Mayor and Board of Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Everybody come back. Some people slide the hooky out.

We're live, Mayor.

All right.

Are we going to look at the general fund anymore or are we going to go straight to Josh?

We've got Josh now.

We've got Josh. Let's utilize his time and Pull up your bond schedule and let's go over that with him. Hey, I'm going to tell you something, Mayor, that's not in that bond schedule. We said we were going to think about doing something with that break room and public works. It's pitiful.

Yeah, we talked about that. I just don't know if that has to be bonded. I mean, you know, putting some flooring down, painting the walls and basketball. I mean, is that really a valuable item, quite honestly?

I know it. The only problem is, is we ain't got

Well, it would have a 10-year life. That renovation would have a 10-year life.

Yeah, and the general fund ain't got any room in it.

What do you think, Josh, on something like that? Did you ever go look at it?

I had Jordan go through it, and I found a bunch of little items I was scrambling at the last minute, and I don't have a cost yet.

Josh, I'm going to tell you what. That room does not need to be a remodel like we do at the police station or the – or the city hall, I mean, some paint, some new ceiling tiles and lights, get rid of all that trash in there. It would make all the- Buy a couple picnic tables that are plastic.

Oh, man. I mean, honestly, I think the tables and chairs are probably fine.

They just need cleaning up.

Yeah.

I'll get y'all something here real soon. I'll have something for you in the next couple days. But send Jordan over to go get a square footage of it and take some pictures so we can do a little quick takeoff.

If I plug a number in today for the purposes of the bond schedule.

I'm saying we can do it for less than $50,000.

My knee-jerk reaction was $50,000. You could probably go plenty.

I was like $30,000 would probably get most of it done.

It ain't much that a few gallons of paint and some ceiling tiles wouldn't fix. And the lighting needs to be replaced. You can't even see in there.

The old... The old floor stuff, you can take stuff like we do towboat decks with. It has a little grid in it and roll that stuff across the top of it. That way you can wash it out. You know, it's non-slippery. Sand, whatever you call it. All right, sir. I don't know. I don't think that's a real name.

Yes, sir.

Pull up your bond schedule.

I'm sitting here thinking I've got it pulled up and I'm sitting here making changes.

Well, you may have it pulled up, but we can't see it.

Thinking y'all can't see it.

Yes. It's called share. Nice to share, Michelle.

Yes. My mom always said it's nice.

Okay. Josh, see the blue column? Yes. That's kind of where we are at this point with the bonds. Um, the stuff that we've got included in there. So you may want to go to the top, Michelle, and just go through them.

All right. So obviously, the ones that we talked about that require the match money and then the proposed economic development land acquisition, the North Bio improvements. All right. Police station, building, they did have a conversation about this amount.

That just seems outrageous for what we're doing. I mean, I could have built the building for that. I could have taken the money we bought the building for and that much money and built a whole new building.

That came from a hard quote from Chris Collins. It included a ton of... security system, getting all that Ethernet, Internet, anyways, hardwired fiber from the police department over to this building because it all has a loop network or whatever it's called. It was a lot higher than I ever thought it would come into, to be honest with you. So I don't know if it's going to be that high publicly bid, but that was a formal... quote given to us so that's the only quote you got then is what you're saying sir that's the only quote you got was from chris yeah so what he was doing he was working on the actual police station and we thought about considering a change order and we started putting it together and i gave him a list and then him and dudley went and that list got a lot longer uh after him and dudley walked through it and anyways it turned into a lot bigger number than i had in my head so that's when we just stopped right then we said we got to go back to a budget

I will say that Dudley spent a lot of money out of his operating budget on internet and security and all that kind of stuff that was not in his construction budget. And so they made sure to get that included in this quote. And it will be even more because it's outside. You're having to carry to another facility. You're having to get them connected to the server and all that kind of stuff. So I forgot that was added into this quote.

We just did all that at the country club and it's not that much. I don't know who they have hired to do it, but Wesley Tindall and Murat Gerd didn't cost much at all with access points and internet's now everywhere. And we did a Benoit outing club too. Like Murat did all at Benoit. I don't exactly know how much it costs there, but technology shouldn't have made it too much more.

Yeah. I know the police department set up is different from Like a normal, I'm just saying it's different from a normal server kind of setup because of what all they use.

The quote I got is a lump sum. It's not itemized. It gives you a breakdown of everything included, but it's not itemized down showing what that scope cost.

Well, we're going to count on it costing a lot less than what he's saying.

Sure. We can always spend less. We can figure it out.

It would be great to have an itemized quote to say what all these things are about, especially $324,000. And that's just one quote. I'm sure we're going to get another one. Are we not, John? Are we going to take another quote?

I really can't hear Ms. Wentz.

She's willing to break an out quote and another quote.

Yeah, we're going to have to bid it out. We can't spend $250,000 without doing plans and full bids anyway. So I feel confident it'll come down just from bidding it out in general, having competition.

Yeah, well, this was just an estimate for the purpose of talking about these bonds.

All right.

Okay. All right, so the next item on there is the baseball lighting system.

So put a big note. We actually went to this thing. We have kicked this can. We have the insurance money. I still don't think it's going to cost this much, but we've got two different material quotes from material providers, and the material alone is about $400,000. And I have a quote from Brian. I still for the life of me believe we're getting, he's just giving me budget numbers. I really think you're gonna find when we bid this out that it's gonna come in, I think, 100 to 200,000 cheaper. I don't know anything. Here's the numbers we have and we've done as much research as we can, but until we put a hard bid out, but I really can see this one coming in.

So his installation quote is at least a half million dollars.

That's correct. That's insane. That's the first comment I said when I saw it. I said, there's no way.

And we have lights. We're just upgrading them or replacing them, right? Everything's new.

Everything's new. There's nothing salvageable on the current system. The poles are completely rotten. All the lights are metal halide that are falling apart. Even the lighting controllers can't be salvaged. We will gut the controller out of the... out of the whatever concession stand in the building, and it'll be new underground electric feeding all the new light circuits.

Well, Cam, we knocked at least 100,000... or $150,000 off of that number?

I feel confident we bid at $100,000. There's no way it'll come in at what Brian's telling me. He's been saying this all along, and I don't believe it. So I think these are budget numbers, and I think a public bid market is going to show that. So if you underbid $100,000, we'll figure something out.

Put $300,000 there, Michelle.

Okay.

Okay, the next thing is...

I really think for that size lighting project, too, I think we're going to pick up a pretty good bed environment. I think there's a lot of people who want to come in for a $700,000, whatever it is, $800,000 lighting project. I think we'll draw a pretty big market, too.

All right, so the next item is Arcade Alley parking lot overlay.

That includes all three parking lots, including the one that y'all... And that's doing all of them. Yes.

Marcy, you had a question about this parking lot?

Yeah. Somebody had mentioned, you know, like starting over almost, like taking up all the dividers and making one big parking lot instead of keeping the dividers. I just wasn't sure if that, I felt like that was low for that kind of.

No, that's a mill and overlay. That's not doing anything but taking it, milling it, re-striping it.

So what about the curbs that are divided? If you got rid of those curbs, could you have more parking spaces?

I, I doubt it. The curbs are what? A couple feet, maybe three. Three feet. Five foot wide, three of them. You'd add 15 foot, it wouldn't do anything this far. You'd add two of them. All right. Park commission. You couldn't warrant. Once you did that, you're going to a full rebuild, you'd spend four times that.

Okay.

Mill and overlay, I think you will have a very good parking lot for what it is, for what we're using it for.

Okay. Okay. So the next item on there is the parking, park commission parking lot.

Are we overlaying the whole thing?

Concrete. That's a new parking lot.

Brand new parking lot.

Do you have... Oh, wait a minute.

This is at the gymnasium. Yes.

Taking the building down.

Where the building is. The office.

I got you.

Do you want me to pull up your...

But he's saying that's phase one.

Right, because there's, do you have a diagram of this?

Do you want to pull up that packet or I can share my screen?

I've got it. I've got it already. Do you know what?

Go to page 29. So we're proposing the building is going to get torn down. I think Christian's working a deal with Raymond Hurta, if I'm not mistaken, to try to take down the building when he's ready. We've got a little budget to come in there and clean up after Raymond's done and clean up the site, disconnect utilities and all that good stuff. And then the plan is this, we're calling this phase one because we have a plan ultimately to run that concrete behind the building. It about doubles the price, but that would be the initial phase. To the east? Yeah. To the south.

Phase one right here. Phase two would be back behind the gym to pave all that back there.

I know that, I don't know how utilized that current gravel area is today, but this would get utilized a lot and you're picking up 44 stalls.

The back would be utilized if they'd unlock the gate. I asked every time we had a volleyball game.

Can we just take that fence down? Yes.

Once he's moved out, I know he stores up.

The fence was put up back when we had all the equipment and everything. It was out here behind that. Ain't none of that there anymore. It's out at the army now.

True.

We can easily tear this fence down or open it up.

And you would have the sidewalk right there to walk from the gravel area over so we could actually be using both areas.

I like that plan a lot. I think it'll open it all up. All right. Any more questions? We'll keep on rolling.

A lot of damn pinecreeks.

Okay, so the next one is the land acquisition. We already talked about that. And then the city striping project.

That's just the Ronald and Bishop striping.

Jeez, that just blows me away. We'll see.

You're not using just regular traffic paint. We probably some kind of... Thermo.

What is it, thermoplastic?

Yeah, it's called thermoplastic. It's the same stripe that we use on highways. It's melted plastic is what it is with reflected beads they put in it. It's actually, it's what it's needed. It'll last.

Like right now- I was going to say, it's supposed to last like twice and three times as long, isn't it?

It's going to be more than that. I'd say 10 times as long. Okay. They're having to constantly re-stripe and it just, it doesn't hold up, especially stripes on concrete. That old base or whatever paint they're using now does not hold up, especially on concrete. This will last. It'll look good. We're about to take bids. We'll know better handle on pricing. Next week, we're bidding the MLK Pyramid portion of it. And I think once y'all see it done, it's going to make a world of difference on that section of road. All right.

We have a map of what this is, where all this is?

The striping? Yes, it's in that packet.

Do you know what, Paige?

I think we've already seen it before, too.

It is on sheet 35. They did include rosemary. Okay, I'm double-checking my book.

Rosemary, Ronaldman, and Bishop.

And then the first page is MLK and Pierman.

That's correct. But that's already in the budget, right?

Yes, we'll be under construction next month. Okay.

All right.

That's the airport entrance sign.

Yep. downtown sign so is everybody familiar with uh what's proposed there for the downtown sign you got a picture of it don't have a picture i have some examples uh did you put them in in this i don't know if they're in that let me uh and do we have where's the crosswalk going

The crosswalk at 8. Right there. At Sharp and 8.

Same location. OK. At the red light. Can I share my screen, Michelle?

Sure.

Hang on. It says I sent a request.

Yeah. Let me just change the settings.

Y'all want me to share mine with y'all? Y'all won't see me again till tomorrow. It'll take me that long to get it back.

We're going to do an overpass.

Stairs up this way.

And just end up on the second floor. Hey, Joe's.

Yeah. You know, we actually talked about that. There was issues with sight distances with the red light, being able to obstruct the red light view. And then the other thing, to get it funded with Federal Highway, it had to be ADA compliant, so then you were going to put two elevators. And it turned into a mountain project, and the people crossing, the number of pedestrians crossing, you couldn't warrant it.

I guess we've got to go underground then.

You should be able to share your screen, Josh.

I can't believe I heard an engineer say it wouldn't warrant it.

So, let me. It's his tax dollars.

Danny Griffiths, take notes.

Danny, are you back from lunch yet?

I'm right here. Oh, okay. He combed his hair. Okay. So in the landscape architect you hired, Michelle, I don't know if there was a name for that project. The landscape architect a handful of years ago made some improvements on the green strip.

Are you going to share your screen?

Okay. All right. How about now? Y'all see it?

Yep.

There we go. The landscape architect made some proposed improvements for the downtown green strip. two years ago. So we took out of that plan this new section of sidewalk and reducing this turnaround. And that is included in our current Highway 8 striping project. This scrap, I don't know if y'all can, can you see my cursor?

Yeah.

So in his proposed plan, we're taking all that in our MDOT project. Here's the proposed downtown sign. It was installing individual letters that said Cleveland or whatever we want to come up with. Individual letters on this corner. So we're getting the concrete portion done, and the letters were proposed to look something like this. Here was a couple examples we talked to. Oh, shoot, I'm forgetting the name of a contractor who did several of these, and that was one of the examples he sent me. Here's another example where Oxford had this, their individual police lettering that they did, Mitchell signs, Mitchell signs quotas. So he gave me a couple budget numbers, I've got another one, they did some in Greenville. And do an individual, Greenville has, they're installing these little individual letter signs all in downtown across the block. So that was a proposed, it's been talked about, 30 grand, we feel real comfortable, we'll cover a very nice sign in that location.

And that's, does that include narrowing the turnaround? No, no.

Yes, all the narrowing of the turnaround and all the concrete work is already included in our sidewalk project that's under construction. All that will happen in the next month. Okay, narrowing that big wide-ass turn. Yep, they'll be back. They'll be working next week. They'll be back on site. They're going to get everything done downtown, including the crosswalk and the new intersection traffic signals.

What are we going to do about stopping people from coming the wrong way off of Highway 8?

Never get that.

Same thing we've been doing all along.

Arrest them.

Every day. So, any, we can keep on going.

Paint arrows.

Yep.

Like one-way arrows. While we're talking this, Josh, while you're sitting here, why do we not go ahead and make Cotton Row one lane? That road is not wide enough for two lanes. And nobody ever uses two lanes. They ride down the middle of it. We got one lane on the other side of the street, and then we go back in two lanes.

Is there a white line going through the middle of it? Faded. It's faded.

Yeah, a faded white line. It shouldn't be a two lane, and I don't know if they never, we're not supposed to strike it back as two lane because there's not enough room.

There's not enough room. It needs to be, but I don't think it was ever, at least it wasn't in my time past, that it was going to go back to a single lane when we did Sharp Street to a single lane because it's really kind of confusing when you make the loop.

It is.

And then people think it's two lanes, and it ain't. It ain't big enough. Yeah.

Turn in until you're trying to park.

Or when you get to North Street and you're on Cotton Road and people want to turn from the right-hand side right in front of you because they think it's two lanes.

There's arrows that point in opposite directions right there, so I'm sitting here looking at it.

That's not it.

He just re-striped this in, and it shows just he did put that little center line back right there, which I probably wouldn't have, but I know he re-striped that way, but I think there's arrows down here if I'm not mistaken.

There are arrows down there.

We need to add more or anything else. We can take a look at it. This image is from 20.

I just think it needs to be one lane, which is just not big enough for two lanes. Parking on both sides.

Especially when it's a long, when like longer vehicles or big trucks park. It's not wide enough for two vehicles.

It's definitely supposed to be one lane. It might be getting abused, but it's supposed to be one lane.

This needs to be striped one lane.

It's been two lane my whole life. When I go down in some ways to the side, I do go around. I'm just used to that. If you don't paint lines that tell me it's only one lane, I'm not going to notice a difference. I don't know what else you could add. Another road we talked about recently.

It's not striped for two lanes. The only way you could You would have to add linear striping, solid striping. I still think you're going to have a hard time.

You can see the old stripes right there. It's there. It's been there.

All the way up and down it's faded.

From Cleveland. It's been there our whole life.

Yes.

It would have to be completely repainted to really direct everybody. Please don't watch.

We're taking most of that old paint off of there. We'll talk to Lucas if he wants to. We pressure washed. I know with the other side, we contracted it out whenever we did all that striping. And we'll talk to Lucas and see if he wants to try to pressure wash and we can get someone out there. I know they had a hard time a lot on those other stripes. Some of those old stripes were just really hard to take off at this point. That's the ones that got all the lead in them.

probably yeah let me ask you a question if y'all can hear me uh as we go through the studies johnson doing that street uh would it be wise to talk to some of the merchants i hate to see them lose customers and people that don't depend upon them i mean they depend upon to come down through there

No, I don't think so, Robert. You don't think so? No, sir.

Ray Bell was still here when we looked into this, and we said they're no longer going to stripe this two-lane. It's been a long time. That's why I guarantee there hasn't been a centerline stripe put down in over 10 years. But it's still remnant and faded.

I heard it from Mr. Abraham himself. He's amazed at this.

I think they're on the right track here. All right. While we're looking at downtown, I would like to talk about at some point. I don't have a budget for it. I'm not proposing it this year. But at some point, I'd love to restripe all of downtown with something more durable than what we're doing now. It just gets so much track. It's on concrete, and it gets a lot of all the parking stripes and everything else. They just don't last.

And straight lines.

I'd love to consider thermo in all of it. get something that'll look clean and last a lot longer.

Well, don't get our people to do it.

Oh, no, no. Yeah. Anything else, Michelle, you want to take back over?

Yeah.

Go back to your bond.

Stop sharing. I'll share mine. Okay. That was the last of your projects. The rest of it are like internal park improvements. All right.

Well, I've got a, I've got a few minutes to throw in this schedule. All right. So we have two pending grant applications right now. One is the land and water grant that we applied to do some bear pen pond restorations. I haven't heard anything back on that. I have no law. I've tried to follow up. I have no idea how long that's going to take. So If it comes up, we'll talk about it then. However, MEMA, we applied to do a flood mitigation study citywide through FEMA MEMA. We were tentatively awarded right before Donald Trump took office. We got notified, what is that, January 25? Yeah. We got notified in January 25. We were not going to get awarded because the funds for this program were pulled. Michelle, if you remember, this came back around six, eight months ago, asking for other documents, and we're still technically on the hook. So we reached out last week, heard back from them that they're in the process of making an award, official award to the city. And let me see. The FEMA's response is the review of the project is complete. They're waiting on allocation of funds by headquarters to make the award. They don't need any additional information. I don't know how long this is gonna take, but the project's a $500,000 project with 375,000 being federal funds. So it would take $125,000, 25% local match. I think that's going to come through. I think it's going to come through and start in FY27. We will not spend the whole amount in FY27, but we need some kind of placeholder. What was it? Citywide flood mitigation study.

What was the total project?

$500,000.

125?

That would be the fully funded.

Yeah.

This was one we're actually going to map. Oh, have mercy. Less than zero. we were going to map all the citywide storm drains. You actually, you have zero maps of storm drains now. You'd have one active map, identify all the projects and get them programmed with FEMA on their mitigation side, every drainage project you have. And it'd be a long play and you'd end up probably getting $20 million over the next 10 years or something like that, 20 years. It'd be a long play, but it would be, it's a huge, it'd be a great, great, great project. project to get going, so.

Okay. You said a couple. Was that the only one that we need to add?

Yeah, the other one, they did follow back up wanting additional information, and I could see it getting funded. It's a good project, but I had no idea. I mean, I can give you a placeholder if you'd like.

Do you think it would happen in 2027?

it's federal money through the part of wildlife all of it's so slow um if it did we probably wouldn't even start anything until spring you know four four or five months we've been another budget year so yeah for today i wouldn't put anything in there let's we'll keep going if it comes up we'll figure it out that's what i'm thinking okay gosh we don't have anything on the uh wall control correct awesome some of those while we're talking just some of this other stuff on this list you are aware the parking lot at municipal court this is going to come up at some point this legion sewer pump station it's on its last leg it's hanging in there but it's one of the It's one of the oldest stations we have that hadn't been converted. You had all these dry pit, wet pit stations where the pumps were down in the ground 20 feet. And this is one of the last ones that we have not converted. So at some point, it's going to blow up on you.

What's the location? You say Legion. What does that mean, Legion? It's on Legion Street. Oh, it's on Legion Street. Okay.

Okay. Is there no more CDBG money available?

Yes, there is. We could apply next year. You have a current CDBG grant for NLK. Wouldn't CDBG pay for that? It should rank as a CDBG project, yes.

Yeah, that's what I would suggest we do is put that in a CDBG grant and come up with the matching money.

All right. We'll put that on our list for spring 27. Okay.

Notated as such on 17 CBDG grant.

All right. The downtown walking trail, it's just converting. All your globes, they don't put any light. They're all yellow. There's acrylic and polycarbonate globes. I don't know which one. One of them fades, one of them doesn't. The new ones on the highway or the newer version that don't fade, all the ones that have been replaced downtown are all old. And those LED lights, it's just dark. So that's just, at some point, we need to swap out all those heads with new globes and new LED fixtures on the inside of them. They need it desperately. It's pretty bad. I want to come up with more. We could include some of this in our next round of transportation alternative grants through MDOT. That would be an eligible expense. We have that current one on Cork Street. We could easily do the next one downtown and try to incorporate some more of this lighting and trail improvements. There's Paul doing repairs on our existing trail, probably overlaying it. We could come up with a good project for that. I think there's money out there just a couple years out.

All right, this is a long stretch, but have we heard anything at all about that application for that $25 million grant? You didn't get it.

You didn't get it. And then they changed the program to raise. They changed the funding parameters when when Trump took over. And it's more geared towards industrial. So a lot of the we were qualifying well with like disadvantaged areas and all kinds of all kinds of other stuff in there. And with current Trump's whatever policies, we don't rank well at all. We're not going to get it with the current funding. It's all going to industrial projects.

Okay.

But I do think we could probably get a million-dollar grant through MDOT and do trail improvements, lighting improvements. All the ADA stamped concrete crossovers, pedestrian walks downtown that are all chipped and peeling up and they look terrible, we could get all of that stuff taken care of. In next, it'd be next year's application. We'd apply September 27.

How much are just fixing the lights right now? 60,000. Look all yellow.

60,000 swaps out the, it's got the old, old, old style LEDs that they don't put out near enough light, but that would swap out the new, put the new style LED internal light along with new globes for 60,000. And that's all of them. That's all, I think there's 40 of them. It goes all the way down to the bike trail.

Yeah.

You could phase it, too. You could do the north half. Do the north 20 and then do south of, I guess, core.

Well, yeah, we want to at least do up what you could do. Maybe get up to college. If you're going to do them in there with 50 nights of lights, they need to all be the same because you'll be looking down. Yeah, that's true. That's true.

And I think we need to get those two taller Starnberg poles that are on the walking trail swapped out. We need to talk to Dudley about that.

Yeah, I agree.

I agree 100%. They look stupid.

Moving on, I know we had lighting, Arcade Alley. I don't think I'd consider that until after you paved it. Delta Electric or Energy already swapped out the lights from metal halide to LED lights. It's better than it was. I know that. So I think I'd pave it and then consider lights down the road. Girls Complex Baseball. We'll get a lot better handle of cost once we do the Boys Complex. downtown speakers I don't know what I keep thinking this has got to be eligible one of these main street programs and they haven't been able to find the funding yet but it's definitely something I would love to see down the road me too can you hear me Johnson yes sir you said I heard you say energy swapped out

What about Delta Electric? What's the problem with Delta Electric?

Say that one more time.

What about Delta Electric? What's the problem with Delta Electric?

I don't know. Robert, he was only talking about the parking lot that whichever he believes is energy that owns the lights in the parking lot, that they've swapped those out. So he was just saying those lights are already improved, so we don't need to do that right now.

He wasn't talking about a big area. Yeah, it was just six lights. Half of them didn't work, and then they were metal halide, and Energy swapped them with LED mast arms, I want to say a couple years ago. We've been talking about Arcade Alley for probably five years now. Okay. At some point in the five-year process, the lights are better than they originally were, so.

all right what else came in is that next on your list came in way dumpsters i think that's on hold according to the mayor well you know the the area behind goodyear that wanted to put the big one big section of those dumpsters uh the guys pulled of offering to sell it so we need that area I mean, there's no sense doing a piece and then we still got all the other dumpsters. We got to have them both areas till we can figure out how to put the containers back there to cover them, you know.

Got to have the location, I guess, first.

Yeah, location's what I meant.

So right now, we ain't got it. Gotcha. So until we can find that or another place and got somebody checking on the area behind the old Wynn Job Center because that's a very deep parking lot too coming all the way behind there that it may be one done something weird that way but anyhow until we can find something out there ain't nothing to do about it we're just gonna always look like crap back there are they painting a mural on the back of the the building behind our

Yes.

They're going to make a difference with a bunch of dumpsters sitting in front of it. That building next to Sherwin-Williams. And on the back of... And on the back of the shop.

Michelle, make a note too that I want to tell them, community development, that anybody's got their dumpsters on our property on the other side of that alley, they got to get them off. We're going to at least get them all on one side of that attic where you ain't dodging them from one side to the other.

Michelle, what does your total look like on the bonds now?

Not horrible.

Okay, one thing Josh said was, I think I've kind of recalculated it Debt payment schedule, I think our limit is $2.1 million.

Michelle, did you factor in the reallocation of funds for previous bonds? Yeah.

Do what now?

Talking about the, we found, I don't know, maybe $200,000.

I did. I did some reallocation here, here.

You did? Okay. Jasmine there. But anyway, I was thinking since we got just a little room left, he said we could do half of that walking trail, that 59,000. Yeah, he said we could do the walking trail part of it.

We talked about what is called like a 50 nights of lights and you got half of them, one color hat.

Yeah, that's your only problem, 50 nights of lights.

But you don't need the whole thing. You don't need the whole thing.

You got lights all the way down.

The 59,000 takes it all the way through the bike trail. Those down there are really not, and actually they're newer than these on the other end too. But we've got to go from eight to college. Those all have got to be the same color.

$59,000 goes all the way to college.

Oh, I thought you said it goes all the way to the bike trail. That's right. To the start of the bike trail. Oh, I got you. I got you. Okay. I'm sorry.

So all we have to do is find $4,000. Wow. Oh. 2.1.

You get to 2.1.

Yeah. Take $5,000 out of the... The lights. The park commission lights.

No.

What? Out of what?

The park commission lights. The baseball lights. The baseball lights.

I thought I already reduced that.

Yeah, but Josh is going to do it cheaper. He already said it. It's $255,000.

To be honest with you, this is five fields. This includes the tee ball field.

Yeah.

See, it worked. I don't know if Christian's... I don't know if T-ball – I hadn't played T-ball. It's been a long time. But I don't know if they're on the same schedule as the other fields or not as far as – That's one of the – they said that was one of the most utilized fields out there this year. All right, well, maybe I'm wrong. All right, well, never mind. We'll put it out there and see what happens. It needs more work, but – We're going to push the light bit out – We're going to have it out to bid within, I don't know, a month or so. We'll know a good handle of cost very soon on the Bear Pin Boys lights. We'll have it out to bid, and then we'll be able to, y'all can make arrangements accordingly afterwards.

Okay. All right. Josh, one of the things we talked about when we were doing the water and sewer utility fund, Wade had said that a lot of our sewer pumps are going out on a regular basis. We think we need to do an evaluation of all of our pumps to see if we need to get on a schedule of replacing them all.

So which pump stations have been renovated? Like which ones have not been renovated?

I can give you that. We've probably gone through 15. You haven't renovated probably five. The only one that scares me is Legion because it's so expensive. All the other ones are small. Legion pumps. It's your second biggest station in the city. It's huge. It pumps. It's a huge drainage basin all the way up to downtown, everything like east of downtown. From Highway 8 comes south to it. Everything from the south comes north to it. It pumps directly to the lagoon. It's a big station. Where's that station at? On Legion Street. Let's see what's on Legion Road. Legion and Christman, one block west on the south side.

100 feet west. It's right off the road.

There's a little garden right beside it. Okay, never mind.

I was thinking it's one of those old style with the round building.

Is that right there? Yeah, that's it. It's got the old, all right, so that's the old dry pit. So the pumps are these huge, I think they're 50-horse pumps. that are 20 foot in the ground down this little shaft. I mean, it's old school what the hell they used to do this. It's just, it needs to go. It's hard to work on, it's dangerous, it's big, it's failing. So.

Josh. Yes. Speaking of pumps, just for knowledge wise, what's the basic age and the lifespan of a municipal well.

Water well?

Yes.

All right. All right. Wells have a couple parts. They have the shaft. Shafts you'll get 50 years out of. Then you have the actual well motor and pump. You'll get a lot. You'll probably get 20 years out of a pump. Motors fail more frequently. You'll have to rewind electric motors and replace them. They're the cheapest thing about it. And the aquifer itself. Say that one more time. And the aquifer itself, the water capacity. The aquifer's not changing. Y'all are all in the same aquifer.

We're all in the same aquifer. They're all in the same aquifer. 200 years. All in the same aquifer, okay. Yes, sir.

Okay.

But the aquifer goes, we got our, everybody's gone.

We need to talk about water wells because it's going to be on a long-range plan that you will see at some point. At some point, we need to drill a new well in Cleveland. We do a lot of renovation work. Mid-South goes through them frequently. We have one of our well casings. So the new wells, if I drilled one, the ones we're drilling right now, we cement line the outside of them. It's a big steel pipe, 1,000 foot in the ground. It's a cement case. It's got about like a two or three inch layer of concrete around the outside. Your old wells put in the 70s don't have that. So your casing constantly sits there and corrodes and starts failing. So at some point, we're going to be in the market sooner than later within the next five or so years of we need to drill a new well. Every time Clayton does our pump test annually, he'll come inspect them and run a pump test and he gives us a report. And he's been talking about it for two years now.

We've gotten by this long without a new well. The last one was built was... God, what year was that?

Around two million to drill me well, so.

But Josh, you just said the Legion Street Proof Station is the one that we need to look at first. That's the one that's given the most problems. Is that correct?

To my knowledge, yes. Yes, ma'am.

Do we have an estimate for repairs over place?

Yeah, I believe it's $300,000.

Right here.

$308,000. You can't, it's unrepaired. Mine repairs only. It's not a repairable station with any kind of major failure. You're throwing good money after bad if you try.

Would you just go in there and build a new pump station right next to it, Josh? I'll show you.

Until the new one was ready to go online? No. What we would do, we just did this with White Street. White Street was... All right, your top three biggest stations were Memorial Drive is the biggest, White Street was number two, and it was built just like this one, and then Legion. So what we did is, this is the dry pit. You tear down the slab, you tear off the top of the dry pit, you fill it up with sand. You come in here to, this is a big wet well underground. That's just a top casing. That's probably like a eight by eight ball underground that goes down 25 feet. You tear off the top, you form up a new wet well, and then you put your pumps in this new wet well and put submersible pumps.

What page is that on your projects? Do you have that in there?

Let's see. I'm sure. right here. So this is a little quick room, but you tear off the top of all that, you fill up the dry pit, you disconnect all the old pumps, and you just build the top half of your wet well up to the ground surface, and you stick two new submersible pumps in.

That's exactly what I would do.

We did it to White Street. Y'all were spending... There's no telling how much you were paying Bubba Murphy for years on White Street. It was too big for the... Do what? $22,000.

Yep, I got it.

It was too big. This is on that same level. Y'all were paying him to de-rag pumps and to winch them up. It was just a nightmare. I don't think anybody's touched anything since we replaced it. White Street was... I don't know, $300,000, $400,000 station. Just to convert it, it was a big station. But we can easily do a pump eval. I'm telling you right now, my gut would tell me the pumps aren't near as bad as you think, so.

So y'all see the location of it? Legion, it's right there.

But I mean, if we ain't got to do anything but basically tear it off and rebuild it right where it is, that's a whole lot less.

Yeah, you just temp bypass pump through construction. That's how they handle that. You'll stop it up in one of these manholes. You'll put a big diesel pump in a manhole with floats, and there's already a bypass port on the force main. You hook it directly to that, and you just run it. bypass pumping for a month or so to get everything installed. Get all your materials, everything on site, shut it down, bypass pumps. And it pumps due east all the way to the lagoon influence station.

Josh, if we do that, how long would this pump station be down?

Well, we keep it operational. It can't be down. We keep it in operation the whole time. You have a bypass, yeah. While they're doing the... Yeah, if this station goes down, let's see if I can... It's something like... This area of Cleveland doesn't have sewer. That whole area comes down to Legion.

Yeah, that's a problem.

Yep. It's a huge, huge, huge basin.

It's the city of B.G. Grant. Let's move on.

Yep. Something like that.

Yeah, I mean, I'd get that application in as soon as soon as we can.

Yeah. All right.

Yeah. The only question I have is this. We're going to ask Lucas when we talk to him. Do y'all know of any recycling projects or recycling companies that we could consider recycling? in lieu of our own recycling process.

I can find some. I think they contracted out in Greenwood, if I'm not mistaken.

Luke was supposed to do some research. We'll ask him if he came up with anything. But if y'all know of something, let us know, because that's going to be another topic.

Yeah. I gave him a list. I went online and found a list of contractors and things.

All right, Josh, you got any questions?

Josh, one quick question. We talked about a bypass pump that we rent them right now if something happens that, you know, we're having to rent bypass pumps.

We have one.

We have one.

But if it gets tied up, like this past, this year, we had more than one station go down and we ended up, well, and our bypass pump at one time was being worked on. So we had to rent two different pumps, bypass pumps. So. Go ahead, Mayor. I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you.

That's okay. I'm just curious, you know, your opinion that we need another bypass pump until we get some more of these pump stations redone.

I personally, maybe, but I would think no. I mean, that's a $70,000 or $80,000 bypass pump. You can rent them for a couple grand, two, three grand a month, something like that, I would assume. Uh, I can't imagine it's that common. I think Wade has inherited – I think Wade had inherited maybe a year or so of backlog of maintenance items that have led to – I think there was a lot of issues that just didn't get taken care of when they should have, and then – maybe one pump had been down and nobody's looking at it until the other one goes down. And I think a lot of that stuff is what, what we're seeing lately. I don't think the system is that bad as a whole. I think it's probably a, I think all this maintenance getting cleared up, you're going to be in a hell of a lot better situation because most of these pump stations have already been renovated. They've already been pumps replaced. And now you're seeing some minor issues that are just not getting taken care of when they should have. So you're doing it all together and you're seeing full station failures, but.

Well, we increased his budget substantially to start replacing different things. And I mean, I think we increased it. How much, Michelle? We put it at $400,000.

Yeah, I think prior to that, he had maybe... Let me just look real quick. A couple hundred thousand.

Yeah, so we increased his budget to take care of that kind of stuff, Josh, by almost $200,000.

It's contracted services.

But if we don't need it, we can take that back, right?

No, he needs it. There are repairs, like pump repairs.

We increased it more because we thought we needed to do more, and Josh is acting like we might not.

No, I think you have a backlog of stuff to do. I'm saying as a whole.

He'll have a backlog.

Yes. Probably, yes. He inherited a backlog of issues that need to be addressed. And once they're addressed, it's not as bad as what it seems once these issues are addressed.

Hey, Michelle, whenever we get to this, I want to talk to Wade and make sure. I want to see what we're doing because 10 years ago, you had Keith Christopher going in there, and a station would fail, and he'd call the pump guy and say, hey, I need a new pump. He'd get the city to give him 10 grand. They'd go buy a new pump. They weren't even putting the right pumps in the hole. We were finding stations that had mismatched. It was one 10-horse and one 7.5-horse, or we'd take a station that was completely inadequate, and we would pour good money into it when we needed to just stop and say, This is not a $10,000 problem. It's a $60,000 problem. Let's fix it right instead of wasting money. And we've done a whole bunch of stuff to these pumps. And I don't want to see us. I just want to make sure we're all moving in the right direction. And so definitely if he's going to be buying stuff for big upgrades, I definitely at least want to see them before he does them.

Well, Keith was saving money for Inframark.

That's right. Yeah. We fixed all the major ones when we started. There was major, major pump failures, and we've gone through and fully reworked stuff correctly, converted them to submersibles, converted new control panels, and I'll go through a list, and we can do a pump eval too.

We increased it 127,000.

Josh, I hate to hear that we still have a backlog of things that's being corrected, especially when we are hiring consultants. come in after they leave and then we're having back as consultant and we still have a backlog of things that need to be corrected uh that's a little disheartening to me all right all right josh yeah thanks for letting sir

Do we have anything else with Josh?

No, that's what I was saying. Unless Josh had some questions.

Josh, I'm good.

Thank you. Appreciate your time.

Thanks, Josh.

Okay. Are y'all ready for me to let Lucas in?

Absolutely. How many we got today?

Lucas, Anna, and Billy, and we have Clint on standby if y'all want to do him at 3.30. Okay. There he is.

Hey, Lucas. Hey, Lucas. How y'all doing? Good. You got it all figured out? Pretty much.

That's a good answer.

Okay. Michelle, you want to pull his budget up?

His multiple budgets?

Multiple.

He's got multiple budgets. That's fine.

Let me share my screen. Start that. Cemetery is the first one up. Nothing unusual here but a mower. Asking for a mower.

Yeah, and as I said earlier, I want an inventory of how many mowers we got on the run. If we can get somebody a car, if Ashley can send them all a mail, and I want to see how many mowers each department has.

I think, Ashley, did you get that uploaded into my folder? It's in your folder on the shared drive, not in Dropbox.

Are you getting working and non-working?

It doesn't list non-working. That's right. It's just the current ones on inventory. As they remove them from inventory, we normally delete them from the list. Unless there's one that's not working that we aren't aware of yet. Because they haven't done the deletions yet for this year.

The one that dies in the next month.

That's right. Or during this year.

We've got a copy of that in the file now.

It's in my file. I'll pull it up. I'll pull it up here shortly. All right. Groundskeeper. Same thing. The budget's generally the same. A request for a mower. street department. The unusual item was the Sternberg Poles, which I'll move to the bond.

What the trash truck? $28,000 engine. How old is this truck?

I think that truck is 2000. It's not very old.

Is that the one sitting that's been broke? It didn't look old. It looked in good shape.

It's not very old.

But it has been out of commission for several years.

About two years. Page 200, I think is what it is.

It must be under that there.

2010 International 4300.

2010?

I don't see more than 28,000 in a 16-year-old truck. That's my first thoughts. It didn't cost but 61 16 years ago, but that's a lot of money to put in a I don't know.

Yeah. What is a new truck cost though?

Right. Right. Twice that.

More than that. Yeah. Like twice the original.

I mean.

These are your mowers by department.

Yeah. I think we'd be better served replacing the truck and putting the $30,000 motor in it.

Pretty good looking truck. I know that doesn't mean everything, but it doesn't look that old.

How many is it?

Mowers?

Yeah.

So you have three in the cemetery.

And they're asking for another one, right?

Asking for one. As far as I know, now they haven't told me yet.

I did ask for one because I think one of them is down.

That's what I was going to say. They haven't turned in their disposals for this year yet. So if they've got one they're disposing of this year, we're not aware of that yet. Yes. So they're probably replacing one.

Can you email me that list?

Sir?

Can you email me that list?

I can.

Thank you. All right. All right. Thank you.

What does the mosquito control mean? Do we do that?

Mosquito control, we used to do it. It's part of groundskeeper. So any equipment that was in mosquito control is groundskeeper now. So those are groundskeeper mowers. Okay. So I think this is his street budget. Back on the, we talked about the trash. Everything else was the same.

Why do we need an F-250?

Yeah, why do we need an F-250 there? Instead of just a regular.

For pulling equipment and also with the We only have two four-wheel drive trucks, and with the storm coming in and when it's snow and ice on the ground, my truck won't make it. In years when it comes, Steve-O has to come pick me up because my truck is not a four-wheel drive, and it won't.

So when you talk about pulling equipment, we're not talking about mowers. You're talking about pulling equipment.

No, we're talking about excavators, skid steers, saws, and stuff like that.

I understand that. That's why I was going to make sure we weren't talking about pulling mowers.

But you can get a four-wheel drive 150, right?

Yeah, but it's not going to pull those big trucks. What do we do?

Say it, sir.

What do we do with Steve-O's truck?

It's still, we still got it.

We've had it for... Who's using it?

We're using it... Right now, we're using it for the poor, the asphalt salt.

Well, that's not all the time. Not all the time, but... Let me ask a question, Michelle.

This is not for Lucas. This is more for Michelle. So his projected expenditures are... Like 1.7 million this year.

Actually projected for this year is 2.1.

And that's proposed.

Right, proposed.

You got projected.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm in the wrong.

Okay, so the proposed budget, even though it's, I mean, that's $400,000 more almost than what he's going to spend this year. Where in the heck is the excess?

or rather where are the salaries right there some where it's the savings there is 200 and it's the savings it's not that so it's because his budget was 2.1 understand but he's coming in under budget and that's where it is it's the lack of employees we don't have right yeah And also like his salary has been moved to Public Works Administration and that position has not been filled. So that's the other piece of it. But most of it is vacancies in the street department.

Well, you know, I guess the reason I'm saying this is he always has vacancies.

He doesn't have as many right now. I think he has three, right? Lucas?

Four.

Four now.

We built that into the police budget.

Do what now?

Didn't we do that a couple years ago? We built the vacancies into the budget, reduced the amount.

Right, but we did that one time with the public works, but when we did that with public works, they had seven, and we removed three. Right now, when we did the budget, they only had three, so one must be new. And they have requested to keep those three positions in the budget because it's more like constant turnover more than it is just three steady vacancies, if that makes sense. So it's just kind of constant turnover. So it's kind of like going without people, you know, at different times. Have you had less than three less than four vacancies this year i know that when we did the budget you only had three yeah i mean i guess that's my question can we can we not just reduce those employee costs but still leave those positions out there so what happens is you can remove them from but then if he

it becomes a budget amendment like if he fills them then we have to do a budget amendment to fill them look do you see do you see you fulfilling those at any time real soon um yes sir okay well i think we just need to look at that you know if you're going to be filling then you need those employees you know we want to be effective we don't want

When we look at the payroll, we'll come back and look at this, but there's $300,000 or $350,000 that's not being spent, and we're struggling right now to make this general fund budget work. Let's get realistic with this thing. If he comes to the point during the year where he has to have that need, we'll make a budget amendment then. We're not going to cut it out of your budget, Lucas. But it's no point in putting stuff in there that we're not using. If you get down the road and you need it, you're going to have to ask for it. We can always make a budget amendment. Let's go back to Stebo's truck for a minute. So no one person is driving that truck anymore?

Well, no, not at the moment. So it's parked?

Michelle, where's the vehicle? I was looking at it earlier.

I'm sorry. Say that again.

You've got a list, a schedule of all the department's vehicles. Where was that? Fleet inventory. I'm sorry.

Yeah. So when they hire, if I'm wrong, Lucas, you can correct me. When they hire a street supervisor, then you'll have someone, will they drive his truck?

Yeah, they will drive Steve-O's truck.

So it's just not being used because you don't have that position right now?

You don't have that position.

No. The only way it's used when we do use it is when we pull in the saw or excavator and stuff like that because my truck won't pull it.

I understand that.

Looking at this schedule, I mean, just to be fair, the newest truck that he's got in his inventory is a 2019 truck. There's two 2019 F-350s. So, I mean, he's got an older fleet. Is that right? Yeah. Michelle?

Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Looking at the... Yeah.

Well, I agree that he's going to need the F-250 to pull the excavators. You know. F-150 is not full of that big old piece of machinery. It will, but it's going to blow the engine up.

You ready to move to the shop department?

Sure.

Nothing here except for the water-cooled fan and the crane lift that was requested. Any questions about this one?

Okay.

He also has sanitation, but sanitation for him is just, he has an employee in sanitation. So it's just payroll. The rest of it is meridian waste and vector disease control. So I didn't pull that one up. Public Works Administration. I think this is, like I told y'all before, this is the fund, where you would see recycling revenue. Did y'all want to talk about recycling?

Lucas, have you been able to talk to any of those people and find out if there's somebody out there to take this over?

I'm still looking. I'm still, I got 18 more, I got at least 14 more pages I'm still looking to. I want to narrow it down to

good candidate but what kind of feedback have you gotten um which i think will be our best bet if somebody's already picking up down in this area and it's working well for them that's michelle share that picture that i sent you okay i want y'all to see what this looks like in public works what they have to go through every single day they have to sort through that crap by hand how many employees are working on that two got two people this is all they do is they sort through this stuff and then not only do they sort through it they have to grade it because some plastic is one grade and some plastic is another grade it is absolutely insane then you see back here how long have we been doing this

Years.

As it started.

This is the cardboard over here because they sometimes don't have, they're not taking cardboard, so they have to just They bail it up. They bail it up until they can have somewhere to take it.

Which Judson said he is, so he didn't know why it hadn't been brought to Browns.

And also we do like the aluminum cans, like the trash truck that we're trying to get fixed. The aluminum cans, we take the aluminum cans to Brown and we recycle the aluminum cans to Brown.

Put the trash trucks down.

We got two people working full time for us to get $100 for a damn crate of aluminum cans.

Well, that's not full-time. One of the guys doing it also does all the other stuff in the shop.

Yeah, but he could be doing something more.

He does it in his in-between time, but still it's just pointless for the amount of money we make. The paper, I think he said it was like trading it negative. Is that the one that he said was negative? It's not even worth recycling right now?

Yeah.

The only thing you make money off of is the cans.

It's the cans, yeah.

All I'm saying is, you know, we sit here, the biggest struggle we have is with payroll costs because with a guy sour, you've got PERS, you've got health insurance, you've got all this other stuff, and we're spending a ton of money to do this mess right here.

This needs to be taken off immediately.

Yes, sir.

Do all your employees, if you can answer this question, do they have to be valid licensed drivers?

Do they have to be licensed drivers to do what?

Licensed drivers. Do they have to be licensed drivers to work at Public Works?

You have to have a driver's license. You have to have a driver's license to drive equipment.

There's no other area that they work in where they don't have to be licensed?

You mean like suspended license or age? I don't think so because they operate equipment and they, I mean, they do. Well, I mean, they have to be able to, they might drive the vehicle.

They got to be licensed.

What are you getting at, Robert? Well, you know, so many times we got some people that make good employees, but some of them just don't have licenses.

Is there a reason why they don't have a license?

It may be smaller. I don't know, Bob.

That's probably the reason.

They may have lost it recently. Are we keeping up with that?

I don't know. Well, we can't. Our insurance company, if they run checks, they ain't going to let us have none.

Yeah, they make us.

They'll usually tell you.

They make us do that every year. Yeah.

Back to the recycling. Gary, so are we trying to find a recycling center that would take this so we won't have to do this?

We would still take the recycling here from what I understand. We're trying to find a contractor that would pick it up. Because we still want to offer the service here in Cleveland.

That's what I was trying to get an understanding. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.

We have, obviously, by the picture, we have a lot of citizens that recycle.

Yeah, they do.

Yeah, it really amazes me that the number of people we do have that will recycle, but the ones that will also throw trash bags out of the window of their car.

Absolutely.

Trash food bags.

Absolutely. All right. So those are all of Lucas's departments. Did y'all have anything additional for Lucas?

Lucas, you got any questions?

No, sir, I do not.

Okay. By the way, we're going to try to get that break room redone.

Yes, sir. I received an email from Josh, one of his workers, and we're going to meet tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock. Okay, good. Look at the break room. Great.

Okay. Thank you, Luke. All right.

Yes, sir.

Thank you. Bye.

Bye. All right. So I've got Anna. Are you all ready for me to bring her in?

Sure. Hey, y'all.

I know we discussed something about that engine. What did we decide on that? Were we going to try to get that garbage truck fixed or what? Because we had a discussion on buying a new garbage truck or getting it fixed because we were saying that that truck was 19 years old.

Well, we need to find out what a new one's going to cost.

Okay. That's what I was just trying to find out. Hey, Anna.

Thank you. Gary, a new garbage truck can be leased, correct? What now? That truck can be leased, right? Sure it can. Jump truck's all it was.

Like one of those that's the square open back where they throw all the debris stuff into it like flatbed but sides all the way around i guess but marcia and i looked at it it's not a bad picture it looks like it's been sitting there for a long time and has not been used but i think it's been longer than that but the thing is you know okay we're putting the engine then

put a new engine once they're going to tear up a new transmission. But anyhow, it's something just, it needs to be looked at one way or another. We've got to get the truck back running or get a truck.

Okay.

All right. I've got Anna's budget pulled up. Anna? She is. Hello. Hello. Anna. How are y'all? Good. How are you? Good. Y'all have looked at this, and the big request, I guess, from Anna was for the train table. And then the other, you know, just minor increases for her events. And y'all have the summaries on those.

Anna, is this train table functional, or is this something we're going to have to bring in and do some work on? I don't know what it does. What does the train table do, I guess, really?

Oh, it's like interactive. So they can play on it, and it comes with like wooden train toys that they can push around. No, if we moved it in today, it would be used this afternoon.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

And we've already measured it out. You have room for it.

Yes, sir. I've measured it out, and it will work. I do think, just being honest, I think 10 grand might be a little high for it. I know that they had it custom made. I would try to talk her down from that, but I don't even know if that's on the table. I told her I had to go to budget and do all that and would have to see.

Who are you dealing with there, please? You're not dealing with Cindy, are you?

You know, I don't know, Mr. Danny. One second. Rachel Myers.

Okay. Thank you.

And she's also who I'll get the traveling exhibit through.