Code Enforcement - Regular Meeting

We're going to go ahead. We're going to call to order the City of Jonesboro Public Safety Council Committee meeting. First on our agenda today, we have roll call. So if you're on the committee and you're in attendance, if you will denote your attendance on the device in front of you. Okay, I do show that we have five members present, so we do have a quorum. Thank you everybody for showing up today. Moving into our next item on the agenda is our approval of minutes from the meeting on Tuesday, April 21st, 2026. And I will entertain a motion to approve those minutes.

So moved. Second.

Okay, I have a motion and a second to approve the minutes from the previous meeting. Do I have any questions or concerns? Okay, seeing none, I will go ahead and call for a vote on that item. Okay, and that item does pass. Thank you, everybody. Moving on to our next item on the agenda, being new businesses, we have ordinances to be introduced. Our first ordinance tonight is Ordinance 26017, an ordinance modifying Ordinance 24037, which established and consolidated special traffic patterns near the Jonesboro Public School campuses in Ordinance 25030, which designated a portion of Wilkins Avenue as one way between specific hours on school days. whereas City of Jonesboro adopted Ordinance 24037, which established and consolidated special traffic patterns near Jonesboro Public School campuses, and whereas the City of Jonesboro adopted Ordinance 25030, which designated a portion of Wilkins Avenue as a one-way between specific hours on school days. and whereas the City of Jonesboro has been asked by the Jonesboro Public School Administration to modify the one-way times on Wilkins Avenue and Hillcrest Drive to 7.15 a.m. and 8.15 a.m. and 2.45 p.m. to 3.45 p.m. on school days, and whereas the Traffic Control Committee has reviewed and supports this request. Now, therefore, be it ordained by the City Council of the City of Jonesboro, Arkansas that Section 1, Ordinance 24037 and Ordinance 25030 are hereby modified to change the one-way times of the day on Wilkins Avenue and Hillcrest Drive to 7.15 a.m. to 8.15 a.m. and between 2.45 p.m. and 3.45 p.m. on school days.

Move to recommend to the full council. Second.

Okay, I have a motion and a second to move that ordinance 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, I will call for a vote on this item. Okay, and that item does carry and be forwarded onto full council. Next ordinance on the agenda is Ordinance 26019, an ordinance by the City of Jonesboro to place various traffic signs at designated locations as determined by the Traffic Control Committee. Now therefore be it ordained by the City Council of the City of Jonesboro, Arkansas to make the following changes recommended by the Traffic Control Committee. Installing an all-way stop on Meador Road and Middlefield Drive. Installing a stop sign on Kendrick Drive at Quail Drive. Installing a stop sign on Pike Road at Elmhurst Drive. And installing a stop sign on Wood Cove at Wood Street. Along with establishing a 25 mile an hour speed limit on Rolson Lane, Dove Road, Cardinal Road, Robin Road, Thrush Road, Lark Drive and Starling Drive.

Move to recommend to the full council.

I'll second.

Okay, I have a motion and a second to recommend this ordinance 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, I'll call for a vote on this item. Okay, and that item does carry, and we will be forwarding that on to full council for consideration. Moving on to resolutions to be introduced, and we'll just be reading these by title only. This will be resolution 26066. A resolution authorizing the City of Jonesboro, Arkansas Department of Grants and Community Development to apply for the FY 2025 Assistance to Firefighters Grant through the US Department of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Agency.

Move to recommend to the full council. Second.

OK, I have a motion and a second to recommend this item to full council. Do I have any questions from anybody on the committee concerning this item? Any from the administration? And any from the public in attendance? OK, see none. I'll go ahead and I will call for a vote on this item, please. Okay, and we do have the votes to move this item onto full council. Thank you, everybody. That motion does pass. Moving on to the last resolution that is before us today is resolution 26067, a resolution authorizing the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas Department of Grants and Community Development to apply for the FY 2025 Fire Prevention and Safety Grant through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Agency.

Move to recommend to the full council. I'll second.

Okay, I have a motion and a second to recommend this item 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 call for a vote on this item. OK, thank you, everybody. That item does pass and will be forwarded on to council for consideration. Next item on our agenda is pending items. I know of none. Does anybody on the committee have any items for pending items?

Did you have an item? I was about to say something, Mr. Morgan. Go ahead.

I was just going to say, and it's a safety issue. It's halfway public works, halfway public safety. I'll do a bad job describing it, Craig. I was using my self-driving at Craighead Forest. I was, like, by the, like, Fort Rotary, coming up the road by the bathroom, and, like, the disc golf's kind of on your left, the ball field's ahead of you. I feel like we need a stop sign there. You kind of have two, like, my Tesla didn't stop, you know, and it should have stopped, but there wasn't a stop sign, so it didn't stop. But anyway, because these guys are going straight, and you kind of need to make a left here, so if that's something we could take a look at, if that makes sense. Thank you.

Is that all? Yes, sir. Well, while we're on, Craig. Hey, Craig. You know, when you're headed north on Main Street, come on to the podium. Thank you. When you're headed north on Main Street and you get to Washington and it narrows to one lane on the new traffic plan there, right hand lane has about four little plastic looking things i had a request from several people downtown to see if we could put one of the city concrete planters right there instead of those little they're kind of unsightly and it still allows the fire trucks and emergency vehicles to pull around and i would highly doubt if one of those concrete planters would uh be an obstacle to

We actually had the concrete planters there before we put the candlesticks in. Honestly, they weren't very attractive sitting there. We can definitely look at an alternate solution, but I don't think those concrete planters are what we ultimately want to use there. But we can definitely discuss a better solution that is more attractive than either one of those, hopefully.

What they seem to think, Evidently, we've got some of them sitting around downtown somewhere. We've used them and they saw. They actually thought if we put two there, one behind the other, then on days that we were gonna have Main Street closed like we did over the weekend, we would just slide the other one over and that would give a more aesthetic look than those little plastic cones and I think people were running the little plastic cones over and shortcut in the corner right there.

We can definitely look at it. We had those up and getting the right angle and we were afraid that it was going to actually, cars were going to hit those and damage vehicles. We were kind of concerned about that, but we can definitely look at some different alternatives to what to do there.

They said at Washington and Main, and then at the next one down, I guess it would be Huntington and Main was the exact same situation. You'll just look at that.

I will.

Thank you, sir. That's all I have.

Thank you, everybody. Any other items for pending items? Okay, seeing none, that will take us on to our next item, being other business. First, I have a communication that's from Vector Mosquito Control, the report from May of 2026. Don't know if anybody else had time to go over that, but there's some really good information in that. Seems like we've sprayed a whole lot more this year, and the mosquito counts down that we've been able to see. feel free to email any questions or any concerns or anything else that you have regarding the vector mosquito control report for May of 26, which brings us to Director Roper. I have reached out to Director Roper a couple of weeks ago. We're coming up on the anniversary of our park ranger program and him along with Eric have prepared a presentation for us on our park rangers and are ready to present that to us this evening. So Director Roper.

Thank you, Councilman Emison, for the opportunity to discuss the Park Rangers. As many of you know, the Park Ranger program officially began last July under the direction of code enforcement. The Rangers report directly to their senior assistant, Eric Smet, who's been instrumental in developing and managing the program. Before Eric presents his program, I wanted to briefly highlight that this was not a program that just simply appeared overnight. We started from the ground developing a comprehensive and well-thought-out plan That included researching similar departments, establishing procedures, creating training set standards, and developing equipment and operational needs, and defining the role the Rangers would play in serving our parks and community. This process took considerable amount of time and effort to ensure we built a program that would be professional, effective, and sustainable for years to come. Today, we are proud of the program and the progress that's been made and the positive impact the Rangers are making on our park system. At this time, I'll turn it over to Eric, and he will provide kind of a more detailed overview of the program, its accomplishments, and our future goals.

Thank you, Director Ruppert.

I'm Eric Schmidt. I'm the Senior Code Officer with Jonesboro Code Enforcement. Like he said, the park rangers directly fall underneath me. And we're just going to give you an update on where the park ranger program has been, where it is now, and where we want it to go in the future. So obviously we had to hire four people to fill our allotted slots, had a lot of people apply, did a lot of interviews. We ended up hiring four people. And then we had to train those four people. We did three weeks of total training, two weeks in a classroom, which included ride-alongs with animal services, code enforcement, JPD. We'll get into the classroom topics here in a minute. But after that two weeks, we actually had to put them in the field and show them how to do a job that nobody's actually done before. So we all hopped in the truck together and went out in each park, tried to visit as many parks we could each day, learn the parks, learn the programs. And then we actually had to teach them what to enforce, park rules, park ordinance. We actually had to find violations so they know what they do when they come across it. Some of the training topics that we covered, we spent a whole day on medical training, stop the bleeding, Narcan, first aid, CPR, AED, hypothermia and heat exposure. City attorney's office spent a whole day with the park rangers as well, covering Fourth Amendment, property rights, Americans with Disabilities Act, juvenile law, affidavit process, city ordinances, and courtroom testimony. These guys are entry-level employees. We have to teach them how to do all this stuff. spent quite a bit of time teaching them to deal with the public and how to handle conflicts. JPD taught classes on dealing with large groups of people, deescalation, conflict resolution, and use of force. Obviously, they're not police officers, but there is a use of force that civilians have to abide by as well. They also spent a full day with parks. Jim Stearns actually taught them all of these classes. He went through the history of parks, park rules, park programs. We even talked about the master parks plan, talked about the trails, the campground, playground safety. Obviously they're gonna be in parks, they have to know these things. Some miscellaneous training they went through as well, report riding, bike training, they know how to use the e-bikes that are, JPD has, and they have access to those. Radio operations, self-defense, OC spray, mental health, and drugs. The park rangers are certified crowd managers, so the Arkansas State Fire Code actually changed recently. Large outdoor events and even some indoor events are required to have crowd managers. And their main purpose is, the police are there to address a threat. Uh, let's say, you know, there's an event downtown and there's an active shooter. The police go towards the threat. The crowd managers get people away from the threat, whether that be an active shooter or fire or whatever it is, that's what they're trained to do. So any event outside with a thousand or more people has to have two crowd managers and for every 250 people after that they have to have an additional crowd manager. So the park rangers are trained in this, and we also actually trained all of the code enforcement officers in this as well so that we can supplement them for larger events. They're mainly using this downtown. That's where most of the large crowds are, but they can also go in the parks as well. Some of our goals, the one thing that came up over and over again when we were creating this program was this term of ambassadors. Obviously, the park rangers are probably the most visible aspect, or at least the most visible employees within the park system. They drive a truck that's got park ranger stickers all over it. They wear a very visible uniform. We want the public to feel that they are approachable. We want people to be able to go up to them and talk to them and ask them questions and feel that they're friendly. So we stress to the rangers that we want them to be ambassadors for the parks. Um, they're the most visible parks representative. We want to be approachable. We want to interact with park guests in the great community. We don't want them to be wallflowers. We want them to talk to as many people as they possibly can. And we want them to be an encyclopedia of information on parks and park programs. Um, obviously they're not the police. They're not lifeguards are not wallflowers. Uh, when, when they're at community centers, Working basketball games, we don't want them just sitting on the wall or in a corner. We want them walking around and talking to people. Our motto is preserve, protect, educate. We want to preserve the parks and the resources that they provide. Obviously we want to protect the public that are in the parks and also educate the public about parks and park programs. Typical day for a park ranger, they're working 12 to 10 every day except holidays. They're stationed at the patrol building on Washington Avenue. They have an office there. And their goal is pretty much to visit as many parks as possible and spend adequate time in each park. We don't want them just driving through the parking lot and then pulling off. We want them to actually get out of their vehicle and talk to people who are in the parks. We want frequent positive interactions, as many as possible every day. They're responsible for all the city parks, Craighead Forest, all urban parks, the community centers, and sporting events within the parks, pools, and the entertainment district as well. Most of their time is spent at Craighead Forest, the community centers, Joe Mack, and Southside, because that's where most of the people are. we try and prioritize where the people are gonna be, because that's where they're gonna be needed the most. Obviously, Craig Ed has a lot of people, Joe Mack and Southside have a lot of tournaments, so that's where they spend most of their time. And obviously they're responsible for enforcing the park rules and city ordinances on a daily basis. They assist in responding to medical calls, animal issues, minor crimes and criminal bans. We get a call about a person with a gun at a park, the park rangers aren't gonna go to that. That's gonna be JPD. If there's a fight at a park, they'll be the second responder, because JPD's gonna be the first responder. Some additional duties they have, obviously downtown events, tournaments. We presented at the Citizens Police Academy for the first time this year. And then with the new JBR trail system going across town, we've been tasked with education enforcement of that. Obviously those trails go through some people's front yards. The city ordinance, you cannot park, you cannot block the trail even in your own driveway So we started a social media campaign and started pushing this out over social media so people know that they can't block the trails. And then we went to flyers and started passing out flyers for people who were parked on the trail. And we haven't had to do any enforcement. We haven't had to write any tickets, and that's our goal. We don't wanna have to write tickets. We want compliance in another way if we can. And they're also doing a lot of school events. They've done a bunch of career fairs this year at the elementary schools. And they've also been reading to some students as well. Earth Day this year, we decided that we wanted to give back to the community a little bit. So we looked at a couple of parks that we felt could use some TLC. And we ended up deciding on Phillip Evans Park, which is on State Street. You can see some before pictures right here where the mulch is broke down or washed out and then afterwards what it looks like after we got the work done. They look a lot better now. We went out there and Parks helped us as well. They dumped a mountain of mulch on State Street and We went through about half of that by putting in wheelbarrows and manually dumping it in the park. This is the reading event we did this year. We got a lot of feedback from the teachers afterwards and apparently the kids absolutely loved it. Some stats. So obviously the program started in July, so we've only got a couple months of stats from 2025. We didn't really know what stats we wanted to compile. So 2025, we had 74 complaints, opened 182 cases, which could range from a park rule violation to a city ordinance violation to a minor criminal issue. Responded to three medical calls, and we had 28 animal complaints. Uh, this year from January to may, we've had 102 complaints. We've opened 246 cases for 26, 268 violations. We've had eight medical calls, 14 animal complaints, uh, 51 criminal violations, six arrests, and 15 people have been criminally banned from the parks so far. We were also awarded with a trendsetter award at AML conference this past winter. We had an honorable mention for tourism development and creative culture for the creation of the park ranger program. Moving forward, we have three main goals. We don't have the coverage that we need with four park rangers, 12 to 10. I mean, that's all we can get right now. So we need to expand that program. Our goals are to increase community engagement, whether it's in the parks or in the schools. We wanna keep engaging the community as much as we can. And then we also wanna, create some park ranger programs that, for example, could be scavenger hunts, hike with a ranger, or canoe with a ranger. Those are our future goals. That's all I have.

All right, thank you, Mr. Schmidt. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Schmidt or for Director Roper?

Chairman, maybe just two quick ones for either one of you, I suppose. I know we're cutting into council time. I know small department, it's got to be challenging when there's turnover to train like one person, right? It's got to be challenging for any small department.

So how does that work? We're just replacing one currently. So we're actually still engaged in a training plan right now. But we're planning on getting also with animal control because we do have some things we can train with them, with the PDs who help us and first aid, that type of thing. So we'll do some cross training with, with them and also with code enforcement as well. So we can combine several, three different departments and train them at the same time with similar aspects.

Yeah, that makes sense. Last question. I know Eric mentioned they were trying to ride the e-bikes. Is that happening any?

Are they using the e-bikes? They have. We found that transportation was an issue. So actually last week we just installed a hitch and we're in the process of getting a bike rack. So we should start seeing them much more on site at Craighead Forest once we get our bike rack in.

Thank you. Any other questions from the committee? Seeing none, Director Roper, Eric, thank you so much. Great presentation, great first year. Thank you for bringing that to us tonight. That brings us to our last item on the agenda for public safety. That's gonna be public comments. This is an opportunity for anybody in the public to speak about anything that wasn't on the agenda tonight. OK, seeing none, we will move on to the next item, which is adjournment.

Second.

OK, I have a motion and a second to adjourn. All in favor?

Aye.

OK, any opposed?