City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Greenwood City Council meeting this evening, Monday, July the 6th, 2026, at 7.01 p.m. Ms. Derry, would you call the roll for us, please?

Yes. A.C. Brown is absent. Ralph Meeker?

Here.

Tim Terry is absent. Roger Rainwater? Here. Steve Tedford? Here. Rob Powell? Here. There is a quorum.

Thank you. Would everybody please stand tonight to begin our meeting. We'll have our prayer by Chief Brad Hobbs, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance by Jeff Turner.

Let us pray.

Father, first and foremost, we praise your name. We thank you for everything that you do for us. We thank you for this 250 years of this great nation that you've blessed us with. Father, we ask you to be with our city council, our governing body, that you'll provide them with the opportunity strength and the wisdom and the patience and that they lead our city in your direction. Father, any things we ask in your son's name, amen. Amen.

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

Thank you. You may be seated. At this time, I would ask the council to consider approving the minutes for the June 1st, 2026 regular city council meeting. I'll make a motion to approve them as written. Second. I have a motion and a second.

Mr. Maker? Yes. Mr. Ray Warren? Yes. Mr. Tedford? Yes. Mr. Powell?

Yes.

Thank you. Next on the agenda is recognitions and acknowledgements. First, recognize everybody here. Appreciate you coming. We've got a good crowd tonight. And acknowledge you for being here. That's good. Even Mr. Lloyd. Good to see you, sir. I meant that very nicely. He's not smiling. I have a really, really cool recognition that I want to do real quick. If I can. Oh, my gosh. My notes are on my desk. Did you send it to me? Would you do that? Thank you, Jeff. I think. It's really cool, I promise you. I got it. Thank you, Jeff. He's going to be looking. Buddy, or Chief, would you tell him? Sorry about that.

I don't know.

Bob, would you check on the chief?

Sorry. Everybody line up single file. Yeah, everybody line up. Doug's office.

Sorry about that, Jeff. So tonight, I want to bring attention to a special lady here with us, and you can guess who that is probably up front here. Charlotte Derry, our city clerk treasurer, has done amazing work over the years. How many years are we talking?

Oh, I've been starting on my 29th year.

29 years. She started when she was seven. so she's done an amazing job and we appreciate her very much every day but what what I want to talk about tonight real quick is her what she's done for the city that has taken across the state I mean when you're recognized by these groups it's pretty amazing it's humbling I know and I know she's that way too but it's also It's her peers that have put her in these positions, so you don't get to do that without doing the right thing and working very, very hard at it. So we've got a list here of accomplishments, and these are not all of them, I can promise you, but 26, she was elected 26-27 Vice President of the Arkansas City Clerk's Recorders Treasurer's Association. She was awarded the 2026 Arkansas Clerk of the Year, was invited due to that. I've never gotten this on her. She was invited to toss the first pitch at last Thursday's Arkansas natural baseball game in honor of being chosen. Uh, I asked her this morning if it was a strike and she said after it bounced three times to get to the plate, it was close to a strike. So that's awesome. Uh, she's received the master Arkansas municipal clerk designation, and this took many, many hours of education and dedication on behalf of that profession. She was also awarded the ACE Advanced Level 3 certification at the Arkansas Municipal League. And then lastly, but certainly not leastly, I'm sure there's more to come. The year's just half over, right? Appointed by President Westrigan, the new president of the Arkansas Municipal League that took my spot in June is a clerk herself, which is pretty cool because she's the first clerk since 1950-something. Only second clerk in the state to be appointed to the to the presidency of the Arkansas Municipal League. But anyway, President Westringham has recently appointed Charlotte to serve on the executive committee of the Arkansas Municipal League this coming year. So these are huge honors, and there's no one more deserving than Charlotte Derry for this. So she deserves it.

I'm pretty proud of it. I really appreciate that and thank you everybody and it's a lot of people here. I think on the urging of Sonny Bell nominated me for this and so I really appreciate that Sonny more than you know. I think he has nominated me in past years but this year he really tried to push it. I was also nominated by some other clerks in the state and that was a real touching thing for me. And I was up against the, uh, so up against the other ones nominated where the city clerk of Fayetteville and a deputy city clerk of west Memphis. And I admire those two women. They're great, great clerks and, uh, peers of mine. And so once the nominations are received by the association, It's a points thing and it's tenure and all the education you've attended and what kind of classes you've given and what you've taken, blah, blah, blah. So it's quite a big honor. So I appreciate you, everybody that made this happen.

Congratulations. You represent Greenwood very well. Thank you. You made us all very proud. Thank you. Congratulations. Likewise.

I appreciate it.

Okay, I am sorry, my phone is going crazy. Let me fix this real quick. Sorry. I thought it was you, Travis, but it's not. Okay. Committee reports, I think a few have, that's you. I think a few have been submitted, but not all. As I say every month, if you see something that's missing, let us know. Danielle's not here tonight. Gave her a little break tonight, but if there's not something that you need to see, let me know or let Daniel know and we'll certainly get it to you. Citizen Forum, I have no one that has signed up tonight, so if you're aware of that, if you're not aware of it, you can just come up and speak and you have five minutes. Does anybody wanna do that? I usually, okay, we're good. We'll move on to financial report from Mr. Tom Marsh. Oh, while you're doing that, let me do this, because I meant to do it a moment ago under recognitions and acknowledgments. I would like for Casey Craig to stand up, please. This young man, well, he's not so young anymore. How long have you been here? Five years. So you've aged 10 at least. But Casey put on, along with his staff, who are amazing, Megan, the new assistant director, who is amazing, amazing. and his staff of workers, the street department, the fire department, the police department. Hunter spent most of the day down there, I know. Bob, of course, was there, but he's supposed to do that. No, I'm just kidding. But what a great event, and the Mason's are here. Great pancake breakfast. I almost got there too late, but thank you for saving me a pancake. It was delicious. But the event went off without a hitch. committee, your parks committee, your Freedom Fest committee that works with along with Casey did an amazing job. It was it was just perfect. I think in great bands, great crowds. We had we had a little scare for a short few minutes. We had a seven year old little boy that was missing or so his mom thought. And the police department came into action real quick and he was found within minutes, which was which is a Praise the Lord, Adam, for sure. He was not harmed or anything. Everything just went really well. Got to the fireworks. If you weren't aware of what was going on, I mentioned it last month, I think, but we did a two and a half to three minute special tribute to Kelly Hendricks, who most of you know, who we lost this year. That was really, really cool and touching. I want to say this about the gentleman that puts on our fireworks typically, Keith Jenkins, who works for the company that puts the fireworks on. called me Saturday morning and was Very much upset. He said, this is my baby. It's been my baby for years and years. And he got called to MENA because they were short of help. So he had to go to MENA to work that fireworks show. He's the one that put the fireworks together for Kelly and basically paid for them out of his pocket pretty much. So thank you to Keith Jenkins for that. And hopefully we'll all remember Kelly and appreciate him for what he did for us and the flags around town. And we are going to continue. I've already talked to Jeff, and Jeff's already started the process. We're going to work and continue to buy new flags and put up around town. I don't know that we'll ever get to 200 like Kelly had, but we're going to try to decorate the town with flags and keep them up like Kelly would have done himself. So, Casey, we appreciate you. You did a great job on your staff. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now, Mr. Marsh. Sorry.

Okay, first I want to start off by just saying that I've got a few additional detailed slides for you to look over and review. The first one I want to show you is the Greenwood's 2% city sales and use tax June over the same period, June 26 over 25. We're up just under a half percent. A lot of that has to do with obviously rebates and audits. Fort Smith, had a 6.18% increase. You probably read about that on Talk Business and Politics. Interesting is the county also was up 6.18% overall as far as the distributions were concerned. So they're kind of following the path of the lead of Fort Smith. One of the things I wanted to share with you, though, is that in addition to that 0.48% same period June over June, the cumulative growth, 26 over 25, was 6.27%, which is phenomenal considering where we were at this point last year. I'll show you that in a second. As far as the county sales tax is concerned, very good. very impressive June over June for the county. 7.51% was our same period percentage increase. Our cumulative growth has now grown to 4%, and I'll show you what that equated to as far as how it benefits each of the operating departments that are served by this county sales tax. Operation for the admin and promotional tax revenues. As you know, the finance department has taken over the collection ability and the monitoring and the posting of the payments, and we have a process now that we're following with the state rules and the state regs and state law as far as trying to prompt earlier payments rather than delaying over a month and then we have to deal with potential penalties, there is a 2% discount for an early payment, which is 20 days after the end of the month. So between now and the 20th of July, the June payments, if they come in, the actual remitter can take 2% of that tax back and withhold it for themselves as far as their incentive to pay early. It's a discount for early payment. So what we're doing is we're going to show you what that percentage is, and also when we do the reporting for A&P, we're going to let them know exactly how many dollars that is so they can see the benefits of accelerated cash flow. A lot of it has to do more with kind of leveling out the remittances as they come in so that there's not one month up and one month down, and I'll show you that as well. But the idea is that by giving them the ability and an incentive to actually pay early, it gives the A&P Commission more revenue in their coffers in order to stabilize and budget their grant that they want to distribute. As far as the same month... month of june over june it's 21.76 percent which is phenomenal for that one month year-to-date cumulative we're now at 9.46 realized too that all of these revenues these tax revenues are budgeted at zero percent growth so that that's actually very positive highly positive As far as the city sales and use tax is concerned, you see the 2025 numbers were all negative and we've, like I've been saying for the last few months, it appears that we've flipped the script on that and we're now up the same amount or just almost the same amount as we were in the previous year. So we were down 6.81% at this point last year, we're up 6.27% cumulative this year. So that's very favorable as far as the city is concerned. Oh, I do wanna point out, oh yeah, I'll go to this screen. This is the actual amount of money that it equates to. We're budgeting in 2025 city sales and use tax to be 1.93, oh, 1,973,526 as far as the 2% this year. So far we're at 2,097,325. So it equates to $123,799 more than what we budgeted. is usable within the departments that benefit from it. Water sewer gets 1% and they're up 61,900, which was unbudgeted. As far as parks, street, fire, and the traffic relief, they're all up 15,475 so far for the year. The interesting thing about the traffic relief bond is that anything positive there assists us in doing additional paid-in capital on the bond, and it accelerates the payoff of that bond. So we're moving that by doing the additional paid-in capitals and applying it directly to the principal. We do it about two times a year because of our phenomenal growth, which was averaging right now about 6% over the number of years that we've had this. I think it was 2020. So we're six years into it, and the six years has generated about 6% growth. And that money is being used to pay down principal, and the debt service is coming off the back end from the interest perspective. So we're going to accelerate the payoff on that. So that's good news. As far as the rebate is concerned, we were at $3,500. So when you take the first six months of 2026, so far rebates have affected us by around 72,000. It's kind of in line a little bit more than what our 2023 rebates were. And if you look at the same six-month comparison from January through June of 2025, we were at $127,000. So as far as our distributions are concerned, the average rebate per month is $11,400 for this year. It was $21,000 average for the months in 2025. So we're about half where we were in previous years. You see that on this graph right here where we're tracking right about now coasting inside what I consider to be a normal range. This is what we've always seemed to be operating under. And this was the couple of the blips due to what we know is a lot of the work that's being done outside right about now on the bypass and the road construction being done within the city limits for R-DOT. As far as the sales tax audit is concerned, very immaterial as far as that's concerned. We are well below half of what we were last year at this time as far as the audits are concerned. We have just started our city sales and use tax audit that we've commissioned a company to come and and look over all of our bills and try to go after some of our taxes. They're in the middle of doing that right now. They will be back to finish up in a couple of weeks. They have another engagement that they're on. we'll get a full report and they'll file on our behalf. One of the big things that we're gonna be looking at is the federal tax on the police and, well, to some extent the fire, for most of the police fuel that's exempt from federal. And so they're gonna go and get that back, but they're also gonna show us and allow us to file those reports on a monthly basis so that we'll continue to get that rebate back to us. As far as the bottom numbers that I wanted to show here, it's the conversion into taxable sales. Even though we were up half a percent if you add back the rebates showing what the taxable sales actually were, because the tax was on that $17 million in sales for April of 26 to April of 25 and distributed in June. That equated to about a 1.19% increase. So as far as the year is concerned, cumulative, we're up 2.95%. That number is steadily climbing. But I do want to share a little bit of bad news for you. And the bad news is that the inflation rate, which Previous month was 3.8%, has now climbed to 4.2%. That's from the government's website. You will note, though, on the good news is that the core inflation rate of 2.9% were about 0.5% above that. So that's good. What that does is it removes food and energy from the calculation, which they consider to be highly volatile. Food and energy prices go up and down rather quickly. And that does relate back to the inflation rate as a whole, a 4.2. So somewhere around 2.9. It's still indicating to me that most of our increases in our taxes isn't because of increased sales of merchandise, but increased cost of what is being purchased. It's more of an inflation factor that's generating a lot of our income, increased income. Oops, wrong way. Oh, I was doing it right. That's right, I was gonna show you that 2.9% again. As far as the county sales tax is concerned, there we go, stop moving it. 4%, if you'll notice that we were at negative 1.71%. 4% is a very good rebound from the previous 2025 period. I'm hoping that trend, this relates to operations departments, all the departments that benefit from county sales tax. And so it amounts to about a $51,248 increase when you look at 26's numbers over 25. And that equates to increased amount of revenues to each of these departments, planning, police, animal control, parks and rec, and fire. So police departments, $26,000, $14,007 for the fire department. Parks and recreation is about a $5,000 pickup as far as their revenue stream coming from sales tax that was unbudgeted, sales tax revenues. As far as the combined sales tax, it's 5.3% and we've really flipped that number, very positive. Most of that is coming on the heels of the increased county and city sales and use tax. It does not include the traffic relief bond distribution because the combined, we don't get that. That money goes directly to pay the bond. So it's not something that we would benefit from. Now we'll benefit from it as far as reduced interest on the bond in the future. So here's what I wanted to show you. I did notice that there was discussion on the other city to our north. about the where does those what's the n a i c s or what's called in their north american in dust industry classification system this is how they they have twenty sectors as they call them and they Four of them is what we normally would track. Those four that are highlighted there in color are the four categories that are primarily what makes up about 77% of the tax coming into the City of Greenwood on a monthly and annual basis. So the others, you can look at them. Sometimes it makes a lot of difference. Sometimes it doesn't. But these are the four that most cities focus on because that's usually what the city's main focus is. generation of taxes from. So you looked at 2026 June versus 2025 June, and I put these numbers out there to show you what these equate to, realizing that this is before rebate and audit, so it's just the raw number of what the sales were, and you look at what the distribution was, and then you can see whether the manufacturing sector was up or down. So it's down 10.9% from this year to last year's June, which would be April's numbers. You look at wholesale trade, and it's up 33.81%. The retail trade is up or down rather 1.04% from the June distribution of last year. And then food service down here, which is your restaurant, your fast foods, they're all lumped in together. That was up 2.89% for June over June. But biggest question is, okay, specifically, is it gasoline? Is it clothing? What makes that up? And these are just the sectors. So the first thing I wanted to do is show what is the six-month trend? What was the six months of January of 25 to June last year versus January to June of 26? And if you look at each of these sectors, manufacturing is up 26.10% over last year, six months. 20.89% over last year for wholesale. Retail is up just slightly, almost a little under 1%, 0.83. So retail is lagging, if you would look at it in that perspective. but they have much significant larger numbers. As far as food service is concerned, they're up 7.84. So the whole, all four of those sectors makes just under 80% of the tax that comes to us. So from 25 to 26, the whole, all four combined sectors are up 3.75%, yes.

Can you give me some examples of some wholesale trade here in the area?

I will. I just wanted you to see the, it's the next slide. Okay. Okay. Cause I wanted to bring down or break down what some of those areas are. Now I can't tell you any specific, Oh, what is so-and-so business? Where are they classified? I don't know that they don't give us those numbers. They just give us this data and then they break it down by 158 taxable entities. So there's 158 categories is what I call them, not sectors, but categories. And if you were to go back to the one previous, you'd see retail trade is 4,400 to 4,500. There's the 4,401, 0203, 11, 12, all the way down. And each one of those represents a specific category under retail trade. Both together, it's retail trade. Same with food services, three of them. So what I did is I went and identified there are, we get a report that shows every single category and what the actual amount of the tax was for that month. What I've done is I've identified the top 15 out of 158. And the top 15 represents over 70 or just under 75% of the tax that we get. So just like you would see the S&P 500 against Dow, this would be our S&P 500 under Dow. These are the ones that we watch. And as they go, that's where the city would go as far as the tax is concerned. So I've highlighted three of them. One is the general merchandise sales. But all of these that are 4,400, that's retail sales. Those are lumped under category retail sales. Gasoline, clothing stores. Now they won't tell me which station and how much. We don't get that data. This is the lowest level we can go. But I will tell you this one right here, 4541, where it says electronics, shopping, and mail order, that's your online sales. It is, and I broke it down and it did identify. Those are online sales. Talk Business and Politics, sorry, network, but they had an article about 9.3% was the Amazon Prime Day's boost in the sales. So in two months, I'm gonna watch this number just to kind of ballpark where our online sales, how did that match against the national percentage, just to see where we're going. But what I did do is I took the average of the six months, and that's the column that you see here, and I compared June's numbers to the average, and everything in green rose against the average, and everything in gray decreased against the average. So we had eight increased subcategories of the top 15, and seven went lower. And so you can see exactly how much in a year, well not a year, in a month, average month sales, online sales was almost $1.3 million. That's the average. Average monthly taxable sales from online coming into the city of Greenwood based on that category right there is 1.3 million. It equates to about 25, it's slightly under around $25,000 a month in actual tax. And then you have the restaurants and all other eating places, and it does bring up three categories, 7221, 7223, and 7225 are the only three that have restaurants, whether it's a full dining or if it's fast food, they're all lumped together in that number. And you can see what that brings in, about $1.5 million on average per month. And then I showed you the trend line of the select merchandise category codes for each of the months as depicted here. And you can see that the total for the selected categories represents in June almost slightly over 71%. So that's why I'm targeting these. Just kind of watch the ebb and flow of these. Give you an idea as to where the money's coming from and...

So that's still not showing wholesale right here.

Not showing what?

Go back to the previous screen.

You asked for wholesale, not retail? Yeah. I'd have to pull up the 4200 code. I can get you that.

Okay.

I just didn't put them in any of this because that number wasn't as significant for the top 15, but I can add anything to this if we want to track and monitor it.

Just be interesting. I'm just more or less interested in what's covered in that, not specifically by store, but just by type of business.

There are several wholesalers that have tax here in the city of Greenwood. There's probably about, I'd say maybe eight of them, eight or 10 of them that we're getting sales tax revenue from.

Okay, thanks.

I don't know who they are. I just know what they categorize them as. So I thought that would be something interesting for you to see and I'll start showing you and comparing you that every month so you can kind of see the trend.

Provided by the Arkansas Department of Finance. That's all sales tax.

Good, thank you, Tom. The City of Greenwood Advertising and Promotion, this is what dollar amount the discounts were. We started in May. During the month of May is when we started doing the collections, and we sent out the letters at the end of April telling them that we were taking them over, and if they paid early. We now have the online system for them to actually go and actually calculate and pay and or just calculate and then come in and pay their actual tax for the advertising and promotion. So in the month of June, a lot of people accelerated their payments, caught up, we gave them a grace period to catch up so that everybody was current and they do understand and realize now that we are doing the penalties and we are assessing those and we go back to them if they don't pay and we send them a bill. So they won't evade it. It's permanently on their record. They can see it just by going online and accessing their account. As far as the amount, it was $228 for the month of June. That was a discount. We do book that separately, so this is what your A&P would have been had no discounts been taken, but these were as a result of people now paying early, and they do take that 2%, and this would be the percentage net for what the gross was versus the net with the discount. So, so far this year, it equated to $237 for increased cash flow for the A&P. And right now, they're 9.82%, and that is the net amount, 112,000 so far this year in growth. This is what we're trying to avoid, this. which is the up, down, up, down, up, down instead of what we normally would see in some of these other months where it would be more of a steady line. We're trying to get it to where it's more flat rather than peaks and valleys where they were paying and then they were not paying and then they were paying two months and they were catching up and that's hard for every two months for the A&P Commission to budget how they're gonna distribute their grants. And as far as the June totals are concerned, this was a huge plus for us. We were on a downtrend in June for June collections, and it's now way up, and that had a lot to do with people catching up from what they were not paying. And we've also turned the average monthly A&P collections for the year positive. which is very favorable for us. Now the trend line is still positive, but we were looking at a declining trend and now we're trying to flip it back around. as far as the amount for if we continued with our current average, we look to instead of having a total year to year, year over year sales growth negative, our year over year sales growth is now positive at 1.13 if what we have now averages that amount for the rest of the year. We don't anticipate that, but when you compare the number, the number is very positive. And cash flow for the city, we had a decrease for the month of June of $266,000, a little over a quarter million. Year-to-date net decrease in cash was $637,000. Our current fund balance all funds for the city, $11,559,000. And for the year, that's a decrease of 5.23%. I do always wanna keep in front of you first and foremost that we were budgeted a 60% decrease. Most of that comes from, as you know, water sewer. Lastly, I do wanna talk about capital expense. The capital expense for the whole city, we've spent 26.46% of the $11 million that the city had budgeted, all departments. Water sewer was 8.8 million of that. They've spent 30% of that. Remember last year they ended up with 50% being spent. So they're way ahead of what they were last year and they will probably be in the almost 80% if it goes at the current trend. Could even be higher, I don't know. As far as the city's side of it, the city's non-water sewer related capital was two and a half million and we're at 13%, a little over 13% spent. And the contingency fund, lastly, I do wanna report on this. For the month of June, we ended up at 1,000,001. So we're 34% above where our contingency fund reserve floor was set, which was the 15%. If you're greater than 25%, that number at 932, the number to allocate it to because it is greater than the 25% ceiling. So anything over that we tuck away and it's there for you to use in future years. It is restricted as your policy says. But we're not at what that number is yet. We'll have to wait as the year goes on and progresses.

That's the policy we discussed earlier in the year and we passed. That's correct. And decided this is the direction we're gonna take.

And it's looking good.

Right.

And it's given me better night's sleeps. Thank you, Tom. You're welcome.

Any questions for Mr. Marsh? Thank you, sir. I think I can easily say it's safe to say that no other city in the state of Arkansas gets such an in-depth financial report.

I agree.

And we appreciate that very much. It keeps us well informed and on task for sure. I get to sit. I had the privilege of getting to go to Tom's office. He calls me to the principal's office ever so often. We get to talk about these things. So thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Agenda additions, as always, we meet on the Monday or department head meets this morning before the council meeting. We did not have any agenda though, but I've got a couple of arrangements I'd like to ask the council to be okay with if you would pass this. First, we need to add one for sure. I guess, are you gonna talk about that, Jeff? It'll be I'm going to call it number one on new business, or I guess two or eight up to what would be number three, if everybody's okay with that.

I think you're asking for number five.

I'm sorry. Is it five? Mm-hmm. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, five. I'm sorry. Thank you. Yes, correct.

And then we have two more to add.

Yes, and then we have what will be 13 and 14, if that's right. Is that right? Yeah. So they're both planning.

Conditional use. There you go. If you can read my writing.

I will. She can't be as bad as mine. Number 13, I guess, would be conditional use authorization for alpha packaging to go from I-1 to C-2.

Okay. So I've had a... I've been questioned on two missing lights that were supposed to be put in, and you've determined what? I made you aware of it. Thursday. That they were not part of the project. Thank you, sir.

Appreciate you. Okay, I know my numbers are all.

Drawing-wise, we want to see the project.

And even though you're going to do it, we would like to see it. What's that?

I think he sent it to them.

Because way back when, four years ago, before four years ago, prior to, we lost track of, I mean, they just went on and on and on for years, and I didn't have an original date of appointment for everybody, so we just kind of started from there. just four years ago this was done and weren't they all said they wanted to stay on so if we could just get a vote to keep them on yes sir would you mind coming up thank you sir

of A&P Commissions where you take one year, you take two, you take three. So that's staggered. Because going not this year, not next year, but five years from now or seven years from now, when does this term begin? And you don't want all of your terms beginning the same year because that could lead to a disaster. So could I suggest that the Commission discuss Staggering their terms among those appointed members so that down the line there will be terms that are actually...

They are staggered. We just hadn't followed... Yeah. We just hadn't followed it and now it's... We've got the staggered... Good, okay. They are staggered.

Initially it was.

And...

It had odd...

They are staggered. We don't...

I don't feel like we need to redo that because they are staggered. We just had kept up with it. So now there's six of the seven that need to be reappointed. And I'd like to add to that discussion. So two are from the city council, and that's myself and AC. I do not mind at all. having a discussion to rotate one of us off. The problem's always been the timing. These guys want to meet at 4 o'clock because they have restaurants they're running. But I was thinking Roger might have more free time. If Roger would like to take my spot, I don't mind having a discussion over that. AC had mentioned before that, hey, I'm not going to rerun. He's decided to rerun for his position.

And I said, well, Roger, he's got a little bit of freedom, so we can put Roger in there.

No pressure.

Yeah. And I know I keep saying Roger, but Steve's out of town working and stuff. Ralph's working over at Game and Fish, and he's... But anyway, y'all can have a discussion about rotating me off, and it would be just fine.

Does anybody else want to do this?

Roger, are you volunteering? By your silence.

And I'm not saying at all.

You'll be all right?

Yeah, I'll be all right.

So you want to replace Rod on there?

He's ready to do it now, I guess. I can step in.

Every other month

That's better.

Let's wait until the end of the year. That's what I was getting at. So on the year starting January 27, let's make Roger one of the council representatives, and that would be taking me off and putting him in. Okay. So now I don't feel like I need to abstain on this. I was going to abstain on the vote for my reappointment. I'll go ahead and vote. All right.

Okay, I have a motion on these.

I make a motion that we approve the list presented removing Rod Powell's name and putting in Rogers.

As of 127. As of 127.

I'll second that.

I have a motion and a second.

Mr. Meeker? Yes. Mr. Rainwater?

Yes.

Mr. Sanford? Yes. Mr. Powell? Yes.

Okay. Thank you, gentlemen. Number three, or whatever number it is. It is three. Three. Finance amendment to resolution 118-15, updating purchase card procedures. You want to take it or Mr. Tom? Let me see.

So we had a deal come up where we have an assistant parks director now who, in our purchase card agreement, it says that, or rules, policy, says that only directors have purchase card rights. And so the assistant parks director, the director needs her to have her own card for convenience and logistics and whatnot, so. We, on page two, changed it to the shaded part that you read there. And then we have a few other changes. We went ahead and reviewed the whole thing. Tom went through it as well and made changes to pages three and five. So they're all indicated there. There is a revised version that's a front and back that I put in here.

We get any kind of review from auditors on things like this where it involves processes? Yes, auditors and audits.

They read all of our minutes. That's the first thing they do is ask for the minutes.

They don't have a problem with it.

Talking about page three where I didn't even notice this earlier today. It says dollar amount per month. It still says $2,500. Do we want to mark that out?

Yeah. Thank you. So every time it changes, we have to go back and change.

Yeah, that's what we're trying to do with this strikeout of the 250. Because whatever's in the budget is what we'll adhere to. That 2,500, though, is a part of another category here that says dollar amount per month. Do you want to just strike the whole dollar amount per month 2,500 there? Does any of that need to be in that section?

We just don't want the dollar, you don't even have to reference that. We do establish a dollar amount for the department, but it fluctuates.

Okay. So do we strike the 2,500 or not?

We'll change the language to be generic and valid.

Right.

Something based on the amount budgeted. Something like approved credit limit.

It's an approved credit limit by department.

Approved departmental credit limit.

Okay, that makes sense.

also what is your process in finance when say boots are you know 250 right now in the budget that's the limit and they're purchased for a department and that's 300 and something what is the finance department's process or any process for making sure that employee pays the city back because I feel like that's a road You'll see it.

Right. And then we have that form. Right.

Do we require that same form when they're purchased by the city on the purchase card? I don't think we do.

No, I'm talking, yeah, no.

The cities, you know, when they're purchased with the purchase card, I didn't know if we still require that form that shows this employee got boots, but it was on the purchase card.

Yes. Okay.

Because the reason I'm asking this is because it gets hard to keep up with. Right.

You know. Right.

And that's preferred, yeah, but. Yes.

Okay, that's how I like to do it. And I think that's really how we should do it, but I'm not, you know, maybe that's hard on people.

I mean, they got seven days to pay it back anyway.

They're gonna have to pay it back soon.

That's the way we do it, I guess, out in the field.

Yeah, okay. You used the term department's credit limit in place of that $2,500. How is that?

the exposure to that. And so we're not harmed on any of this. We work very well. We have online access to everything and can immediately suspend that card from our office. So if there's any attempt that there's some issue, we stop that transaction and we immediately contact the department director. So we're on that. We get the notices every day.

What I was just wondering is if you wanted to base that on amount budgeted

There's not a budget number for this.

There wouldn't be. But I'm saying that the credit limit would not exceed what was budgeted that particular month for it. So if you had the Arkansas Municipal League and you budgeted this money to go to that, and your credit card limit wouldn't exceed that for that month.

The problem is you can charge anything in the budget with this thing. It would be hundreds of thousands of dollars because you can use it for anything. You understand? That way that would not work. Yeah. Our preferred method and it does mention it in these policies is for the vendor to bill us anyway and avoid using this thing. But in the times of convenience and you know. And when it's better to do like an online payment for whatever reason, there's a lot of that now, we use the card. And that's why that sounds good at first, but it's not a real world way to do that. I mean, it'd be a lot of money.

This system isn't broken. We're just modifying this policy to match the practice.

Right. But the department is gonna share the, two cards for this department are gonna share the credit limit for this department. They don't each get now. Because as a whole, everybody suffers if one department really skyrockets theirs, you know. It's nice to have this thing, but it is very tedious to keep up with for the finance department. And it's a big old thick thing that we have every month to pay the bill. Gotta have all the original receipts, et cetera. Anyway, that's the reason why we're doing this, because it was prompted by the need for another card in parks for the assistant director. Yes, and it's always nice to do that.

I'll make a motion that we adopt the resolution.

Second.

The motion is second to adopt.

Mr. Meeker? Yes. Mr. Rainwater? Yes. Mr. Tedford? Yes. Mr. Powell? Yes. Anonymous?

Thank you. Next item is the attorney follow-up discussion on pool fill adjustments.

Yes, I just wanted to follow up. Last month, Mr. Newcomb... He's not here. He's not here. He's left. ...had a question regarding... and specifically stated that he felt like he was paying for something he did not receive. I talked to Tim and the water department, sewer department, and nothing about his usage in the last 10 years seemed out of whack. It all seemed pretty regular. He did get a pull fill adjustment once each year. But most importantly, our ordinance number 24-02 sets our sewer rates and it explicitly says in there that rates for the city sewer service shall be based upon gallons of water used. And so I feel like, I don't feel like he was not getting something that he paid for because your sewer bill is based on your water usage. I don't know where you would draw that line. What about when you water your flowers? What about when you give a glass of water to the kids from next door? I mean, there's really no way to measure sewage. And so that's consistent across all municipalities I represent and have looked at. And so I really don't think there's a problem with the way that our sewerage structure is set. It explicitly says in multiple places in here that It's based on thousands of gallons of water used. And so that's how we built for sewer. That's all I wanted to address.

If anybody has any questions, they'll be happy to answer.

So it's not broke, don't fix it.

Any questions, comments, council? Does it matter? Okay. Moving on to number six, water treatment plant resolution to waive competitive bidding on clean out of sludge ponds.

Why are we waiving competitive bidding? I bet there's 20 companies that want to do this.

Tonya's got something to say about that.

You want to address this? Or Tim?

If they are, send them my way.

We've tried. It's a very proprietary thing.

This isn't one of those deals where we're waiving competitive bidding and they're already doing it, is it?

Last week. Kidding. No. No, I inherited this. It should have been cleaned out several years ago, and it's been budgeted. And the price has gone up. They quoted us $60,000. Now the new quote is $90,000. It could go $100,000. That's for 500,000 gallons. It has to be permitted. It's very proprietary. We tried to get another quote. We couldn't. We couldn't even obtain another quote. We have a nature of what it is, so.

I'll make a motion that we approve the resolution.

Motion in three seconds.

Mr. Meeker? Yes. Mr. Rainwater? Yes. Mr. Tedford? Yes. Mr. Powell? Yes.

I want to make a quick, thank you, sir. Thank you, council. I want to make a quick comment. I kind of gave Tonya a hard time this morning. She knows people that the rest of us don't, but the Apache helicopters that flew over recently for the 250th anniversary of our country took pictures of really cool things in other communities, and when they flew across Greenwood, instead of the square or downtown or city hall, they took photos of our sludge ponds, which looked very nice from the air. She said she did not make that happen. She hadn't seen it, but if you've not seen that, I don't know where that website is, but It's kind of pretty. Well, the pretty green was glistening, though. It was kind of an interesting... Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I misspoke.

Sorry.

You know what I don't know what I'm talking about. Okay. Oh, it's on the other side. Okay. Okay. My bad. Anyway. Okay. Number seven is Park. Sorry. You were halfway up, Casey. Confirmation of Heath Weeks as Parks Commission alternate member. Is he not here tonight? Wow.

I don't know if many of y'all know Heath, but he's an outstanding guy. He showed up for a couple of the Parks Department meetings. He's helped me tons. He's kind of been my IT guy when it comes to the Christmas tree on the square. My go-to, and he's also served on the Freedom Fest committee for four years now.

Excellent. And he's a Greenwood resident, 660 Forest Parkway.

That's correct.

I taught him how to play basketball when he was a kid. That's why he's not doing it today.

He's also a volunteer coach for the trap team at the high school. Well, there you go. He's coaching. Really good guy. Yeah, he's a great guy.

I'll make a motion to approve Heath Weeks. Second.

Motion to second.

Mr. Meeker? Yes. Mr. Ramwater? Yes. Mr. Tedford? Yes. Mr. Powell?

Yes.

Next up, Parks, ordinance declaring related party with All Phase Electric and Ashley Parker, emergency passage.

Ashley Parker serves on our Parks Commission, and I just found out by happenstance that her father-in-law is Kevin Parker. He owns All Phase. Very important that we have this resolution in place for her.

Since he's about to put in our tunnel light?

Potentially, yes.

Do you want it under emergency?

Ideally, yes. If that's okay with you all. Before I sign any paperwork with all faiths.

Okay. I'll make a motion we put this ordinance on for first reading by title only.

Second. Motion and second.

Mr. Baker? Yes. Mr. Powell? No. Mr. Rainwater yes Mr. Tepford yes unanimous an ordinance declaring related parties Kevin Parker and Ashley Parker authorizing the city of Greenwood to conduct business with all phase electric declaring an emergency and for other purposes I make a motion that we waive the second and third reading second motion second to waive first and second reading Mr. Meeker yes Mr. Rainwater yes Mr. Tepford yes Mr. Powell yes unanimous I make a

Motion, we enact the emergency clause. Adopt. Adopt the emergency clause.

Adopt the ordinance.

Adopt the ordinance, I'm sorry. Thank you.

Second. Motion to second.

Mr. Maker. Yes. Mr. Rainwater. Yes. Mr. Tatchford. Yes. Mr. Powell. Yes.

You're going to miss. Can I do it now?

We need Tim. We need Tim here.

Now will you adopt the emergency clause? Second.

Motion to second to adopt the emergency clause.

Mr. Maker? Yes. Mr. Rainwater? Yes. Mr. Tedford? Yes. Mr. Powell? Yes.

Thank you very much. Thank you. I think I'm done now. All right.

Appreciate you.

Thank you. Just for a second. You mentioned Heath Weeks helping you with all things parks, and he has been for a long time. I've seen him at the Freedom Fest every year. But another young man, I'll call him here in Greenwood, that has helped out. and he'll love the fact that I'm calling him a young man, is Travis Hawkins. Travis Hawkins is there from in the morning until the night. I think he got a little overheated this time and went home to take a little break, but he is always there. He never asks. The only thing, when he comes in the week before, two weeks before the festival, he wants to know what time he's supposed to be there. and that's all he ever, I mean, he's just there. Sir? Yeah, six o'clock in the morning. If you see Travis around, do me a favor and do this, because I pretend that he's an angel, and he hates that. So, thank him. He's an amazing guy. Number nine has been removed, so we'll go to number 10, ordinance rezoning property on East Center Street, C2 to I1.

Mayor, council? Mr. Derry, Mr. Plummer, I'm here representing the Planning Department. Mr. Bell's knee is not feeling too great today. In front of you, we have a request to rezone lot one of a new four-lot subdivision off of East Highway 10 from C2 to I1 Industrial. The intention for that property is to construct storage units as set by City Council, set 2023, 2022, to move storage buildings into the industrial zone. This is the second proposal by the applicant, the first time they submitted it to us. Planning Commission did not approve of it. They did not like the layout. This new layout has two commercial lots up front which block the majority of the actual storage buildings. Also the I-1 zone has a required 50 foot buffer for the rear setback from residential zones. So overall this proposal protects the residential area and preserves the commercial frontage along our corridor.

How does it protect the R1, which is right behind it?

It's required to have a 50-foot rear buffer that buffers between the R1 and industrial use.

50 foot is from here to the door.

That is all treed currently. So part of our requirement and plan approval could be to retain the existing canopy.

And so the... Commission was fine with this.

This was the second proposal, and they did vote to approve this contingent on the final sale of the property.

That's Highway 10 right there, correct? Yes, to the south where his cursor is.

Okay, so industrial, part of that industrial would be abutting Tinsburg or Center Street the drive why why do they want to Rezone the commercial as industrial Directly on the highway that is what is required to have storage units per our zoning ordinance storage units that use is only allowed in an industrial by right and Okay. So, but I mean, okay, the corner of that lot, what are they going to use that, that corner lot for is that, I mean, show us.

So the, the flagship lot there, the, the pole portion is going to be the entrance to the property. And then they will have an office building just to the right-hand side, pretty much where the cursor is, just a little bit to the right. It's going to be the office building where you would approach and you would see an entrance gate. And then beyond that would be.

You said the planning commission denied this.

The original submission they denied.

And what did they change?

The original submission, where you see the two smaller C2 lots broken out, that was also one large industrial lot that took up all of our commercial frontage.

So let me wrap my head around where that hand is, if you go to the left of that.

That's dollar general market.

That's C2, sales tax generating business. They sell everything. We get sales tax of it. Correct. Behind that industrial, that's all high density R1.

Correct. That is all subdivision.

That is a whole lot of voters.

Yes.

Absolutely a whole bunch of voters with no buffer other than from here to the door. So our sales tax generating business is all the C2, all the commercial. Everything down there is zoned commercial. I don't see how this got through the Planning Commission. So you're asking us to remove this C2, which is sales tax generating in prime property, going down the highway. disenfranchising all those R1 voters back there, and then we get no sales tax out of it. All the financial stuff we were going through earlier was sales tax, which is how we exist and thrive and survive. Correct. And you're taking that out. Man, I'm a no. There's no way.

Gentlemen, would you like to speak, sir? I got one quick question. Did we not impose a moratorium on the billing of storage units?

Until we pass that ordinance requiring them to be in an I-1.

Right. Temporary is in? Yeah.

Temporary is temporary. We passed an ordinance to put all mini storages in I-1 because you don't expect I-1 to generate any sales tax. Right.

It would generate the same as a medical office or a doctor's office. It's just a service provided to the citizens.

But that is a service provided.

Yes. They're both services. I mean, people have stuff they've got to store, and they need places to put it. It keeps the city overall in a cleaner look.

You know, with that I-1, I mean, if a non-sales tax generation was a medical clinic, a buck backing up to high-density R-1, I'm fine. that is not a bad scenario. And those are a lot of voters back there to disenfranchise people coming up for an election.

Well, it's not just the election. It's not the election. It's just the fact that Typically, you have buffers between industrial and residential.

And there is a buffer there. There's a 50-foot buffer that has trees.

When we talk about buffer, we're talking about types of going to C1, then going to multifamily, then going to R1. The intensity of the use, and this does not follow that typical planning design.

Okay. Well, the spot in the very front corner that's attached to the road is more of the office. It's not going to be your storage. You're not even going to see the outside of the units. The part that's hooked to that is going to be all inside. It's going to look like a building, for one. And then you've got, like I said, the 50-foot buffer that's going to have trees. It's going to have a fence up that buffers that zone from the neighbors. I mean, the gentleman, people putting this in, it's not their first time doing this. They've done it throughout Central Arkansas, up to Jonesboro and Paragool, up in that area. We originally, like he said, had the first two lots as industrial. We went through Planning Commission. They was like, no, we don't like that. So when we stepped back a little bit, got with our client, I mean, they've got to have access to the back. So we pushed most of the storage that you would see is in the back of that property going behind those C1 or C2 lots. So therefore, they can, you know, a C2 lot or something could go in front of those buildings to cover, to help buffer anybody from sitting up in the streets. And we also submitted drawings, renderings of the property to the Planning Commission to show how they were going to do it, along with a drawing for them to see the units, how they looked, and on the lot.

How does this benefit the city of Greenwood?

It gives your residents a place to store their items. Instead of putting them in their backyard, putting them out on their carport, You know, putting it in their garage, not being able to park in their garage. I mean, people store their stuff. I've got stuff in a storage unit myself.

You know, I've got a great lobby. And that lobby has prevented us from collecting sales tax on all this. So there's no financial benefit to the city of Greenwood for us to improve this.

Do they not get revenue off of the rental of the units? No. I'm not a finance person, so I didn't know.

No. That's why we passed the moratorium. If you have property that's supposed to be commercial use and that what that Center Street is, then if we tell you we want mini storage on industrial, so then you take industrial and you replace commercial, it's defeating the whole purpose of zoning commercial. And as far as the city goes, when we're looking at revenues coming in, we're not going to get anything from that. And that could be all commercial there. It doesn't have to all be commercial, but you're taking the prime piece, that lot right there.

But, I mean, to be honest with you, a commercial property, how much of a building is going to use up that property? That's the reason why we kept those spots on the front, one-acre lots on the front, and then also you've got the big one on the right side there. We kept those out there to... still have the revenue-generating businesses out there and be hidden in the back. We had to keep that little section in the front for access for our property. You have to have that access to the road. We can't put our zone back in the back and not have access to a road.

How wide is that right there? Do what? What's that distance?

Let me see here.

Let me pull the plans up.

I believe those lots are, were they 120 feet or 180 feet?

I don't have approximately 125. The plant I got right here don't have it on it.

Okay.

But it's probably probably over 100 foot, a little over 100 foot or so, or maybe.

So that's 100 foot of major water and sewer distribution line that we get no benefit from.

And just for perspective. The lot that McDonald's sits on on Center Street is, what did we just say, 215 feet deep? It was about 215. Just put a McDonald's on a lot. So these C2 commercial lots, what's the depth of those?

Off the top of my head, I don't know that number.

Well, we need to know that because it's fairly limited

You mentioned pictures that you provided.

I didn't make that planning commission meeting.

We did. I don't have them on me. No, I didn't bring them. I walked out of the office in a hurry. It was trying to be a storm coming through Searcy today before I headed this way. And they were sitting on my desk along with all my plans and everything sitting on my desk. So I had to have somebody from the office email me.

Will you be the owner of this?

No, we're not. We're the engineering company.

Who is it? Crestwood or Crest... Where do they live here in Greenwood? I don't think they live in Greenwood. Where do they live? In Sebastian County?

I'm not exactly sure where their actual main office is. I know they've got offices in Beebe. They've got offices, I mean, units in Beebe, Perigul, Jonesboro, Searcy.

So the money they profit off of this property is being spent elsewhere. Mm-hmm. Well, those are businesses that generate sales tax revenue. You get your pushback on the election.

I mean, I've been to plenty of planning commissions, and a lot of times when somebody's in opposition, they show up, I've seen a full room full of people that are in opposition. I've seen a full room of people that are for it. You know, it goes both ways. I'll tell you.

How far out were those letters sent, Sonny? How far?

400 feet, is it not? 300? It's 300 feet. There it is.

I'll tell you, you had me if you'll remit sales tax on every unit in there.

And this industrial rezoning, this was all commercial, correct? Yes. And it was all commercial. So I need to know the depth of those. I know, I know. I need to see the depth of those two C2 commercial lots sitting there. That's what he's looking at.

I don't think that's going to be adequate for... We did discuss this at Planning Commission. They are adequate size to put a... drive-through facility on. They're 264 wide on their frontage by 166 deep. So they're not as deep as McDonald's, but they're wider than McDonald's is. The lot two, the closest one to the left is 221 by 166.

Well, we're compromising twice. We don't have a zoning buffer between the industrial and the residential. There's no scenario where it speaks well to abutting an industrial property to a residential because it could be mini storage today and then you could sell that and somebody else could put some type of industrial usage in there that's not compatible with those people. It's not compatible with residential, it's not compatible with commercial. Ideally, you would have more depth on those commercial lots. That could be, I just can't see the benefit to the residents, to the city sales tax of putting this in. You're usurping commercial to put in something that is not appropriate, abutting residential, and not generating sales tax. There's absolutely nothing that I can see that advances anything in our interest.

One of y'all just said a few minutes ago that you'd be fine if a hospital or something that wasn't generating, still not generating your tax stuff went in there, you said it'd be fine. That's one person who said that. I said that.

I would be fine.

That's what I said.

If you have a little mercy clinic right there abutting that neighborhood, I'm fine with it. It generates no sales tax.

And see, that goes forward. You're talking about sales tax, but then you're saying, well, here's an exception to that. You know, here's an exception to that. There's always an exception to everything. And like we said with the buffer, in your code, there's nothing that says you have to go from an I-1 zone to a multifamily to this to that. There's nowhere in there. We put that 50-foot buffer in there to have that buffer where you're not going to have a group of, And nobody showed up at the meeting to object to the design or anything like that.

And this was the sign for rezoning was posted on the property and everybody was notified. And it was, I think, put in the newspaper.

And nobody showed up at the meeting to object to it. You know, so the neighbor, and all them neighbors are budding them, so I know for a fact those neighbors right there were notified, and I know that everybody within 300 feet of the property line, not the center of the property, but of the property line, were notified.

Once it's industrial, any type of industrial use can go in there, and if somebody starts using chemicals...

somebody starts a condition put on it the condition for me would be you pay sales tax i don't have no control that'd be an owner question and i don't know how you pay sell i mean i don't know how they pay sales tax there's a law that they don't have to because they got a really good lobby and that's probably why you get pushback from people like us and if you're counting votes I'll go into what I think about the Planning Commission at Council Forum over this.

Yeah, I'm not, you know, they can get mad and they can vote me out, but industrial use is industrial use today, tomorrow, the next week, and the year after that. And it can be anything that qualifies industrial can go in there. And what goes in there today is mini storage. May not bother them today, but as long as you're industrial, the next person that comes in there and uses that property can use it for something that's not appropriate And to go in and take sales tax generating property away, I just don't see any, I don't see any benefit from allowing this to take place. Just one man's opinion. I would refer it back to the Planning Commission and tell them, you know, look at your zoning, Trees are not a buffer. Trees don't have to exist there forever. If you could go in there and you could guarantee that the trees would live forever and they would never be removed, you still have the problem of industrial use in the future being something that's incompatible with residential and it doesn't generate any sales tax. There's no planning support for this approval. and I would take it back to the Planning Commission. I think we oughta vote on it.

Or take no action.

Yeah, I think, yeah, if you wanna halt it, then it's up to you guys.

I would move that we reject the zoning request. Is that a motion? I'll second it.

Is that a motion and a second?

He did move it. Who seconded that, Rod? Mr. Rod. Okay.

So repeat what the motion was? To reject. Reject, okay.

Reject this proposed ordinance. Right?

Yes.

Mr. Meeker? Yes. Mr. Rainwater? Yes. Mr. Tedford? Yes. Mr. Powell?

Yes.

Unanimous.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think I'm up next. Okay, I believe 11 has been removed. So we're moving to 12. Planning. The description was given by Miss Barry earlier.

I don't have it written down. We don't have a piece of paper. It's gonna be a hundred presentation.

Okay. I gave you all two sheets of paper, two packets.

Oh, the ones that were sitting up here?

Yes. Those were just the applications for these conditional use requests.

Sorry. We do have pieces of paper. He can put those down after. Yes. So it says.

The first conditional use request that we're entertaining this evening is for Alpha Packaging for their facility on Ware Road. They are wanting to lease that facility to an individual alterations by Lori, who is not an industrial use. They do not conform to the current zoning. We are not requesting to change the zoning, but to allow a conditional use for that commercial use in an industrial zone. Conditional uses are only good for a year. They can be renewed. as long as they're continuing that use, but as soon as that use ceases to operate, it automatically reverts back to an I-1 use. Is this the little building off the parking lot I think we talked about? Okay.

Oh, you got it in there? I'm sorry.

There were, while Alpha Packaging underwent an office remodel a couple years back, they transformed that facility into their temporary offices. where the where the red mark is yes alterations She currently has a location in Mr. Oliver's facility on Center Street across from the dairy.

So she would have customers coming in. It's a true C2 type business. She's going to perform a service, charge them sales tax, and send them out the door. That is correct. And then when she goes away, it reverts back to I-1. Yes. Well, I'm all for it.

Alpha Packaging did mention that they might possibly entertain the idea of having a storefront in the future if this current proposal was to go away. For their factory? Yeah, for their factory.

So we're actually allowing a more restrictive use of the property, which is good. I mean, it's more restrictive. Yeah.

Yes. This was voted by the Planning Commission unanimously.

So do we need to make a motion to approve?

Yes. This wasn't anything that required ordinance by our current ordinance that requires it comes to you. It just says it requires your approval. It doesn't state that we need a resolution. We just need a vote of the council.

I'll make a motion to approve it. I'll second it. Motion and second to approve.

Mr. Meeker? Yes. Mr. Rainwater? Yes. Mr. Tedford? Yes. Mr. Powell? Yes.

Thank you. Mr. Michaels?

The next item is going to be a conditional use for the Little Blue Farm stand, which is located on West Denver Street. I think the address is 1414 West Denver. It's just east of the intersection of Webster and Denver. This property previously had a house on it that was torn down. I'm not sure how long ago, but it's been empty and vacant for quite a while.

So this will just be conditioned on them being there, and then it reverts back to R1? Yes.

They were not aware of our processes and procedures, so they had already got the building put in place and had some gravel work performed when I drove by and had a conversation with them, got them... set straight on the proper procedure and then they've gone through the appropriate channels ever since. They do have some solar panels just behind the farm stand to power the stand. They did state that if they have some success with the business that they would look at getting city water and power in the future.

We have had no comments. Okay. And then the heating and air guy back there behind, nothing from him.

We have had no comments. It went through planning commission, public hearing.

They're selling stuff?

Yes. I believe that they have it open to multiple vendors. If you wanted to put your product in there, you can. They've got security cameras and what not, it stays, the doors stay shut so you show up, you can open the doors, peruse the products.

That would be a business that collects and remits sales tax.

Correct.

Yep, I'm for it.

Hunter, real quick, you got, this says no sign at Roe, they intend not to put a sign up?

Correct, they don't want to put a sign out. A lot of these farm stands operate off of word of mouth.

Would there be an objection for them to do that at a later date within that area?

They would have to adhere to our sign ordinance And the idea the idea on that is if they're if they're putting in a business like this it's supposed to Limit the impact on the surrounding and it's not a high density area here every all these properties are fairly decent sized but in I mean in a residence what you're seeing would be if somebody wanted to open up something like this in a subdivision, you're gonna have a lot of traffic coming into that subdivision that wouldn't ordinarily be there and it's gonna disrupt the character of that neighborhood. And this does not seem to have that potential.

No, this is operating off of one of our minor arterial streets. I don't foresee an issue with traffic in this area. It's got a limited customer capacity. I don't foresee having multiple cars there at any point in time.

Unless they've got sweet corn.

And if they are, they're going to be there for a really short amount of time.

So, Hunter, let me ask you. I mean, they've got one building there now. Yes, sir. Next year, they put another building and another building. I mean, at what point does it become a restricted-use residential neighborhood to need to go to a C1, to commercial use?

I think that if there was any addition beyond what is approved with this conditional use, that they would have to come back for another conditional use.

We can add that to our approval.

You can. You can approve it with said conditions that it stays with this single structure. It stays a little bit more.

Yeah. That's a good catch, Ralph.

Yeah. So that's what's...

It's kind of like a shed. It's a four-foot by eight-foot shed.

You're expecting a visit from the fire marshal.

It'll be gone before you get there. I'll make a motion to approve it.

With that condition.

With that condition, with the current building as is. No addition. No addition.

Because if they wanted to have additional in there, then what would you do commercially if someone came in and said, I'm locating a building here on a three-acre lot. and then they decide they want to put some other similar business. You would ask for some type of site plan. Correct. And you would want, and now you've got additional use in there, you would need probably additional infrastructure. So that needs to be noted in there that, you know, any additional use may require site plan implementation.

I think this is, in my opinion, if they determine that this business is successful enough to need to expand, that they should look for the appropriate commercial property and the appropriate commercial location. And that would revert back to R1. Because at that point, you're not the little blue farm stand. You're the big blue farm market. I agree.

I have a motion to second.

Mr. Meeker? Yes. Mr. Rainwater? Yes. Mr. Tedford? Yes. Mr. Powell? Yes. Unanimous.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Michaels. I believe, if my calculation's right, that's all the agenda items. We'll go to department reports and questions from council.

Someone was telling me today that on the bypass, that there are some large trucks that are turning on Main Street. and he said would it be not more appropriate to have maybe a sign there that says trucks take Coker instead of Main Street because the cars get stacked up waiting to get onto the bypass and these large trucks are trying to turn at a 90 degree and that Coker has a turn, a curve turnout. I said I would present that.

Jeff, you might want to address that. Here's what I would say about that just in general. We can put up as many signs that we can afford to put up, and we still end up with semis on Bell Road today, as of late today, who turn around and jackknife in one of our employees' yards. So I'm not saying that's not a bad idea. I don't know. You might be able to address the fact that Coker in itself You're talking about coming.

He was talking about when I'm waiting at the stop and a semi is coming from Center Street or 10, whatever it is at that point, and they're turning left, it's a 90 degree, whether if you're going down to Coke or you've got kind of a curve to turn.

The only reason that they should even be on Center Street would be a local delivery.

Well, there are going to be deliveries for the schools. Right, but if they're delivering to the grocery store or to the school, then our preference would be for them to take the Coker exit off the bypass as a semi rather than taking the Main Street, because the Main Street's a hard 90 degree right with potentially multiple cars here, and Coker Street's a much more gradual turn. It's just somebody brought that up and I said I would bring it up at the meeting for consideration.

I don't know that we can sign it. If they can, I say we, I happened to be in side by side with Chief and Officer Gossett Saturday while we were determining what needed to be done to get ready for the festival and we're sitting kind of in the middle of the road there and here comes a Walmart truck behind us not knowing where he was I guess and the Chief led him through the parking lot behind the tank And he was able to turn, come back out on center, and then turn left at that light, and then hit the bypass and turn left and go to Boonville. That's where he was going. But how do you get that far without?

The GPS has been updated. There's a flyover already from the map. Yeah, I've got it on mine.

Yeah, there's a discretion there. And what's interesting, we talk about this a lot, what's interesting is there was word that came from R-Dot that is not a truck wrap, but R-Dot themselves placed a truck wrap sign by First Baptist Church. We're still dealing with all that daily.

Just so I can say I did what I said I was going to do. That helps me wrap my head around that. Thank you.

Looking at those categories, we don't have a wholesaler business here, but I would imagine most of it's like me. When I go in, And if it's going into my product, I'm sales tax exempt. So it's probably the sales tax exemptions coming from places like Yeagers and lumber and stuff that's being delivered in town.

Martin Young's business out there.

Martin Young's business, yes, because they're sales tax exempt, but they're recording what they've paid. Right.

Okay. I appreciate that.

Do you think that's correct?

There was a toy store in Fort Smith, and it's got a little small storefront, and they sell neat little toys. Nine-tenths of their business is online, and you just see this little place. You can go buy a yo-yo, a fancy little yo-yo there, but that's not what their business is about, and there might be people who sell retail and then do a large business wholesaling.

Chief? Sir? Yeah, you can, absolutely. No, go ahead. Come to the mic, sir. Tell us who you are and where you live.

Chief Ryan, City of Greenwood Fire Department. Just gonna let you know, we did get the safer grant applied for. Tom and I and even the mayor came over and went through the final process before I hit send to make sure that he knew what all it was that it entailed. And so we applied for three. and it's for four years, so it's three full time. So it'd be a total of nine to meet the NFPA requirement. And so we'll see how it goes.

I looked at the application and Angie did a really good job.

And when do you typically get an answer?

Just saying.

No, most of the time it's probably, I mean, for last year's they just came out this year. And so most of the time it's about a year behind. You're like a year, yeah.

So you won't know for a year?

So we may not know until maybe February or so. Maybe get lucky in December, November, something. You don't need to be in a big hurry about it. And so anyway, it'll have to go, it has to go, the process now is it goes in, the computer will kick it out. If there's anything that doesn't meet the computer, and then it goes to a board. And then there's, if it actually makes it to panel, you have three fire chiefs or firefighters or somebody that's on that panel from another state that go through all the state of Arkansas ones. pick and choose and so it's no one from our state gets to choose and so I've had five if I get the opportunity to be on one of those panels I know there's a couple of my associations that I'm part of every once while they asked for it that's one of those times that will ask to use more on the credit card to be able to go on that trip even though the product they'll pay for it for two weeks and learn how to grade those so we can ride them better and you go there after you look at 500 of them in a row, you start to see the patterns. So anyway, it's applied for. We got it all in. That was done on the 21st or 22nd, whichever day it was, it was required. So just gonna let you know.

Thanks, Chief. One other question that we, or one topic of discussion that we discussed at that meeting, or our budget study session, whatever you want to call it, was discussing with EMS them and picking up, you know, us covering...

Yes, the mayor and I, I went on vacation for about all last week and a couple days before that, so we have not had a chance to have our meeting yet. We'll ask you again next month. Do what? We will ask you again next month. So the mayor and I will have to get together and have that meeting with the judge. But, yeah, after I got the main thing was try to get that grant done in time, and then after we got that done, I took some time to go with the family and go to D.C. before all the excitement and the fireworks. Anything else? Yes, sir.

Last time we visited, you were going to bring us back on-call policy pay shifts.

Well, we haven't had time to have a meeting with the board. You've been on vacation.

When you tell us that other next month, tell us. Bring back your proposal just so we can approve it.

All right. We'll look at it and see what we can figure out. And I just know right now, I don't know if you saw our numbers. I put our stuff together at the last minute tonight and didn't realize it was past five o'clock when I hit send to Charlotte. So I don't know if she was able to get it out to you or not.

It's on our tablets.

But again, it was half the med calls had zeros. So it's very consistent. And so we're going to have to do something different.

Well, the on-call policy would be a tool, so let's try it.

I think our biggest problem with that's going to be that we have nine that live outside of town, and we have 12 that work for full-time services, so it's going to drop us down to about maybe 10 or 12 that even have that option, and so we'll see if it's going to work.

They may not do it, but just bring us back a policy with what you're going to pay, the shift, and let's approve it, and then let's try it. Give it a try.

Okay.

All right. I appreciate it. And then report back, you know, over time, just like you do everything else. Is it working? Is it not?

Right. I forwarded your report to the council.

Okay.

I appreciate it. Anything else?

thanks chief thank you any other department head for anybody yeah i got a couple questions for jeff um updates on some uh drainage i had met with a gentleman up on burgess drive i guess he's saying that someone come out and put flags in their drainage ditch and was doing some surveying and then nothing happened

do some of that in-house ourselves. The problem we get into

Okay. The ditch that T's into is an issue too, correct? That's right. That's what you're talking about.

It dead ends right there. Yeah. And so if you put more water on it, you go up and over, it hits the houses down below.

Okay.

So it's kind of a tedious little thing.

The other spot is on Woodland Trail over in Forest Hills. It's that ditch that would be on the west side of Forest Hills in between the school and the houses. Yes. The one at the very bottom? Yeah. The one that's sprayed all the time?

The one that has the, yeah. The school, of course, said have at it. So we don't have any problems there. But when we got down to that private property there, we needed to contract these to get all the way to the highway. So when it drives out a little bit more, we'll be able to get back in there and start scooping stuff out and make a good trail all the way down to the pen. That's the longest part of it.

It ought to be good and dry.

And you mentioned, I think you mentioned the spray yard or the property. We're addressing that too. Code Enforcements, we've sent numerous letters and requests and what are you doing and why are you doing it. Because neighbors obviously don't like to look at it and we don't either. So we're looking into that. Maybe it shouldn't be with all that stuff that's in the dirt. I don't know.

Yeah, I know.

Looks pretty bad. Maybe Hunter or somebody. Do you guys know how the gas station over there on these sides do? How are they coming along? I know they've been working in there cleaning it. I mean, they've been doing some work. I'm just wondering how they're.

They have approached me with a preliminary set of drawings. They were not architecturally stamped, so they were turned back around and requested to have architectural drawings. That was supposed to be about a month out. That was the last communication I had had.

We're talking about the east side gas station that caught on fire. The A-1, yeah.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, they just had kind of a floor plan layout of the building, said that there wasn't going to be any exterior modifications. I politely disagreed and then told them they were going to have to have a structural engineer come in and certify the structural integrity of the interior of the building and then provide an architectural set of plans that involved having an exterior disconnect for the gas pumps.

That would be nice.

Yeah. Yeah. But that was about a week ago. So hoping we have something in three or four weeks. We'll see.

Okay. I'd like to get them back open, though. We've got it all over there.

Okay. If there's no other department questions or from council, we go into council forums. Anybody got anything? Nope.

I know I was gonna say something about the Planning Commission, but I don't mean to say anything.

At one point, several months ago, we talked about now is a time when there's not a terrible large amount of development inside the city, and those are the times you take advantage of a quiet time to put in place policies that will give people time to react. And one of those is when we extend services and we're looking at getting paid back for those extensions of services, we always react to a development and put one of those things in place and figure out how the recoup is gonna take place. And Tim's always been the one to come up with those. I think we need to look at something right now in terms of it's a quiet time for development. Let's look at a policy or an ordinance that we can put in place and adapt each time so that they can't be circumvented. I know we had one where we extended infrastructure out and people found out about the extension and bought taps before we had the chance to put the ordinance in place. so i think we need to do it now and have us start looking at that some type of ordinance and the other thing that we need to do and i guess this is more of a question uh sunny hunter Is the Planning Commission really taking a good, hard look at the lack of extraterritorial jurisdiction? We lost that last year, and I spoke with the Deputy Planning Director in Fort Smith, and everybody uses that term, the Wild Wild West. Spoke with an engineer who said it's the Wild Wild West. Fort Smith owns some water rights, which gives them a little bit of leverage, but we don't have that. And we really need to start...

Okay.

Yeah, what about our Master Street plan? How do we enforce our master street plan? I mean, that's not a city service that we're providing, but as somebody develops, if they want to put something with three-acre lots out there and it is going to be right in the middle of where our master street plan extends out, we can't control that. So we need to look at strategies. We need to find out what other communities are doing, what Fort Smith is thinking about, what Barling's thinking about. We need to be proactive. And the ordinance says that it is gonna be the responsibility of the county planning board of which one does not exist for Sebastian County. So if it means we've got to start looking and looking at the county and saying, hey, This is your responsibility. How are we going to carry this thing out? But we all need to start looking at it because these are huge planning issues. OK.

Not about that specific, but I do want to remind everybody about Issue 3 coming up on the November ballot. If you're not aware of it, please make yourself aware of it. I invited a gentleman that was at the AML conference this year to come and speak. We've heard many, many speakers talk about it, and John's one of them, John Wilkerson. But whether it be John or somebody, I'm going to have to come to— to visit with us at a council meeting and also answering questions if you've got anything. If you're not aware, it's the tool that's going to help Arkansas get in the game with incentives. Every state except Arkansas and Arizona has this benefit in their toolbox, but until it gets passed in November, we don't have it. So it's going to be a deal breaker, if you will, if it gets passed. Anyway, anything else for Council Forum? If not, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

So one last thing. We have a budget study session scheduled for when? Next week?

Okay.

Is it? 15th.

Oh, July? I don't even have it on my calendar.

Yep.

Is it a quarterly financial review? Oh, okay. You said a budget study session. It just made me think of next year's budget.

Yeah, well, it's a quarterly review. I'm not going to be able to make it.

I'm not going to be hearing.

No, I'm going to say, why can't you do them some other days on Wednesday?

Yeah, you don't like Wednesday.

No, I go to church on Wednesday night.

Yeah, we set those in the calendar. When we're doing the calendar. Yep. What about July 30th? Is that good for anybody? It's a Thursday night. Or the 28th, a Tuesday night. Is that bad for fire?

Chief, the last Tuesday of the month. The last Tuesday of the month.

Tuesday, 28th will be okay.

It's a fire meeting. It's a fire meeting.

What? The 28th?

What about Thursday, like you said?

The 30th. Is that good?

Tom, you good with that?

July 30th?

It should be either one.

So July 30th at?

Six.

That's what?

Six is what we usually have it.

Yep. Danielle's not here. She'll bring something homemade, I'm sure.

It's okay.

Yeah. They beat us out last time.

Okay. Everybody good with that? Good. Good. Anything else? If not, motion to adjourn. Second. Second. Thank you all.

No, and I think the only one we scored was a penalty kick. I think the only one we scored was a penalty kick. Yes, sir. 50. 50.