together. Any other questions? Sounds good. I make a motion we reallocate 15,000 from parks to the community project.

Second, Miss Lisa. Crystal Thompson? Yes. Robert Thompson? Yes. Baker? Yes. Bradley? Yes. King? Yes. Russer? Yes. Thank you, council. It's going to be a busy summer for sure. We appreciate that. It helps a lot. Uh 6D is going to be adjust economic development budget for the Monroe repairs. I'm going to pull these invoices up. Stanley, you want to talk us through this? Yeah, I mean we got severe SER issues up there. We're having places. We've done some of it so far, but right now the lease that we're getting from that just went straight into economic development. We won't make a maintenance. Yeah, that's something I

Yeah. So right now the the the lease payment that comes in must 2000 it's going straight direct into economic development and a line item for um a Monroe maintenance needs to be created. So any motion you make tonight please include creating a line item for Monroe maintenance or Red Wings maintenance. Um I think we if we can to call it Monroe because I think the other stuff said building improvement and then Monroe insurance in case something ever happens to it. Yeah. Yeah. It'll always be called an old building. It's always going to be called an old building. So it's been a lot cleaner for us a lot easier when you have that.

Now the lease will say Red Wings lease on that line item. And the last year we we appropriated 72,000 for the fire the fire suppression system. But do we have enough out of that particular adjustment to pay? I was actually going to talk to Lisa. We can probably can do that and I'm hoping we have more in economic development that we can probably transfer over. I think that 70 or 80,000 we had was for that RPZ was it not? Did we still have that some economic development fund? So we should be able to do both. Yeah. I think it is 80,000 75 and I didn't know when they were going to do that. 71 almost 72,000. [clears throat]

So, council, there's a fine line between being in code and then being safe. We need to do that fire suppress system like tomorrow. It's, you know, to make sure everyone's safe. Even though it's up to code, it needs to be brought up to extra code. And then if we can add this expense to it since um that whole sewer I don't know why they ran the way they did back in 50 but it's terrible. [laughter] It goes uphill. I think we've had rubber root up there three times in the last 10 months. Roy, it goes from the It goes from the Red Wings building, Monroe building uphill to Oakland to the center of that tells you how deep it is. That was probably the only place that we

and it's 11 foot in the center of that road. So we got to go from Monroe down to that 11 foot headed east. We're going to partner for the plumber and do a lot of the work and it was clay tiles on top of that. So it has to be it has to be fixed. That's one of those things just for the council that Fort Smith got in trouble. They got put under a consent decree for not fixing these things. So, we really don't have a choice to fix it. Just where we paid for if they'll stop putting stuff down. That'll help.

So, what do you need? You need a motion to adjust that budget [clears throat] to include these expenditures and make the line item. We were going to put $10,000 in there and then anything after that because this was six. So, I guess we'll just have to come back and twist it later. So, Councilman, if we need a motion for moving 10,000 over line item for Monro maintenance and authorizing that 72,000 to be spent on that already is already in there for the RPZ. Okay.

That's already in there. Okay. And then whatever's left over, I guess we can use this. But the main thing is getting that lease fund going into it. You got to get that isolated. So, do you need 10,000 or 15,000? I I think 10 was probably going to be pretty close. I mean, if we have to, we still have economic development money. We can come back in. So, we think there's going to be some left over from that fire suppression and then you add 10,000 in a line item strictly for this this particular project. Wing.

Yeah. And so I would say the motion is to create a maintenance line item using the proceeds from the lease authorizing the $10,000 from economic development be set aside for this this um sewer project and then anything left over from the 72,000 can be applied towards this sewer project too. That make sense? Yes. Clear as mud.

Clear as mud. Well, I make a motion that we create a maintenance line item for the Monroe Redwing building to authorize 10,000 for this repair and any balance out of the you say RPZ. RPZ is the the fire suppression. Okay. RPZ or fire suppression to be moved over to this line item. And in your motion, you're saying that the line item, the proceeds from the lease need to go into that line item for maintenance on the building. Yes. Okay. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Miss Lisa. Robert Thompson? Yes. Baker?

Yes. Bradley? Yes. Yes. Risinger? Yes. Mr. Thompson? Yes. A lot more difficult. Do we still need to uh take money out of economic development? I think so. Right. Rob, you said on your your resol your motion was to authorize 10,000 from economic development for Yes. for this repair. Okay. I thought he said and anything the continued lease to go to the line and then anything left from that 72,000. Okay. If it goes over, we can use on the sewer because we we don't know exactly what it's we just how bad that's going to be. You never know. the rest of

you gonna bid it out. We won't have to bid it out with that.

Okay. All right. Thank Thank you. Uh 6 C or 6E is going to be the chamber contract. Ray, do you have questions or comments or did we vote on that motion or do we have a second? Did you take a Did you take a vote on that? I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. on Rob's motion. Would you call the RO, please? Sorry, I did. Oh, yes. My fault. Yeah, you and Clay are fired. [laughter]

Give me my chip 68 chamber contract raise here. If you guys have questions or comments, it's not a standard contract detail. already we got that amount in the budget. So appreciate a good motion. Make a motion we approve the chamber contract. Second. Second. M L Baker. Yes. Bradley. Yes. King. Yes. Risinger. Yes. Crystal Thompson. Yes. Robert Thompson. Yes. [clears throat]

Thank you, council. Last item is going to be resolution for the TAP program. I'm going to pull it up here. Miss Lisa, could you read that, please? A resolution approving an agreement for participation in Arkansas Municipal League's trauma assistance program. Whereas act 398 of 2025 requires public employers to provide coverage for licensed counseling for his public safety employees following a traumatic event. And whereas act 398 of 2025 states that a public employer may satisfy the requirements of the act through the creation of its own program or the participation in a program that complies with the act's requirements. And whereas the Arkansas Municipal League has established and is administering a trauma assistance program in compliance with act 398 of 2025. And whereas participation in the Arkansas Municipal League's trauma assistance program is strictly voluntary and the city wishes to participate in the program to facilitate the provisions of licensed counseling to individuals who are eligible for such services under act 398 to 2025. Now therefore be it resolved by the city council of the city of Clarksville, Arkansas one, the particip participation agreement attached here to as exhibit A is hereby approved.

Okay. Council, I apologize whenever for not knowing this any better than I do earlier because when I think of TAP, my two girls have taught me that's tuition assistance program.

And so that's all I know. Dave, you want to come up talk to us about what what this program is and just for the council know by law it is now law. We we must have this program in place. I mean, this offers this program at no cost unless we actually use it. Um David, I'll let you talk as the spirit of this program and why. Uh what what it is is it it we have it has been mandated that we have to lay out a plan for trauma assistance. It's mainly counseling for trauma traumatic events for first responders and police officers. And uh all [clears throat] it all this is doing is just putting it on paper on record so we uh we will come in compliance with what the state now requiring that we do. Uh I don't know all of the details of it, but there's so many appointments that that uh if someone needs or wishes to have assistance with something that's going on with them, something they saw, something they had to participate in. U it it lays out a formula of what they can do and what we will what we will meet their needs. That's basically

will it be covered under their health plan, health insurance? Yes. Okay. No, the city has to pay for it. There I think there about 12 sessions after a traumatic event that we approve that that's approved in the act. Um, and we don't pay for it unless they use it. So, we have to pay for those sessions basically. So, there are health insurance as well. And what we have to set it up, right? And I have I have all we'll set it up and do a training and all that good stuff.

Is the municipal league doing this? They are providing actually they're providing licensed counselors. Okay. For that and that's under our uh umbrella. Yeah. It's a free service that they're offering unless I say free. It's a free service offering to counselors, but we'll have to pay the fem.

Yeah, there's nothing free in this line. There's absolutely nothing free. No free counselor just for counselors, you know. And years ago when when I was sheriff, we used to have tried to get counselors for people that were going to mental institutes or, you know, was going off their rockers and we couldn't find anybody. You know, it's not it's not easy to find them. Right. Thank you. Thank you. We'll set up a program and all that good stuff.

Well, at least you got a policy on it. So, that's good. We just need to make a motion to approve the resolution. Approve the resolution. I make a motion we approve the resolution. Is there a second? I'll second.

Got a motion in a second. [clears throat and cough] Bradley, yes. King, yes. Ringer, yes. Crystal Thompson, yes. Robert Thompson, yes. Baker, yes. Thank you, council. Uh, CCU, you're up. No, don't you don't you don't make him do it.

What are you for the boat? He fell out of the chair. You fell on the boat, didn't you? I did trip and fall. [laughter] [cough] [clears throat] Kind of embarrassing. That's behind me. All right. Tell us about this contract.

Well, you know, as you're aware, we uh sent OMA letter termination 18 months ago the end of this month, but uh we had to end up keeping them for an extra month, which they agreed to to maintain us for an extra month because the books on SVP power. So, uh, April 1st, I've got to be on the books and stuff with everything and they have got to get started getting everything in order now to get it approved by SVP and everybody. [clears throat]

Well, I noticed you brought Arkansas Municipal Power Authority attorney attorney with you. So, I'm going to I'm going to ask them to come up and talk to So, for the council who don't really know what OMA was and what they did, Eddie was here when they first came in. I think used to be on the commission. So, you know, some of these folks don't know. So, Jason, can you We started with OB in January of 201 January 14th, 2000. You been here that long? Holy. Well, no, I hadn't been there. Yeah. Renewed contracts with them. Southwest Power? No, Southwest Power has been here long. Well, Southwest Power hasn't been here that long. Yeah. Southwest Power was here before.

Yeah. Wasn't they? And then you went to OMA. Yes, it was Western Farmers is what it was. Jason, [laughter] yeah. Can you ask the can you kind of give the council just a what this energy consultant does and what what they do for the city?

Right. As Royy's saying, right now you have a contract with Oklahoma Municipal Power. They're not a bad organization, right? uh we are the only entity that they serve outside of Oklahoma. We did a lot of deep dive analysis on their pricing, what their pricing look like and how that pricing plays out for the customers in CCU. And that's when 18 months ago plus some that's that's the culmination of sending them the letter that says, "Hey, love you guys. We're going to have to part ways." Uh and we negotiated for a while. We've done research for a long time and we felt like their operating mechanisms that they use in OMA results in a high price point for us. Um you do have federal hydro power assets southwest power administration [clears throat] 19.1 megawws. That is that is great that you have that. That is a valuable resource that you have. You've got uh you're taking hydro power out of Independence County. That's a good resource. You got some solar resources that you develop locally. You're you're uh very deep in renewable resources. So, we didn't feel like you were getting all of the value of that within your contract. So, part of that was it was a pricing issue with how they do pricing with OMA. And I'd say that the other part was flexibility. So, anytime that we wanted to,

you know, build another thing or do something that we thought was in the best interest of uh Clarksville, uh, or recruit a big customer, somebody that would bring jobs to the community. Every time that you do that, you have to go to OMA and go, can you service? What can we do? We don't want to violate our contract. We're trying to maintain a relationship. And it was just difficult. It was hard. Suffocating. Yeah. Okay.

So, it's uh hey, nothing against those guys. Got lots of love for them. Their model works well for them, but their model's not working well for us. So, that's when back 18 months ago, we said, "Hey, we we're going to take a different path." We looked at different options for uh different providers, and Everg is the one that we ended up with. This is just a three-year contract, so it's a nice little test run for us to see how this works out. Their pricing is very favorable as to what we looked at with other folks. But you need to know the way that the contract works is different than the way OMPA's contract works. The OMA is a full requirements contract. That means you get all your STP services, all of your capacity, all of your energy, all of your ancillary services. Everything comes from one source that gets tied up in that energy cost, right? In that energy charge that you receive. We think that there's more advantage in breaking that out. So, all EverG is doing for you is providing market services, right? That's the primary thing they're doing. And they're going to go, well, and we'll see if we can't make some more money handling some congestion charges. You have transmission rights and trying to get some make some extra money for the city out of that. We're going to try to do that. And [clears throat] if we need more power, then we can enter bilateral contracts to buy that. they're going to facilitate those for us and that's all within the contract. So, we think that that's going to be a better approach. It's going to uh save the city money uh moving forward and uh we're anxious to see it play out.

This is one of the attempts to try to keep from raising the electric rate. We should make a little extra money on it, but it's we need to keep that money to keep from raising the rate. Well, you have the option if you have excess energy to sell it back into the market. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. Which was something we didn't have before.

Yeah. And and two, I want to say we're not cutting the high grass on this. Uh you know, the city of Paris, they did the same analysis. Uh and they needed some deep dive stuff. That's when I got Michael Chapman from he had retired from Conway for I said, "Gust your boots off, man. You got to get back in this." And they did a lot of analysis for them. uh they were the only other city that was with OMA. They took a different this type of energy management approach with a different entity, not the same entity we're using. Same energy management approach. They've saved themselves a lot of money doing it. It's worked out for them. They're happy with what they've done. Oh yeah.

So what we try to do is what they did the better. Well, now will will [laughter] they uh provide their own transmission lines? So they won't. So all of the transmission lines that come in are owned by whichever transmission entity owns it, which is typically SWAT. Southwest Power Administration owns the lines. Uh someone else could build the line. Depends on what SP says. They manage the lines.

So as far as access to the lines and who builds what and what gets needed, that's all managed through Southwest Power Pool with um you know, their methodology that they use for that. As far as working with SP to get power tagged to us and all that administrative work that goes behind it, that's part of their obligation under this management contract. They got to do the forecasting loads. They got to do all the uh communications, you know, back and forth with SP to make sure we're in compliance. If you're not in compliance with SP, that can get real ugly real quick. Uh the fines are significant. We get protected from that in this contract. It's their obligation to comply and we get indemnified against any kind of penalties that would come towards the city. Roy, the one thing that keeps you there was a city and you know Jason was it hope there when wintertorm Yuri hit pick it they they were for example we're we're paying $54 a megawatt for power today they didn't have the coverage they didn't have an evergy or a tea or somebody cover them they end up being subject to market risk which they were paying upwards to $1,000 and it they had to take out a revenue bond just to pay their electric bill. Almost bankrupt the city. So, this company is kind of that risk authority manager for us, right?

No, no, no. Some of this is means that you've got to decide what how big old boy are you, [laughter] you know, do you want to open yourself up to that kind of risk? Now, the good thing for for is you have all these generation resources already at your disposal, right? And so, it's it's not like you come to the table empty-handed. You're buying all your power requirements every day. You are that is a very high risk maneuver within the SPT market and it's cheap. It's cheap as it is anywhere in the country. I mean, it's it's and you'll think I'll just buy it straight out of the market. You can't do that, right? You got to have resources. You got to have contracts to protect yourself from risk. The cities that ran into a buzzsaw, I'd say, either didn't protect themselves from risk or they had wholesale partners like Oak, like Bentonville, like Preston

that shielded them who did not protect them. Oh, and and those costs ran straight through the contract. So they all had whole full requirements contracts but with the formula for that contract those all those costs ran straight through the contract those utilities. It was ugly. It was bad. It was it was bad. So just because you got a full requirements contract that doesn't protect you. You got to look to terms and see ours our rates too. So nothing like that. Oh no nothing like that. Imagine getting a a thousand dollar kilowatt light bill. [clears throat]

We we still have a contract with white white river white river. That's a we were just talking about that they got those are three units four megawatt units on the white river. These run of the river units one of the things you got to know is you get the electricity that the good Lord gives you, right? It's you know it's it's you know when the sun's shining and solar's producing when the river's running that hydro is producing river's not running hydro is not producing you know when I was at north of the rock we had a you know [clears throat] a large 40 megawatt facility and when the river's up that thing sounds like a slot machine [laughter]

right if you don't have water flow it's just it's the nature of renewable energy Jason one for me the final I question is so you and I have moved battalions, we've moved divisions, we've moved a lot of stuff together with a lot of risk. Is ever you recommend them? Yes, I think you feel confident in it.

Yes, I've uh worked with Energy on being on the other side of the table for 10 years. Uh they wor with uh they worked with her for longer than that. back when they were west star, you know, they got bought out, but it's the same people who were there. Uh there's a coalition of cities, [clears throat] they call them cities, New York, southeast Missouri, northeast Arkansas, and they serve all of those cities in that area. So, they've got a team that are focused on providing services to municipalities and and I think that they try to be

What do you need from the council? I just need approval from this [clears throat] contract. Council, do we have a motion for approval of this contract with Evergy? Have a motion from Eddie. Is there a second? I'll second it. Second from Miss Thompson. Miss Lisa, would you call a roll, please? Thank you, Roy. Jason Roy. Thank you, sir. [clears throat] Ever e vg yaker? Yes. Yes. Yes. [clears throat] Yes. Yes.

Again, thank you both very much. I know hard work you've been putting in on it. Ray, just a couple more things. I kind of covered the event deal. Uh just as a reminder, we are we're bringing back the home showcase. uh March 14th at the Marvin and we've already got five major sponsors. So there's been a lot of response for that. Yeah. Yeah.

The other thing too I would say is we have just had a very successful banquet chamber banquet. Most of some of you went and this latest publication that we sent out has been a huge hit. Uh thanks to for his sponsorship [laughter] also uh helped us with that when we saw some advisor. So it's been good. Any questions for just appreciate Hannah and your staff down there been great to work with and uh look forward to this summer. It's going to be fun. Me too. A lot of lot of good events happening. Thank

Thank you. Thank you mothers. I have the January numbers for the police department. Uh offense violations were 426. Ticket violations were 66. There were 360 warnings, 132 missile reports, 54 arrests, 16 accidents worked, 13 cases assigned to CD with six cases closed. There's one agency assist and seven DWIS. There were eight K9 deployments for the month, five search warrants. [clears throat] There are 2,158 active warrants. There were 1,095 dispatch calls in the month of January and 17 special events. Code enforcement had 75 tasks and they completed 74 of them. There were eight drone performance for the month of January. Questions?

Chief, are you at full capacity? We are in the process of trying to hire one position which will open up possibly We're short of corporal, but we really need to get somebody in the front door before we move somebody else that's working on that. It is uh it is difficult to apply.

Thank you, Chief. I thought I saw Steve. There he is right there. What do you think, Doc? [clears throat] Stanley, you have a report. Everything's been a little slow except for the CS.

I would just take a um and I don't know if I have got a chance to address it publicly, but um we had ice and rain, then snow, and then ice and rain. And we have How many employees do you have? We had seven. And then Chief, you've got how many on shift? We had 22 about four shift.

So it's nice and warm at home. We got power on. There's any point in time that our folks are out there in this mess trying to keep the roads open. And I mean just for the public to understand how how St. Come on up. We're going to have a conversation for the public to understand. Prioritize it on opening roads. When you grade a road, what is the first road you try to keep open? The hospital.

A hospital. That's stop right there. We try to keep the hospital open. Right. Number one. If that's not that's the that's our first priority. So, anybody in the city of Clarksville who questions that, understand right now that they're all told, "Make sure I can get to the hospital." First thing. Second thing is if we're in the process of doing that and we go past your road to open up the road, let me back up. For those that don't know, Popular Street is a state highway.

Taylor Street was a state highway. Rogers is a state highway. It is illegal, right, for the city to expend dollars on state property. And the minute I did it, I promise you, I'll be on word of mouth and there'd be some kind of some kind of all of us being thrown under the bus for breaking the law. But we do it anyways in that case. Sue, sue us. I don't care. We're going to open up the road to the hospital. So, we just dispel all that right away. If it's my direction, at my dis my discretion, we're opening the road to hospital. Now, as they're doing that, if the grater goes by and it blocks your driveway, pile it up, get a shovel, call a neighbor, call me, send me a Facebook message. I'll come open your driveway, but don't yell at my Don't yell at our staff and get on Facebook and and and just browbeat these people. We're a better community than that. They work too hard to be treated in such a way. And I just want to tell you from the very bottom of my heart, I I can't say it enough to thank you for what you done because I get to watch it. I get to see how your family goes without you. Your cows don't get fed. Everything gets put aside because you're focused on the city of Clark. And we are blessed to have you and your crew.

And so, um, I just want the community to understand what a wonderful resource they are and how good a work they do. No matter all that ugliness and naysaying stuff you cut it out of your life. They they have a priority um of how to run the city and keep it running right. I'll take that. I'll take the beating, but stay off our folks, please. Um they they they we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. So,

you did good job, guys. We are very fortunate to have a road graers that some towns don't have. And I will say that plows on the trucks did not touch this stuff. It took down pressure and a grater to do it. And we did go back and try, you know, clean the driveways after we got the main roads open. But our priorities to get all the main roads open first and we'll work our way out the outer perimeter of town. Who took care of Brown Hill? We did. Okay. We did that. State Highway, we did it. We tried to hit everything that we could hit. If it's a hill and somebody needs to get down that hill or up that hill to go get food or get to the hospital, I don't care if it was state, county, or whatever, we we did it.

And I I can promise you every road get hit maybe with just salt and sand for traction, then come back and gra. But almost every road it should have been. May have been one miss, but when you're working on, you know, 90 hours in a week pretty much, I'm sure we probably did miss one or two, but we try to get everything that we know for sure that it's going. [clears throat] While you were off doing this, did you lose a cow? Yeah. Where was that cow at? It was fell in the pond. Fell in the pond. Right. So, I just People don't see that and I just wanted I wanted to harp on that particular point tonight and I hope people will lift you up more than what they do. So, you know, I got a lot of good and bad, but our guys is looking to hear from you guys. They're they're the ones that are out there a lot and if you see them out, just tell them thank you.

Yeah, that's all I ask. Thanks. And we're about to start putting a new roof on the on the swimming pool Thursday. Do the precon and go over that. So next week we should start putting the new aquatic center roof on and getting those holes that are size of soft balls filled up and take care of. Okay. Don't know exactly how long it's going to take for the extended closure, but we're going to try to have it open by the evenings hopefully enough people in. But while it's they're on the roof, we're not allow too unsafe. I want to I want to add to your deal about your guy and I'm and and I'm I'm not really looking for no pat on the back. I'm just putting this out there to you. This fire department Well, that's what I was It's amazing, man.

I was letting him go speak because you the fire department and the police department I I never seen a group. We're so blessed to have a town that our size that has the commitment from the people that we have. Um it's nice to be able to call 911 and have somebody actually show up.

You know what I mean? And that's either fire department or an ambulance or a police police officer. And and I you know, David, you know, we we know what happens. We know what happens when no everybody else is asleep. We we see it. And that's a good thing that nobody else gets to see that side of this world because there are some there are some ugly folks in this world. And and you guys keep that you keep us shielded. And I don't know how many lift assist somebody who's fallen, can't get up, things like that. Patrick, we are so blessed to have you guys. It's It's amazing. I wanted to just say uh how thankful I was for the fire department because we we have three or four guys that live out of town,

a little ways out of town, Bible, you know, out and things like that. And uh called Chief Weaver up and said, "Hey, can we put some of our guys up in your fire department?" He said, "Sure do. Do it. Do it." So we, one of my guys had a camper who lives in town, didn't have to. He's fine. He brought his camper down to the fire department out on Massing Hill. Slid it up in there in an empty in an empty stall and, you know, gave a place for my guys work a night shift to stay so they wouldn't have to,

you know, run those rows back and forth. They could be on the scene. So I appreciate Chief Weaver and Fire Department for that. Well, and Roy, while I got you here, likewise. I don't water leaks at school, power going out, transformers getting done. You look up and somebody's on a pole on a bucket and it's 20° and blowing snow and rain and your guys are up there and your girls are up there. I mean, it's incredible to to watch how this city operates is like it's the best well Marine, Army, Navy combined unit I've ever seen. It's crazy. It's crazy good. So, we we had guys that were taking people to the hospital. We were picking up hospital staff, bring them there, take them back.

I was I was going picking up prescriptions for people. They called 911 because they weren't delivering, you know, their medications. You know, I had guys Yep. that were running the rose drug and picking up their prescriptions and take them to their

And that's that's the instruction from the day-to-day side of it is get the job done. Even though that may be a fire department thing, police can do it. Go do it. Even though it's a state highway, you need to get it open. Get it open. in those emergency type situations, that's how we do stuff. So, I mean, it don't happen automatically. It happens because you've got people willing. They they they're selfless and they believe in what they're doing. And we are certainly blessed to have them. So, until I'm done here, Stanley, I'm going to keep harping on that point because we we handle all these parks, 100 linear miles of sidewalks and road. 100 linear miles of sidewalks and roadways, parks, inclusive playgrounds, bike trails, soccer fields, you name it, with five people. It's incredible. I hope somebody someday will just stop and take note of that. The actual work that gets done with the amount of people we do is incredible. It's incredible how I I've never seen anything like it, just to be honest with you. So, I wanted to take tonight because I didn't get to do it in January to start the year, but I wanted to take tonight specifically hammer on that point about how grateful we should be and are of you and your staff and what you do.

We're thankful to have the guys we have working. They do it without any complaint at least for the first 40 hours. [laughter] Thank you, Stan. Thank you, Stanley.

Uh ACCO's done really well in in spite of all that. we're full um for the community. If if we can get help adopting out animals, we need help. Um the the shelter's full and [clears throat] we don't want to say that. We don't want to, you know, go the E route, but at some point we're we're putting off animals that need care for ones that have been in a cage for a year. And that's not that's not a life for an animal. I don't want to use euthanasia, but it is an option in our policy. So, we've been full for a long time. Wade and Dylan do a fantastic job and that's the last thing we're going to do is is put animals down, but we do need help making space because every day we're finding more dogs, more cats. Uh Diane and them, I don't think I think she's even doing the community cats program anymore, but we've got to revive that. That's that was working. For those of you who don't know, it's TNR trapneuter release. So they they catch the cats, spay or neuter them, then take them back and they become community cats and they they they it's done a real good especially around Walmart. Rats, mice, snakes, insects, those community cats right here behind my old insurance office. They there was like 50 cats in there. There was no squirrels for a while. Now some of the cats have gone away. We got squirrels back. But there was no snakes, there was no bugs. They did a good job and we fed the animal. So, huh?

Bring the cats back. Bring the cats back. So, we do need help with We do need help with with animal control. It is It is a problem here. So, we caught 20 in one trap one night. Squirrels or cats. [laughter] Squirrels don't squirrel don't go out at night. Ask Ask ask. We call this this yard right here behind us. We We call that the Serengeti because the cats are always plotting to kill the squirrels. [snorts] Hey, uh, can I ask a question? Just hold. Council, have y'all y'all got a letter from somebody anonymous about the recycle center? Yeah.

Yeah. No. Yeah. Who didn't get one? You didn't get one. I did. You're send it. No. [laughter] I'm gonna send a letter. [laughter] That's what that's what blew me away when you send a letter and don't tell you. Anyways, uh I I know I know we had a lot of problems with them dumping and stuff. Is there are we doing anything to address that? [cough] Come on. So, and just so that everybody in this room understands uh what happened and I don't think it's ever been. So, I'm just going to state it for what really happened. [clears throat]

You got a program that was set up to be um honor system, no funding. So, we're using parks money to run it. Now, they're not trained in recycle. Um we we takes parks people to go over there and run it. Then we hook onto a trailer and we haul that stuff to green source and it was been working fine until you come in to work and you realize somebody is filling five gallon buckets of human waste. Okay, that's the first thing. We're not trained or qualified or equipped to deal with that. And then carcasses and the hunting season. So, we're not trained or equipped or qualified to do that. So, obviously, we had some problems there. The honor system wasn't working and nor do we have the money to staff it. So we went to where it's now we have an employee there that can watch it and own it because if we leave it open and we continue someone has to sort through it because if you remember Fort Smith got sued a few years back because they weren't they weren't segregating it and that stuff was going to the landfield because if it gets contaminated going to green source they send it to the landfill. Well the city was supposed to be recycling but we we wouldn't be because it was we have to separate it and so then we're dealing with that mess. So, this community is at fault for that. Number one, they need to honor their honor system or find some funding for us to to do it because we got too much part stuff going on.

What would the question? Well, this this person says that we're we're we would get a lot more money from recycling. You don't know. That's what I'm saying. They they didn't know they actually said in the letter too that we were selling our aluminum cans to Fort Smith. If we don't make a Yeah.

We don't that's they didn't know what they were talking about and then I never put anything behind anybody. If you go up there and sit and talk to a lot of the people that have been recycling over the years, they like it better the way it is because it's cleaner than it has been in years and they'll tell you that if you sit there and talk to them. Is ours perfect? No. But if we leave that thing open at night, we're going back the opposite direction where we we came forward. Well, they don't leave the recycle works out there open. No. And they did.

We we've tried volunteer program. We don't get enough volunteers on the weekend. They cancel on you. Then myself or one of those guys have to get called in. So, we staff all Saturday from 12:00 to 6. We just just started staffing it for that. Not even worried about volunteers. And the weekends, it's 6:00 to 2:30. Love to leave it open longer than that, but we really need volunteers to run it the way it needs to be run. And that's a hard program to come. You know, we had help with it and it's still nobody was doing it. And I want to share I want to share two stories with the council. I don't I don't know if council knows this, but this is what you have to deal with. I'm on a lady dumps her stuff over the fence and then leaves a note saying going to do it anyways, right?

So, she leaves a note saying, "I'm going to dump it anyways regardless." Or she she obviously got to meet Chief's mothers and his staff. Second guy was up there and he was just he was he was mad mad about the hours and he was just carrying on and blah blah blah. And then he says, "I drove all the way up here from Ozark and you're closed." And I went this is the car thing

and and I don't know how to communicate that there is no funding for that recycle program. We're paying for that out of parks. We don't have another parks employee because we're funding the recycle building. If we could find funding for recycle, then we could hire another parks employee and have more help. But we don't. I think we actually took it out of community project. Took it out of community projects this year. So, well, if it wasn't an anonymous letter, I could have called them back and told them all this stuff. But they they think we make all this money off. We don't we don't and we the rules that are posted there are actually green they can and cannot take. So, [clears throat] I want you to reiterate that. So, our rules at the recycle are based off what the place we take them.

The city don't make those rules. We are given the rules. And just because it says recyclable on it does not mean it's recyclable. It's weird, but there's all kinds of different rules. Lady was up there and I saw her just giving um Matt just giving her him the business over the bags. Green source says don't bring the bags. We say don't bring the bags. And this lady got so mad she went to cussing him and just it was I mean over recycle. It makes you want to close it down because you treat people like that.

Whoever this is apparently didn't take Mr. Bradley's class in spelling. [laughter] I was madly sorry. I'm hoping with education up there, it'll get the people who are really truly want to recycle involved in helping police it, helping to teach everybody, right? And that's what the direction. We're not going to close it. It's just is that high school pro program. They still doing the high school program where uh community hours kids have to have community hours. Yeah. Oh yeah. But I think they But you can't bring a high school kid up there by themselves. No, we have actually talked about No, we haven't tried that yet, Roy. We just

loose about how you recycle because of them letters. It's been it's been I've had enough drama in my life over the last two years. It's literally been a month. I'm just trying to keep things as far as that, you know, keep us from getting sued and keep us from getting shut down at Green Source. That's all I want to do with this. All we're asking keep it clean and nice and, you know, do what they ask. There's no reason to be yelled at. Trust me, I've been yelled at there myself. Tell them they can't put some things in there. They were used to using it as actual a trash. No, that's what they're used to.

And that's what got Fort Smith and caused their recycle problem. Their pro problem was they weren't once it gets coingled, we have to put hands on it. We have to separate it. We're not equipped or trained to do that. We're not nor have we ever been given funding to do it. And it's dangerous is dangerous to our employees. And no, we don't get a penny off of that in any shape, form of a it's a strictly it's a good program. We're going to keep doing it. We're going to keep doing it the way we are. And I think it's it's come a long way. Like I said, you go up there and just listen to people who've been recycled for a long time. They're proud of how it's looking now. Yeah. No more busted bottles. Oh, you're going to have There's always busted. Well, I mean, but the kids are not going to get in the dumpster. They should be cleaned up as soon as there's busted.

No more buckets of feces and and animal carcasses and things like that. I can tell you that. It ain't going to happen. Now they Now they got cameras on them. So, if they do it now, we got them. No more free passes. Thank you guys. uh am I we funded several things and I don't remember what all they were Lisa remember the [laughter] festival triathlon track meet 4 track meet for Clarksville is going to be May the 5th Alex did you get yours at the epic yeah the chamber home showcase

yeah Michael B Michael Banny said he was coming to see about to try me. He came. Okay, good. Yeah. So, so it went well. $25,000. Everybody likes I mean, you can You're always the hero when you give out free money, right? [laughter] Yes. Good job. I appreciate it. U Miss Lisa, got anything? We still need a restaurant person.

Yeah. Uh we still need people for planning and zoning, right? So, need some folks that that in the sign business, house building, small business for planning and zoning, and someone from the restaurant business for&M. See, hear that silence. That's the way it's been for several months. Y'all put out the word, will you? Put it on. Put it on and it pays good. [laughter] Yeah. talking on that note. I'll make a motion. We sold motions. We We are adjourned. He said it may not be the one you want. You'll get one.

Oh, shoot. No. I think you guys probably need to open it up countywide because we can get just like [clears throat] you got a lot of lot of house builders and stuff. They don't live in town, but they live in