Code Enforcement - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. It is 05:00 and it is time that we call to order the city of Jonesboro Public Safety Council Committee meeting today. If you are on this committee and in attendance, if you will mark your attendance on the device in front of you. Okay, I am showing seven members present. Thank you everybody. So we do have a quorum to proceed today. First item on the agenda today is going to be our approval of minutes from our previous meeting on Tuesday 03/17/2026.

Move to adopt unless changes are noted. Second.

Okay I have a motion a second to approve the minutes from the previous meeting as presented. If there's no questions from anybody on the committee we'll go ahead and we will take a vote to approve that item. And that motion does carry. Thank you everybody. Moving on to our next item on the agenda being new business which are resolutions to be introduced.

Our first resolution that we have before us today is resolution twenty six zero four five. A resolution by the city council of the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas to condemn property located at 1205 North Floyd Street, Jonesboro, Arkansas 72401. Parcel number 0114312301200. Owner David A. And Melissa A.

Matthews. Whereas the above property has been inspected and been determined unsuitable for human habitation whereas all stipulations have been met the condemnation process to proceed with the condemnation of this property. Now, therefore, be resolved by the city council of the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas. The city should proceed with the condemnation of the property located at 1205 North Floyd Street, Jonesboro, Arkansas 72401.

Move forward to full council.

Second. Okay,

I have a motion to second to forward this item on to full council. Do I have any questions from anybody on the committee? Any from the administration and any from the public in attendance? Okay seeing none we will go ahead and we will call a vote on this item. Okay and that item does carry.

Thank you everybody. Moving on to our next item on the agenda which number five being pending items and I show none in front of the committee today and brings us to our next agenda item being other business. This first one that we have is going to be a communication item regarding mosquito proposals that have been submitted by vector disease control along with daddy rabbit aviation. At this time, I will go ahead and I will entertain I think everybody's had an opportunity to review the bids from the RFP process and I'll go ahead and I'll open it up to committee for any questions for either of these two vendors as they see fit.

Mr. Chairman, I know you had made a request for members that are the individuals that were submitting the bids to be here. I know someone's here from vectors. Anybody here from daddy rabbit? If we could, I'd like to let each of them come up and get just a couple of minutes to give us kind of an overview of what their proposal is.

Sure, definitely. That sounds great. First up, we have our current vendor being vector disease control. So we'll go ahead and

we'll have them approach the microphone please. Thank

the board. I'm Steve Popovich. I'm the chief entomologist with VDCI. Jim Stark, who is the local manager here, I am his direct boss. Just basically want to give you a brief overview of the Jonesboro contract.

We are a multi state mosquito control full IPM vector vendor. That means that we break our programs down into six main programs. And this would be starting with surveillance, larviciding, adult deciding, efficacy testing, public education, as well as any other services that we may have. We've detailed some of those things in the proposal. Our proposal offers the use of routine use of six vehicles.

These are heavy duty sprayers to spray roughly 5,500 miles, which is work the with do work that are coming into the area. 20,000,000 square feet of larva siding as well as a couple of specialty items that we have which is barrier equipment will go out and we've done this in the past and we have a special piece of equipment that does treatments around parks that we can send that. It's a truck mounted unit. We can send it out to the parks, spray around, and it in combination with the spray trucks and the aircraft provides a barrier or repellent to those areas. And we also have something that we use called the tunnel rat that allows us to do some space spraying in hard to get at areas that may be obscured by foliage, trees, those kind of things, as well as can be used if we've got encephalitis such as West Nile or any of the other encephalitis that come in the area.

We can get into those hiding spots where the West Nile mosquitoes go and hide, and that can be underneath homes if they're raised or sewers and those type of things. One of the key pillars of the program is to use surveillance. We use three different traps here for the city. These are gravid traps, New Jersey light traps, and CDC traps. And these three traps look different species and different types of mosquitoes, as well as we supplement that with something called landing rate, where our inspectors, while they're doing these traps multiple times in the week, will go out and let the mosquitoes land on them for one minute, determine what type of mosquitoes and how many are landing on them.

And from that data, as well as service requests that people call in or that may come from the commission, we can look at that data on a daily basis and direct our efforts to a pinpointed area. Normally during the year we start off where we're doing truck applications two to three times a week, and that increases during the peak of the season to six times a week with the supplement of the aircraft. Usually around July 4, we start our regiment where it's a weekly aircraft treatment after that. We do have 13 colleagues that are based here at the Jonesboro office. 12 of them actually live in the city of Jonesboro.

Eight of them are dedicated just to this program and then the rest, the remainder of those individuals supplement what is needed in Jonesboro, as well as we have 10 support personnel. I've brought the chief pilot of VDCI with me, as well as I'm a pilot, but don't fly here in Jonesboro. And we've got other two PhDs on staff that will direct. I'm a master's degree entomologist. We have two master's degree entomologists and two PhDs that oversee the program, making sure that we're using science to direct that program.

We do have a lab, two of them, one in Denver, which is not conducive to here, but then one in Louisiana that is an in house laboratory where we do testing of mosquitoes if a state laboratory is not able to do that. So we typically will take our samples from the mosquitoes, we'll identify them down to species here, and then we'll test them for disease on a weekly basis. If we do have positives that end up coming into the area and we need to respond, we have a virus response protocol that involves multi days of spraying, larvicide of that area, which is treatment of the animal, to do do that. Levels for transmission. I And think that might be it as far as you know what we do offer that laboratory as a backup to the state lab and it's something if we need a very quick turnaround within a day, we can overnight those mosquitoes and get them tested in our own in house laboratory.

We do rotate through the products during the year, so we use several different mosquito control products as well as test those products with a couple of different methods where we bring a biologist in and that person tests the mosquito control products to make sure that they are working effectively against the local mosquito population. I don't know if you wanted to let them go or if you want to

Just a question. I'm trying to clarify. You said something, and maybe it's just the terminology aspect of it. You said something about repellent. Is there a difference between repelling the mosquitoes to keep them from coming in and killing them on contact? Are there two separate processes?

So there is a lot of the things that so what we use in the mosquito trucks as well as the aircraft are designed to kill the mosquitoes on contact. Basically what happens is the mosquitoes are beating their wings, and because of that pattern that they beat their wings, the droplets are brought in and impinge upon either the abdomen or the thorax of the mosquito, and a couple of those droplets are enough concentration of insecticide to kill the mosquito. The other technology that we use is a barrier treatment, and we would use that for ballparks or backpacks where we'd go around a wood lot, or we have an ATV that's able to do this too, and it would blow a pesticide mixture of water that is basically a micro encapsulation, and you can envision it as a BB or whatever that would then impinge itself upon the foliage around that ballpark. A mosquito could land on that and it could affect control that way, but what it also does is it over time allows that mosquito prevents that mosquito from coming into the area. It it disrupts their senses, but also keeps them from coming in.

So we do it as a dual approach where we use the trucks and the barrier to prevent if you're having a a festival or something like that, you can kill the mosquitoes that are in the area and then prevent them with this repellent.

It's a combination of the two.

It's a combination. It's not the same stuff.

They're not done at the same time.

They're done with two different pieces of equipment. But they would be done typically either the day before or you could do them the same day, but they're not done with the same piece of equipment at the same time.

Starting after July 4, you do one a week for eight weeks aerial That's correct. What seems to have the most impact? And I know it may depend on the terrain. I know Jim was kind of educating me a little bit about, I guess, in the heavier forest area that the aerial may not be as effective, but what has best effect?

It depends on the product. Aerial, get broader scope penetration, but from the ground you're able to penetrate those areas that you can't get to with the air as they're going up underneath the foliage, up underneath houses, those kind of things. You're at ground level, you're then spreading that material out. And usually with the spray truck, you get 95% plus control at 300 feet away from the truck and you can get 80 some percent control 500 feet and then it drops. But if you've got a two to 10 mile an hour wind, it will blow that stuff through the area and effect control that way.

And I understand it's all subject to the weather, but that was one of the questions, fine I'm driving down the road, how much does that penetrate? It's great if you're in your front yard, but if you're in your backyard, are you really getting that much

saturation Well, have wind currents if the wind is going in one direction, you do have wind wind currents that whip and come around the house. I mean, the mosquito is directly behind the house and it's up against the house, the potential is not as great there. But generally, the reason that we spray at dusk and then two hours, two and a half, three hours after dusk is because that's the peak activity time of the mosquitoes. And so it will linger in the air for thirty minutes to forty five minutes. And so in that particular time period, they're going to be on the wing and causing those droplets that are in the air to impinge upon their bodies and affect control.

And I see you're doing a combination of both aerial and ground.

That's correct.

But I live on the South Side of town, and when the sun goes down, you come inside. I mean, it's that simple. It's not pleasant.

And that's why at the times it's necessary to do a multi level approach, the aircraft and the trucks, that we use twin engine aircraft. One thing that is required for congested areas, we have a congested area plan that allows us to treat over populated areas. That population can be anything from a couple of houses, but all of Jonesboro falls in a congested area and requires a congested area plan. And unless you're using helicopters, you're required to use a twin engine aircraft to provide that aerial control. And one of the things that I mentioned earlier is that we're going to be, even though it's not the city limits itself, but we're, because the production area is outside of that, we're treating that with

the The

rice fields to the south of town, yeah.

And those are the production areas. Most of the mosquitoes, the rice field mosquitoes that you're having, the two big species that come in are Anopheles quadromaculatus and Saurophora columbii. Those two mosquitoes are being produced out of those rice fields.

I'm just trying to see where we can get the most effectiveness, whether it's ground control or aerial. Aerial seems like you can get a wider area, but I don't know which one is the best and has the most effect on it.

You can get a wider area with aerial, but you also need that component of ground in order to penetrate those areas as well as the you can't make repeated applications with a lot of these products that we have. You're required or you're reduced by the label that you can't go above a certain pound of active ingredient per year. So the amount of applications can exceed that.

So you're limited to what you could saturate an area with based

on That's what correct. The chemical And that's why we rotate through some products.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Yes. Chairman, I know this is a tough question. Try to compare us to another city. Different cities have all kinds of different topography and wetness and humidity and temperature and size and all that kind of thing. But how would you compare what we spend versus some somewhat similar city of size somewhere in the Delta?

Well, I think that your program based on the amount of mosquitoes we use, we do a lot in Louisiana. We do 10 full county programs in Louisiana, and I think that the area of Acadia, which is on the western portion, is probably the most comparable, and those areas because of the rice fields. You're in a unique situation. We also do Cleveland area of Mississippi that's also a similar type of topography based on the rice. We do have throughout the Delta rice everywhere.

But as far as the size of the program and the spend, mean, of the Louisiana programs are around $1,000,000 is what the spend is. There's several of them that are half 1,000,000, but some of them go up to $3,000,000 It depends on the type of program, the population, the broadness of the parish county, municipality. This being we also do several, you know, we do the Blytheville area. We have more of an impact from the rice field here than we do in Blytheville. I would say probably the closest comparison would be the Cleveland, Mississippi location with the amount of rice that's up against the city that affords for Mesquite.

And I believe their budget is right around the same thing in the upper fours.

If we were going to spend more money, what would we spend it on?

If you were going to spend more money, it could be rotation of additional area.

Could we just absolutely saturate the parks? Jim and I talked about the difficulty, parks where there's baseball and stuff being played and all that adds a lot of difficulties, but like let's say Cricket Forest Park, Jim says we're pretty welcomed there by the patrons. So could we saturate some of the parks to help?

That barrier machine that's in the back of the that I was talking about that Mr. Miller had asked about is one that we could saturate the parks with. That is something that we do now and plan to do more in the future as that two fold effect in hitting the parks. Jim has them on a regiment to have the parks sprayed more routinely than the zones even in the beginning of the season to get ahead of those. People have less, you may be able to go inside in your house, but if you're at the park, have no protection from the mosquitoes.

And if you're at a game, the last thing you want is to be being torn up by mosquitoes. And so one of our focuses has been that, will continue to be that. I think we've got this new machine that is able to make it more effective, not effective, but efficient in applying it, enable to be spraying a wider area, helps us do it more quickly and get back to those areas more often.

Last question. If we're going to spend more money, you extend the period of time in which we do treatment?

The period of time here seems to be more finite. It depends on the application of the agricultural fields. It really ramps up hard and then it falls pretty sharply towards the end of the year. So going further, what we typically do is we larvicide early on to get on top of what we can as far as the larval mosquito. But when the agriculture ends up popping off, that ends up being in a finite period, it needs to be more focused applications during that time.

Thanks, Councilman. Do you have any other questions from anybody on the committee?

Just to be clear and follow-up on LJ, so you say people range from a half million to $3,000,000 in their community on mosquito spraying and we're looking at something less than a half 1,000,000, what do they get for the other $2,500,000 Is it just a difference in size and territory or is it?

It depends on each, the unique thing about this business is each individual location has its different some people are dealing with both rice field mosquitoes and salt marsh mosquitoes. And so that may be a problem where you're on the coastal areas dealing with tidal influx where the tide raises because of high tide, and you're flooding areas that have these mosquito eggs, or you're dealing with hurricane response. After a hurricane, you get 10 inches of rain, and it floods a woodland area that causes it. So it really depends, and and that's why it's really important that you are heavy into surveillance of what the conditions are, so that you can target it. But even if we were going into a new area and we were determining what was needed, we would do a survey then figure out what that is.

And from that, most times the okay, ideally we feel you would need this. Sometimes it's not always the case that you can provide that because they may have budget constraints, and what can you provide for that budgetary constraint? This is an area, as I said, that's comparable to other areas we do, and specifically that I'm thinking in Cleveland, and it's about similar in the cost structure. Can you spend more than that? Absolutely.

Some of these larger programs end up spending millions of dollars, different focuses and it may be heavier into public education or you're doing some of these programs end up doing a little bit of research to where they're looking deeper into the mosquitoes themselves, or they've got a heavy component. And one thing I didn't mention is public education, and and one thing we do in in July and September is or July and August is to do a radio campaign where we put out PSAs talking about people helping people help us by eliminating containers in the yard, emptying those things, and then also taking or using precautions when mosquitoes are biting because that's the peak encephalitis time that you would have transmission. So there is I think you've got an adequate program. Could you put more towards it? Certainly.

One thing I didn't mention is we base two aircraft in Cleveland, and we have one up in Blytheville, and we have two down in Northern Louisiana in Bastrop, we are able to service that from those five aircraft. It could be that we dispatch an extra aircraft or something like that. But when you start doing those things, the program costs go up considerably.

I assume there's a direct correlation between the square miles that you treat and the overall cost of our program too. Do mosquitoes travel? Would we be better off to expand our program to a larger area and try to cut them off before they get here?

Mosquitoes do travel. There are 62 or 63 species of mosquitoes here in Arkansas. Some mosquitoes will travel as much as 15 miles. The rice field mosquito is one that has is a stronger flyer. It may not go that far.

It might be in the 10 mile range. You have other mosquitoes that breed in backyards and won't go but between 501,000 feet. Many people are familiar with the Asian tiger mosquito, that's that being one of those mosquitoes that typically if it breeds in the yard behind you, it goes to your house or your neighbor's house, and it has a specific biting pattern that keeps it in that area, and it'll often go back and lay its eggs in that same area that it might have come from. But to get back to the the distance traveled, you can, depending on wind patterns, have those mosquitoes below into an area that's being produced outside of your jurisdiction, but then moving in either by light attraction from the lights of the city bringing the mosquitoes in, or by host seeking preference, looking for people or animals to feed upon, or lastly by wind actually pushing them in and helping them to fly.

So in your opinion, would there be an advantage to spraying farther out on the Southwest Side Of Jonesboro where the rice

That was part of our expectation in the proposal, which is to expand what we were doing into the South Side. The further that you go, the better the benefit of that because that is where the production site, that's where they're coming from.

Can you give us a percentage impact on that if we go deeper by say five miles?

It's hard to judge without actually getting the I mean it's a lot of acres of rice down there. So if it would be more of a trial by error type of thing in my estimation to where you'd have to say, okay, we're going to go another two miles out or another mile out and see how much effect do we get for that and what's the cost benefit versus the cost.

Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Borjej? Chairman, I mean,

not necessarily a question, think just a comment. I know we can't solve the problem. But I think there's this attitude, at least by some, it's like, well, what could we really do? It is what it is. And I'm not saying we solved the problem. But if we applied the same attitude to the police department, it'd be like, well, you can't solve crime. No need to hire any more cops. So I just think that from a counsel perspective, I think we have a can do attitude. I think we're willing to do more. We just need some guidance on what we could do.

Well, I think one of the things that we put in our proposal was that we could do that extra aerial. In addition to what was there, there is an option for that, that we could try those things if the council is willing to do that. The other thing is you've hit on the point is that mosquito control is exactly that. It's not eradication. But you have to do it to a level where it provides comfort comfort for the citizens as well as protects them from mosquito borne disease such as West Nile or other encephalitis.

And so those are the two pillars, I think, as well as having just the comfort of life being out outside at a ballpark or just in your backyard and being comfortable enough to do that. One mosquito is something, but if you've got 30 mosquitoes on you, that's a big difference.

Any other questions? Mr. Pavlovich, excuse me, sorry. I did have a question. It was more to the terms of the bid that was put forward. There's a current conversation that we're having in the Advertising and Promotions Commission about partnering with our county representatives and looking at broader studies that take us on out into the more agricultural areas of the county. If we were to develop a new strategy or we were needing to make changes to our current effects here and broaden that scope, is that something that we would be able to do during that contractual period?

Absolutely. That we so myself and a couple of the other PhDs that we have, we actually look at a lot of that type of process, designing the programs, but also working with the communities to best effect what their needs are as well as what we can do for them.

Gotcha. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Dale. Thank you. Appreciate you. Next we will hear from the representatives from Daddy Rabbit Aviation.

Thank you all.

I'm Ron. I am the owner of Daddy Rabbit Aviation. We have been in business as a family run business for sixty two years. We've been in this crop dusting business, flying service, application business, and we're also in the farming business. We have approached mosquito control differently over the last ten years.

We were wanting something that was a little more user friendly for the communities and the municipalities that we work for. So what we did is we joint effort with develop a all natural product to treat mosquito control, you know, population areas. And what we've done in the last seven years with our testing and research, we have determined that our product has no rate limits. We spray we do a little different program than what everybody else does. Our program is aerial only.

We do all aerial. Everything we do is by air, and we do it on a weekly basis during the mosquito season. Jonesboro, for example, is about 82 square miles. We would normally weather permitting this town would be treated anywhere from 16 to 32 times by air. And if being treated with our all natural product, affects I mean, effectively gets into all of the wetlands, all of the low lying areas, all of the residential areas.

This product is safe for human use and it also has a very, very good knockdown on mosquitoes. The program is designed and based on what we, in our experience in the flying service have done over the years. Did the Boll Weaver Eradication Program years ago. We were some of the very front runners in that program. Going back to what you guys said, no, you can't eliminate all the mosquitoes, in the boa weevil eradication program, we did eliminate the boa weevil in Georgia.

We pushed it completely out. We haven't sprayed for boa weevil in Georgia since 1994. Texas still runs the program. We treat our mosquito control program the same way as they might this type program. We run aircraft weekly to ten days.

It all depends on the weather. You know, some day we try to treat everything with a minimum of every fourteen days. And that we we run the program that we run with an all natural product, has no rate limits, targets all the mosquitoes. What we were asked, since I'm a taxpayer of Craighead County as well, I was asked to bring my program to the table because the money that's being spent by the city of Jonesboro needs to be spent to kill mosquitoes. I think everybody agreed that it needs to be that is what it needs to do.

That's what we target with the use of your money money is to try to kill the mosquitoes. And with that, run like I said, we run the aerial program and we feel like it's the most effective and we've had great success with it at home. Any questions?

If I understand right, you're saying based on the type of chemical you use or product that you use, you can spray more often. If I understood earlier, they have to rotate chemicals out so they can't spray as often. But you're saying you can spray more often because product that you're using?

Yes, we can spray every week.

Every week. So how often are you gonna be spraying the city? Let's say we go area only, and I understand you're area only, how often would you be spraying the city?

It would be sprayed with a minimum of 16, maximum of 32.

16 times over the course of how long? What are you calling a season? An eight month season. Eight month. Sixteen to 32 depending on weather? Weather both

variable sometimes but it will more likely be on an average of every ten days. So if you figure two forty days, ten days would be 24 sprays.

So once every ten days on average is what you're gonna spray, once every ten days?

Right, but it won't be like we spray a specific day. Those sprayings will be spread out through the evening hours of every day of the week. So you meet so you're spraying at the peak time that the mosquitoes are out.

Okay.

Just say it takes five hours, six hours to spray the entire city. We won't spray a six hour run one night. We'll break that six hours up over four

nights. Okay. But the entire city is gonna get hit at least one time during that week. It's just gonna be spread out over the course of a week. You're not doing the entire city in one night. That's correct. Okay. And you have no ground operations, it's all aerial,

right? Correct.

Chairman, to be fair, I'll just try to ask the same questions if I can't even remember what I said. If we were gonna spend more money, how would we spend it with you? And then I guess the other question would be what cities would we aspire to be slash what other cities if you help similar to us?

Your budget could be increased. And personally, if it was me, I'd increase it and I'd go out two to three miles outside the city limits. My program's already structured to go in a half to three quarters of a mile outside of the city limits on the East Side. South Side, we're going a mile south of the city already. And on the West Side, same thing in the North Side, it's not quite as bad. But you could effectively bump that program up to more sprays. Obviously, that's more money. But yes, you could you could move that buffers zone out beyond the city limits of Jonesboro. But the mosquitoes don't stop because the city limits are there.

Then how about other cities? I'm sorry, Kevin. How about other cities you've worked with? What are some other cities similar to us?

We do everything in my hometown in Georgia. All of the municipalities around home. Had an example would be this past week. They had a political rally thing for Georgia. The governor of race in Georgia is a big deal again this year, and they wanted to hold a big shindig southern comfort type thing barbecue deal. The mayor asked me to come in. It's like, will you come in and just do another treatment? I'm not sure we'll go do it. Went and did it the day before. No mosquitoes.

Couple towns we worked for in the past, they're at home, their budget was kinda tight, they're like, hey, we don't have the money, we don't know if we can do it or not. You know, they cut us off thirty days, forty five days later, they'd always call us back, but we need you to come back. It's been a repetitive thing every year. And we were hesitant about doing we've held off on doing what we're doing because we didn't have the products that we wanted to use. The products that were currently available, you know, wanted to build spray wetlands, water, creeks, streams, homes, the whole nine yards. So until we got the product developed that we wanted, which is this product, then it allowed us to move forward and be able to spray everything 100.

One product for everything. It's a combination of kill mosquitoes and buffer or you're concentrating on eradicating?

We're doing killing larva side and a buffer all at the same time.

But you're using one product? Yes. Okay.

Any more questions from anybody on the committee? Chairman, where do we go from here? Now, I think our next steps is now that all of our questions have been answered and these gentlemen have come before us today and they've been able to speak about their product and their process, I think that at this point if everybody's questions have been answered that we would necessarily make a recommendation on which vendor that we would choose to go with or if we feel like there's more due diligence that's needed, we can leave this on the table and we can get back to them through the RFP process. Chairman,

my thoughts are thinking aloud and Carol Duncan can inform us how this would be if this was the desire, but I wouldn't mind seeing our current vendor keep the spray program on the ground and have a new vendor do aerial like crazy. We would be spending some more money and it would be back to the table on the proposals, at least it would be on the current vendor. But that's A hybrid? A hybrid.

I that's a

Hire them both?

Hire them both for different

purposes. Is that something that your company would be willing to accept?

I've worked with anybody. I've known Ms. Steve for thirteen years.

Mr. Pavelic? If I can, sorry.

Won't be able to

hear you on the mic.

Come on up here Mr. Pete.

Sorry to make you walk again but they won't be able to hear The

concern that I have is that I think Ron is using a 25B labeled product which is not, am I correct in that? It's not. Well, is it a 25B Yes, So a 25B product is one that's not it's what they call a natural product. It is one that's not regulated by the EPA, of Agriculture, and those. So the difference is the products that we use are all tested, regulated by both the EPA and the Department of Ag here in Arkansas.

And so the efficacy of those things have not been regulated or tested through the governmental bodies. I think that there have been some repellency effects that have been seen anecdotally from the 25B products. I don't know which one exactly it is that they're using. But it's something that and I don't know what aircraft are you guys using? We've helicopters. You've helicopters

And that you're we've airplanes.

So typically, from what I remember of Ron's company is that it was agricultural aircraft over agricultural areas. You can use helicopters over the city, but you can't use those ag aircraft to apply mosquito insecticides over the city. That would be something that we'd have to discuss internally, but if that's what the council wanted to do and how that

would work with the I think what Bryant's saying is use a combination of chemistry and technique and approach.

I'm saying in case the ground game's really important, keep vector for the ground game and keep you for the air game.

Sound like you want to spend more money. My

only concern is I want to know who's gonna be responsible. So when mosquitoes get bad and somebody has to be fired, I want to know who that's gonna be and how we're gonna determine that. And if we've got two people out here spraying, I'm sure it's not going be either one of their fault. So I would say that if we would either select one or the other, LJ, I don't know. I can't envision how two different contractors can work together and one of them be accountable to the city. Mean

Well, as far as the legal aspect, I do think if you're changing what you're asking them to do, you'd have to change the RFP request and let them resubmit for that because otherwise, I don't know how you do that legally if you're changing what you're requiring under their contract because they've already

That's what we submitted a request

for. Correct? I I believe so. Yeah. Then as a citizen, have a question of is there any concern about those products interacting together? If you're doing one product and you're doing a different product, like, you know, is somebody going to grow a third arm because you all are combining two different products that aren't normally applied at the I'm same a scientist, so I'm just asking that question.

They're not being mixed together and applied, so there shouldn't

be a

So it shouldn't be a problem? I feel like there's somebody out there that had that question.

Time is fixing to be of the essence here.

Our

next meeting's not for another month so I don't think it's something we can put off. We've gotta move forward. So I'll test the water here. I'll make a motion we recommend BDCI to the full council to continue with their program.

Okay, I have a motion. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Okay, I have a motion and a second. All those that are in favor of accepting Oh, sorry.

So real quick, I got both of y'all up there. Any concerns or have any studies shown either products that you use cause long term health issues for anybody?

I don't. I was all natural. The EPA and Department of Ag do studies on representative organisms, rodents, those kind of things. And after time, basically they give the graphs and so forth that it has to be applicated 10,000 times more than what the application rate is for mosquito control. So it's those kind of things. Where salt, if you have too much salt or you have too much water, it's similar type of thing.

Well, like I said, I mentioned it earlier, south side of town, things are not pleasant. I'm not opposed to trying something different. I don't know if it's one of those things, how bad would it be if we did nothing? What's the difference between being bit by 25 mosquitoes or 50 mosquitoes? It's all bad. But I definitely would like to see something where we can try to make some kind of improvement because what we're doing may be adequate, but adequate is not cutting it right now. Where does that focus need to be? More aerial? More ground support? A combination of both? That's the question and I don't have an answer. I don't know the answer.

From my experience, more ground, more air works.

Seems to have a broader reach?

Yes. I think that that is when I think you had asked Mr. Bryant the question on what would be the spend, it would be going further away from the city in those production areas.

Creating a bigger buffer going farther south of town. Well, south, wherever the rice is.

Okay.

From a data perspective, is there a control rate from either one of you guys? I mean, with the chemicals that you use, is there?

We do have and you can

go ahead and talk on it if you want. Repeat the question, please.

Is there from a data perspective, is there a control rate? Do you control like 78% of the mosquitoes and

you're the efficacy of the knockdown? Yes. Yes, yes. Both products that he and I both use have a ninety to ninety five percent knockdown

rate. And we do efficacy testing each year with both bottles and what we do cage testing, which is simple hanging cages on a pole and driving the truck by or flying the airplane by. And the area at least I talked about this a little earlier, 300 feet away from the truck is 95 plus percent and at 500 feet is like eighty something percent kill and it drops off beyond that and similarly with the aircraft. But aircraft is designed a little bit differently where you're having that stuff go through a wave of an and killing mosquitoes that way. But it's 95 plus percent.

But if I understood right, because the type of product you're using, you have to spray less often. Is that correct?

The EPA regulated products have a maximum amount of Right,

you can't saturate it very too high so you have to spread it out and spray less often.

Well, but you can, one of the ways of getting around that is switching active ingredients so that you're not using that same product. However, here in the delta, the organophosphates like malathion and those type of products are not very effective because of all the agricultural use of organophosphates in the past against mosquitoes. And so they've become more hardy or tolerant in the past and that's caused you to not have as many tools in your toolbox.

Chairman, at some point I'd love to know more about what A and P is doing to work with other partners because it sounds like you all both agree we should go farther out and as we do so we're benefiting folks that aren't helping paying the bill and they're going to benefit and they need to help pay the bill. So the county should help pay the bill because there's a lot of county citizens that are on the edge of town that would benefit from the actions and we shouldn't be fitting the bill completely for it.

I would agree, Councilman Bryant. That's a conversation that's been happening just here very recently. I know I talked to Chairman Morgan today about where we're necessarily at in that process and it's in its infancy. However, by doing that study I would agree that I think that there's something that we can do here to be able to cover. As so eloquently said it's something that we've talked about beforehand mosquitoes don't necessarily see the city of Limit Jonesboro sign and they know when to stop and they don't know where to necessarily cross so I think by creating a bigger buffer that's going to give us a better opportunity to deal with the problems before they get into our city limits.

We'll have more update on that. We don't have an A and P Commission meeting that's scheduled anytime soon. However, I think before the next A and P Commission meeting, we can begin those conversations and we can get update on that as well. Okay. Do I have any other questions from anybody on the committee? Okay. We do have a motion and a second that's currently on the floor for the acceptance of the vector disease control bid. At this time I'll go ahead. Anybody that's in favor of the vector disease control bid hereby say aye. Aye.

Any opposed? Aye. Okay, the ayes have it. And vector disease control is rewarded the bid for this particular period.

To the full council. Thank you.

That'll be recommended to full council for further deliberation. Great. Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate your time. Thank you.

Been very educational. We only get this opportunity once every three or four years and appreciate everybody's time. I think that we can all leave City Council Chambers today a little bit smarter in the field of entomology. Moving on to the next item on our agenda, I know that we're fifteen minutes overdue already for City Council. I want to give everybody an opportunity and thinking that with the information that we've had that's changed since the last Public Safety Commission meeting, I would like to have a representative for each party kind of come up and give us an update on what has necessarily changed.

I believe that we've received some lease language from our friends at the Caraway Road property and we've received some new information from our friends at the FUMC property. At this time, I'll welcome up whoever would like to approach the microphone first and give us an update on each building that we're looking for a lease opportunity for our Jonesboro Police Department. If you don't mind to state your name and address for the record, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Don Parker and I am chairman of the board trustees of the First United Methodist Church. We have since the last public safety meeting, we've had some discussions with the chief and we have met with the chief and the city engineer and Kyle Cook who is the architect for the building as well as a number of others from the police department and did a tour of the building. I think several of you or some of you may have also toured the church property.

What I have before you is an updated lease proposal with some pictures and some other information about the church property including a layout and a floor plan of each of the three floors. At the request of the chief and further discussions with other city officials, there have been a few changes requests made and adopted as part of the proposal and I just highlight a couple of those for you or a few of those. We have increased the lease term with a five year initial term with two five year options. The building we thought initially was 36,000 feet. It is actually 41,226 feet on three floors.

There are 112 parking spaces including six adjacent to the building as well as 106 parking spots across Union. And there's additional parking available in addition to that for over 100 vehicles. The 1st And 2nd Floors are finished with offices, classrooms, and two large meeting rooms. The 2nd Floor has a complete kitchen and there's ample bathrooms on both floors. The 3rd Floor is unfinished but it is heated and cooled.

One thing I want you to note, the church as a charitable entity is exempt from real estate taxes. So under triple net lease, that would save the city approximately 35,000 a year. The base rent, we did not increase the base rent in our proposal from what we initially put before you, dollars 31,250 per month. That works out to $9.1 a foot, which is about half of the market rate. We also were asked about some tenant improvement money if the city is interested in that.

We don't know for sure. I haven't heard yet. Maybe Mr. Cook has put together some numbers, but he was tasked with developing a rough guesstimate, I think, of what it would take to do some renovations and finish out the 3rd Floor for use. The church would be willing to add $600,000 in tenant improvements If that is something the city is interested in exploring, that would take your rent to $36,000 a month or $10.28 a foot.

Or if the tenant improvement costs were more than that, the church would be willing to spend up to $1,000,000 in tenant improvements and the lease rate would go to $39,000 a month at $11.35 a foot. There have also been some of you that have asked either the church or through the chief if there would be an opportunity to purchase the building. The board of trustees of the church has agreed to include an option to purchase the building at such time during any time in the lease that the city would like to exercise that option at an appraised value to be done at the time, mutually agreed or an average of two. I will say that First United Methodist Church is one of two large churches left downtown, and we are committed to staying downtown and committed to be a good partner downtown. We would love to partner with the city on this building and keep the police department downtown.

And I would welcome any questions you all may have about our revised proposal.

Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Parker?

Just one real quick. You said that if the city decided to purchase the building that would be an option at the appraised value. Just for ballpark, as of now, what's the building appraised at? I don't know if it's 2,000,000 or 22,000,000?

I have no idea. Don't know what the I don't have a copy of the appraisal when the building was built or finished in 2020. I'm sure the bank has an appraisal when they probably did an as built or projected appraisal back in probably 2018 but I do not have a copy of it. The church does not have a copy of

Okay, just trying to get an idea if we decide we wanted to purchase it two years, five years, whatever, what look would like?

Mr. Cook has told, has advised us when we did a walk through the property that construction cost, if I recall what he said, for a new facility would be in the $500 to $600 a foot range. And so doing the math, if I do my math correctly, that's somewhere in the 16,000,000 to $18,000,000 range. Now I don't think a five or six year old building would appraise quite for that but that's what you'd be looking at to build I that same building

was just curious of what the current building may be valued at.

Any other questions for Mr. Parker?

I'm going to ask the same question that I asked Carol at the last meeting that you and I discussed just briefly. Any opportunity for a portion of that rent to go toward that purchase price?

Well, with the square footage the way it is and the foot for price at $9 a foot, that would not

be but

I have not, we could consider that with the Board of Trustees but I don't think that that would probably work out too well.

Potentially after five year term?

Perhaps. Do

we have a cost estimate on the development or the remodel at the First United Methodist Church property?

We do

not at this time.

So we know how much it'll cost to make

It's it still out to engineers at this point in time. Don't necessarily have the ETA. I would say that it would be in the next thirty days before the next public safety meeting. And at that point, I think that it would be worthwhile to all parties to probably due to the duration and the amount of information that we really need to sift through on this is that we would call a specially held meeting to be able to go over that information because that would be our last piece to the puzzle.

Who's in charge of putting that estimate together? Is it Craig?

That would be Craig and he's working in conjunction with Mr. Kyle Cook.

We're here by our next meeting.

Craig, do you think that's fair? Gotcha. Yes, sir.

Will it be on both facilities? Yes.

That's what I thought. That's what I

want on both. I don't know what the upfront construction costs are gonna be on both properties.

Chairman. Yes sir. Just one quick question for Mr. Parker just to educate me on the, as far as the Methodist denomination goes. The Board of Trustees can solely make that decision if we exercise the option. Y'all don't have to go to Little Rock or any other higher authority to sell.

If you exercise the option after we get a contract together we are required under the United Methodist book of discipline to seek approval from the Arkansas Conference. The Arkansas Conference in this situation I can almost absolutely tell you there would not be any problem at at all in getting the conference to approve the sale. And it's really not an approval, it's a release of the trust clause. In the United Methodist Church, all properties owned by a local church are held in trust for the larger denomination. And so it's just a matter of checking a box, if you will, getting their approval.

For example, we just sold a property, the Old Nettleton United Methodist Church, it was strictly formality.

Do you have any other questions for Mr. Parker at this time? Good deal. Thank you, Mr. Parker.

Thank you.

Appreciate you. Okay, and from our friends at the Caraway Road facility. Mr. Caldwell if you don't mind state your name and address for the record please.

Carol Caldwell. You know I'm sitting here listening both times, and really y'all are listening to two proposals that are one's an apple and one's an orange. 12,000 square feet, 16,000 a month, 41,000 square feet or whatever, 30,000 something a month. It's really what you all need. The per square foot price doesn't make any difference.

It's location, cost of construction. There's going to be a lot more than this one is without saying any numbers, I don't know any numbers on them. We're willing to give 200,000 for tenant improvements and I'd say the most that they're going come back with maybe another 100. So it's just apples and oranges. You're going to decide you want the apple or you want the orange?

We've got 12,000 square feet with several acres behind it that could be available if you ever wanted to expand. We're putting a new roof on the building. If you all do the deal, it's with the lease. We're to put a new roof on it immediately. So to summarize the lease, it's a five year lease with two five year options with no increase in rent during those fifteen years. You can buy it anytime you want to based on appraised value. The lease says that y'all can have it appraised. If we agree to the number, we'll take it. If we don't agree, we get to have an appraisal and we take the average. And I think fair, the only fair way you can do it.

So we're pretty open minded to that. And then our key is we got land behind it if you ever did go there on the apple instead of the orange. And it turned out that you want stay and you wanted to expand it, we got the land. We got a whole lot more parking spots, about another 70 that could be resurfaced easily without a lot of cost. So really, don't think this is going to take a sales job from Don or from me.

It's apples oranges. So we've got a really good apple. They got a really good orange. So that's what you all gotta make your mind up on. Any questions?

Harold, would the roof cost come out of the $200,000

No, we're paying for that. It's $125,000

Okay.

I knew that that was gonna be expensive.

We have the $200,000 buffer. Yeah. Same question I asked earlier. If we were to buy, how much do you have an idea roughly what the land is valued at right now?

A little over $2,000,000

$2,000,000 ballpark. And I understand the future price, but ballpark we're looking at $2,000,000 if we decide to

do A little over $2,000,000

Okay.

Believe at our last meeting, Chief and Ms. Waterworth both confirmed that either building was big enough to for their operations. So I'm assuming the 12,000 square feet that Carol has, that's large enough for the police department. Mister Parker has 41,000. I'm not sure what we would do with the extra. And if we're buying it by the square foot or paying for by the square foot on rental, I think that's an important aspect.

Any questions?

Mr. Brian? Chairman, not a question for Carol, but a comment. I think it would just be helpful in the next thirty days for PD administration, kind of along the lines of what Councilman Moore is saying, just to summarize and say if it was Caraway Road, we would do this, this, and this, and this would stay here, and this still doesn't fix this problem, leaves this problem, fixes this problem. If we did the Methodist building, it fixes this problem, but then we'll still have we're gonna only occupy 28,000 of the 40 you know, I know it's a little bit of guessing. It can't be precise, but since we've got a little bit of time, it'd be really helpful to fully understand what it is we would do with each space and what problem it does and doesn't fix and what division does and doesn't go where and so on and so forth.

I would agree. I think that's insight that we have to have as we move forward on this. And I think our next steps on this, our next trigger point is once Mr. Cook gets us the additional information on what the build outs would necessarily look like for each facility, I think at that point if it's far enough from our next public safety meeting that we would call a special meeting just because I see being very a lot of people having different insights to different directions on this and what necessarily the future of the city beholds and helps helps us make this decision between the apple and the orange if you will. So I would say just depending on when that information comes in from the engineers, we can make that determination and we'll be sure to have police administration there as it coincides with their schedule.

One last comment, chairman. I think both Conway and Fayetteville have built a new PD building recently. So I mean, I say recently, I think in the last five ish years just from reading the news. So I'd be curious what did it cost them? How big is it? I mean, I know we can't we're not exactly apples to apples in population and blah blah blah, but I'd still be interested just to know how somewhat similar sized cities have x amount of square footage and so forth.

Sure. That's an important aspect because what we're considering is we're considering leasing something temporary because we're gonna build a new facility. The I don't know of any discussion to purchase either one of these buildings that's been serious. I mean, our goal is to build a new PD right down here on Washington that we've already approved. So we have to keep that in mind also. We're just gonna be passing by tourists on this. Mr. Chairman, if I could just

quick comment. I was looking at both. I think LJ is touching on what I feel like I need and really need to hear from our chief, from our police department, just what is our vision and plan. Yes, part of it is to go down on Washington, but really we need to look at the next five to ten years so we're not renting buildings or buying different buildings across town, but we need to really come up with a plan if we have to reach out to some consultants and try and get some help and some guidance because maybe a big building downtown or whatever is not what we need. Maybe we need to start looking at the looking at precincts in different parts of the city as our city continues to grow.

But we really need to in my opinion, we really need to have some time and some thought put into what is it that we need in the next five, ten years. So we're not chasing our tail and doing this again in the next few years.

To your point, I think we need to even look further down the road. I think we need to look twenty five years out rather than five or ten because five or ten is going be here before.

Here's me real quick.

Any questions for me?

No, sir. No. Thank

you, Mr. Caldwell. Great. Okay, I think that is everything that we got on the agenda through communication. We'll be back in touch with committee and the parties that are involved. Moving on to the next item on the agenda is public comments. This is an opportunity for anybody from the public that would like to come and address the Public Safety Commission today and name and address for the record please ma'am.

And it can be on the topic of this right here. Correct? Or can

I make

a comment?

Sure. Yes,

ma'am. Okay. Patty Lack, 4108 Forest Hill Road. So we have apples and oranges and now I got a lemon. And the lemon is from the citizens of Jonesboro. You know, this has been pretty quiet for the last month since it was brought up in the last meeting. There's been no information in the newspaper and nothing mentioned in any of the city meetings except for today's paper. I saw it on the newsstand. I saw that this was gonna be brought up. I guess the reason is that I think there's so many citizens wondering why we need this because the police department is still in business.

You know, is it because we need more office space? Is it because we need more parking spaces? No. That's not been explained. We just want it.

Mister Moore, you put on the building down on Washington. And I think if you all remember that it hasn't even been a year ago that the special committee voted against purchasing the property on Caraway next to the police station. It hasn't even been a year since then. And that committee loudly voted against putting it there and having the office on Washington eventually next to the e nine one center. Not at the first United Methodist Church building and not on the South Carraway Building.

That wasn't that's not included. Our intentions are to have it on Washington. Very few citizens have even heard about this issue, which I think is very disappointing. When you look at the property when we were talking about the e nine one center, is that that was an emergency. We had to get those people out of that building, close the building, and reroute them to different locations.

Right now, all the police department has a location, so I'm not understanding why because we're still in business. I'm not understanding why we're having to spend this money. Is it because that we're looking for a space to rent, or is it because we're looking for parking spots? I don't know and it has not been explained. If you look for office space, is that I think next to the fire station next to on Washington, there's building there.

How many office spaces do we need? There's also a building on Congress Drive that this city owns that we could use that. The police department owns that building right there. The parking is that there's plenty of parking on Washington and on Congress. I think on the property on Caraway, looking at the lease agreement is that it says that additional parking would be available if we have a parking lease agreement. So the price is gonna go up if we're looking at parking on there. And I have to tell you guys, this is kind of like a story of me wanting a new car. I want a new car. I want it today. But guess what?

I don't have the money for it. I have to save up, and I wanna make sure that I get exactly what I want when I purchase it. Not something that's okay, but something that's gonna fit everything at that point. And once again, we're in business right now. They all have a place to stay.

So why are we spending this extra money? I'm not understanding, and the citizens are not. I don't think it's a good time. This is not an emergency like getting those people out of the Justice Building, and I think you all realize that. And I think what we need to do is that we need to focus on what's important to our city right now, and that's one, retaining the police officers that we have, keeping them here, and keeping our citizens safe instead of thinking, I'd like to have a new building because it's on my wish list. So I don't even know why we're even talking about doing this right now because it's not necessary. Thank you.

Thank you, miss Lai. Is there anybody else from the public that would like to come and address the Public Safety Commission today? Okay, seeing none I will entertain a motion for adjournment. So moved. Second. Okay, motion second for adjournment. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? We do stand adjourned and City Council will begin in five minutes. Thank you body.