Code Enforcement - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. It is 05:00. So we'll go ahead and we will call to order the city of Jonesboro Public Safety Council Committee. First on our agenda is our attendance. So if you are on this committee in attendance if you will denote that by selecting the appropriate button in front of you. We do have six members present, so we do have a quorum. Thank you everybody. Moving on to the next item of the agenda is the approval of minutes. You should have those minutes in front of you and I will, if there's any questions, we will cover that, but if not, I will entertain a motion to approve.

Move to adopt unless changes are noted. I'll second.

Okay, have a first and a second to approve the minutes as presented. Do we have any questions from anybody? Okay, we will go ahead and we will call the vote. And that motion does pass. Moving on to the next item on our agenda, new business, we have ordinance twenty five zero twenty five and I will read that ordinance in its entirety to break down all of the changes that are listed within.

An ordinance by the City of Jonesboro to place various traffic signs at designated locations as determined by the traffic control committee. Now, therefore, it be ordained by the city council of City Of Jonesboro, Arkansas to make the following changes as recommended by the traffic control committee. Establishing a speed limit of 25 miles an hour on Flint Street from Thomas Avenue to Dogwood Lane, and establishing a speed limit of 35 miles an hour on Ray Street from Caraway Road to Browns Lane.

Move forward to full council.

I'll second that.

Okay. I have a motion and second. Do we have any questions from anybody on the committee? Okay, any from administration and anything from the public in attendance? Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and we will vote on this item.

And that motion does pass and that ordinance moves on to full council. Coming up next on the agenda is pending items and I know of none which brings us into item number six other business. First on the agenda we have vector mosquito control report for June 2025 that was submitted in your packet. And if anybody has any comments or questions, this is we'll go ahead and we will entertain or we have quick question, Mr. Chairman. The only reason I

brought it up, I'm bringing it up. I was looking through their report and the amount of mosquitoes collected, do we know how many traps they have out? Do we know mean, their counting looks like it was down but I find it hard to believe. But that's just me putting on my tenfold hat. But I just think that surely there's I'm just curious how many traps they have, where they have them, where they collected, was it on the South Side of town, it on the North Side? Where all do they have them? How many? Again, how many traps they have? Because I'm sure that number that's in the report, I think I had that at my house last week.

Right. Yeah, in the report, noticed that they said that they had a total of 55 sites that were inspected. So now necessarily where those are located, I haven't seen that out. I haven't seen that on a map or anything.

We ask them to maybe get Victor to give us that information. Think it would Sure, be

right. And I did notice another question that I think that I would like to answer about Victor. Noticed at this point we're still doing spring. We haven't done any aerial applications, or at least I didn't see that reflected in the report. Do we know when we typically start doing our aerial applications?

Generally, it's around this time of year I can find out. They'll send us an email just to kind of give us a heads up that aero applications are starting so we can inform the public or anybody that wants to cover their tomatoes or whatever that might be. So whenever I reach out to them about these other questions, I'll ask them when their first planned aerial is. I mean, generally, they base it off of, I guess, trap data whenever it shows that there'd be a high need. I'm not an entomologist, but know talking with Doctor. McKay, there's just environmental conditions sometimes that exist that just so happens when they run traps. If it's been exceptionally dry or exceptionally rainy, your numbers are gonna be down while the next week they could blossom and be all over the place. Just

curious if, again, where they are, all that good stuff.

Councilman Emerson, you wanna shoot me an email of the exact questions and David's question and then I can definitely get that over to them and get their info on it.

Perfect, thank you Mr. Rich. Mr. Chairman. Yes, Chief.

Point of clarification, they did spray the week of July 4 because I was outside and they came over my house and I watched the path back and forth over Cricket Forest area. So two days prior to the fourth they were doing aerial applications on the South End.

That I saw myself.

Great. Thank you,

Chief. Mr. Chairman.

Yes.

I've said this for years. I'm just underwhelmed by the reporting. I mean, they're a $50,000,000 company that's owned by two Harvard MBAs, and the report looks like a third grader did it. I mean, so I just expect more from these people. I mean, they give us no benchmarks to compare us to anybody else. I mean I know it's up for bid this year but they're going step their game up.

Gotcha. Thank you, Councilman Bryant. Anything else from the committee regarding mosquito control? Okay. That will bring us to our next item in other business. We have an ordinance that has been presented before us to walk on to the public safety agenda for the evening, and I will entertain a motion to adopt that item onto our agenda.

So moved.

I'll second. Okay. I have a first and a second to put ordinance fiftyforty on tonight's agenda and since we are walking that on to the agenda do we need to vote on that? Okay gotcha. In that case I will entertain a vote before I read the proposed ordinance. All in favor of adopting this item and placing it on tonight's agenda?

Just point of clarification before we vote, it's ordinance 20 five-twenty eight, not fifty-forty.

Gotcha. Thank you, sir.

Okay,

All in favor of adopting this ordinance and placing it on tonight's agenda? Aye. Okay. Any opposed? Okay.

An ordinance to amend the code of ordinances of the City Of Jonesboro to add section 40 entitled park rangers, whereas the City Of Jonesboro has added positions of park rangers to the city to educate and promote the city parks and to provide the safety patrol and enforcement of city codes and ordinances within the park system and the city of Jonesboro as needed, and whereas the city council of the City of Jonesboro, Arkansas desires to amend the code as follows. Be it ordained by the city council of the City of Jonesboro, Arkansas section one that the code of ordinances shall be amended to read as follows. Section fifty forty, park rangers. Section A, a duty of a park ranger is to maintain a presence in the city parks and to preserve and protect the park property, ensure proper use of park equipment and resources, provide customer service to the public, and educate the public about the history of the city parks, and perform all other duties as assigned by their supervisor. Section B, that park rangers are to enforce all park rules in the city and to write citations and warnings where necessary to accomplish this duty.

Section c, the park rangers are under the authority of the code enforcement division of the City Of Jonesboro and shall have all authority to enforce codes of the city of Jonesboro that are authorized to be enforced by any code enforcement or animal control officer.

Move forward to full council and do we need to walk that on tonight? No. It's okay.

Do we have a second?

Second. Second.

Okay, I have a motion and a second. Do we have any questions or comments from the committee regarding this ordinance?

One question. So with them being the park rangers, will they also go to Joe Meg, I guess other parks, Parker Park or Allen Park?

My understanding is yes.

Okay.

It's my understanding we have close to 30 parks throughout the city. And the idea is to be at places where people are, right? We want to engage the public, whether it be volleyball, basketball, baseball, soccer, Craig At Forest. It just kind of depends on what the schedules are, right? And we're still in training right now. We hope to have them ready to go here in about two weeks, week and a half or so. But yes, the idea is to have them have the ability to go to all the different parks. And we should be covering seven days a week as well.

Thank Thank you, Mr. Roper. Any other questions from the committee? Seeing none, anything from administration? And anything from the public in attendance? Okay, seeing none, we will go ahead and we will call a vote on whether we go ahead and we pass this along and forward to full council.

Do And? You want me to roll call or do you see a voice vote?

It'll, gotcha. Yeah, let's go ahead and we'll do a roll call on this one since we're walking this one on April.

We've walked it on to the committee.

Oh, right.

Ms. Porter. Aye. Mr. Gibson. Aye. Mr. McClain. Aye. Mr. Miller.

Aye.

Mr. Bright. Aye.

Okay, that motion does carry and it does forward to full counsel. Great, thank you everybody. Moving on to any other items for other business, does anybody else on the committee have anything that they would like to bring forward to the committee this evening? Okay. Just

real quickly as a reminder, Mayor Copenabra sent out, I believe it's the last July 4 around this time, that he would like for this group to start looking at

the

fireworks ordinance and we have failed to do so at this point. I just happened to find it in my box today is the only reason I remembered

it. Was the

I don't remember I know a little bit about that if you want me

to If you don't, if you don't mind.

I know that law enforcement had put out a request that that the committee consider whether we want to make it. Right now, our ordinance says it's just illegal to shoot any fireworks in the city limits of Jonesboro ever, period. Unless you have a permit. Obviously on days like the July 4 it's very difficult for law enforcement to enforce that. Sometimes it's juveniles that are involved which makes it a whole another enforcement issue and it puts a lot of stress on 911 and on the police department in the calls that they get.

That's not to say if something dangerous is going on where they're shooting them at cars or they're setting dumpsters on fire, which I think we had this year, that they wouldn't address those issues. But they wanted a consideration of whether we wanted to amend that ordinance to allow for fireworks to be used in the city limits just for that day, for one day prior, one day after. Like whatever the parameters are. I think somebody even mentioned whether you would consider New Year's also in that or if it would just be fourth of July. So I think that's the basic discussion.

And I think I recall seeing something in there about hours that you could shoot them as well.

Like you have to end by 11PM or something like that. I mean, reasonable but that allows for what we know is probably happening anyway, which is people are enjoying fireworks on their property, but eliminates some of the calls to the police department and 911 which ties them up when they're trying to deal with other.

Do you think you could or who would have something in front of us or a rough draft that we could?

Depends on if y'all want to discuss it a little bit as a committee to say what you would want to consider.

I think we all know people are going to pop fireworks whether we got an ordinance that says you can or can't. We might as well either make it something where we got an hour or day. I think the hours on the day make a lot of sense in by this time.

People that have concerns and PTSD issues and things like that, they know exactly, maybe by giving a, I think the theory is by giving an amount of time where it is legal, maybe it eliminates the randomness of a whole week of suffering for people that, or does it, I don't know. This is just something that was as an idea for y'all to consider from the police department.

Chief, you got any thoughts on that? Know it's get a little long winded too. Put the shot clock on him April.

So many years of law enforcement experience, this has always been a problem. It's one of these ordinances, it's just really we can't enforce. Yes, we go to the calls. That's something dangerous going on. They may come in as a shots fired call.

So, we respond but between that and everything else going on, it's just we're going call to call. And we've had this conversation actually for several years. It's it's kinda like maybe, just maybe, if we set down some hours that as as Duncan said, we can kinda get the majority of it confined to set number of hours, set hours. And then after that, give us a little bit more teeth to kind of bite into it, hopefully. So I think it's one of these deals that if we went forward with it to see if it helps, if it doesn't help, we can go back and take it back away.

I mean, it's we're doing what we've always done and we're not really getting the desired effect. Now I'm looking at can we try something different that we may all can kind of agree on and give it a whirl for a year or two. If that doesn't work and use legislative body, we'll go back and change it. And if you want to stipulate that into whatever you're willing to write up as a trial period or whatever, I don't know if that's doable or not but.

That would be confusing for the court. It would probably be better just to adopt it if you wanna adopt it and then change it later if you wanna change So

Chief, could maybe you and Chief Hambrick get some bullet points together for us for our next meeting Sure, for

yeah, I'd be glad to. I can just kinda show what call volume looks like know versus everything else. Look at the quick numbers that we

have to

get about. I don't think there's any doubt about the call volume and the calls you get. It's what would you like to try to see in the ordinance that we could kind of streamline it to be able to fit. But absolutely there no doubt we need to do something.

Yeah, would I think there will be some areas of town that we want to restrict it from like the downtown area, some of the commercial property areas, some of the nursing home facilities. So I think we need to impose some restrictions, maybe kind of look at how we do zoning and

And those are the kind of suggestions we'd like

to Yeah, agree. I think that's a conversation, one, if as a y'all as a body wants to move forward with this, it sounds like we're gonna entertain that idea, I think we can start bringing some things back bouncing I off each

personally would want us to make it very clear that a burn ban would supersede our ability. If a burn ban is in place then all bets are off and you can't

shoot out. Yeah, and I think obviously there needs to be some kind of language in there that if you are shooting off fireworks and you do cause damage, you are still going to be held responsible for that.

And maybe something about parents being present or parents being responsible for the juveniles. I don't know, something along those lines. We can look at language like that.

Discuss that. Again, if it's something you're interested in, then we can start researching other cities and see what they're doing. But I do think we do need some restrictions on the areas. But again, it's a will of the committee. If we want to start exploring that, I'll be glad to get with Marty and we'll start those conversations.

Great, thank you Chief.

I got one more thing, Mr. Chairman.

Yes, Councilor Since

we're talking about ordinances for care, I'll work on a little bit. So the attorney general just announced that there's a crackdown on ordering, especially at intersections. Is there something that we are ready to take up and go ahead and

No.

Can we get the ball rolling on that too?

There's not any law change So in his as far as I know, nothing changed. I'm hoping for some guidance from the AML based upon his statements if there is anything that they think that we can do that's different than what we're already doing. I mean, essentially, what he said is you can still enforce the parts of the loitering statute that the court didn't say we can't enforce. And we've already had that ability. I understand the frustration. We all do. But I mean the police department currently can enforce if somebody's littering. They can enforce that. If they're entering the road way, they can enforce that. If they're harassing or threatening someone, they can enforce that.

The problem is that none of that happens while the police are present, typically. Right? If they see the police car, they're not gonna enter the roadway and obstruct traffic. And secondly, the the person giving them money that stopped their car is not gonna come complain about them entering the roadway. And and or they may call and complain, but they would have to do an affidavit for criminal charges.

They're gonna have to call the police while they're there and say, I've witnessed this. It was this person, and we've gotta be able to identify them to press the criminal charges. To my knowledge, they've not created a new channel that made it easier other than saying we'll back you if you decide to enforce this. Not I'm not sure what that means. I mean, I I want more teeth in it Yeah.

But I don't know that anything changed in what the court said. I don't know that, you know, so I'm hoping for some guidance. If there's something else out there that they think helps us in that situation, I mean, I'm gonna put in another request and say, but I assume all the cities waiting to see if the AML comes out with anything to give us some guidance on how to move forward. But, I mean, the tools we had are the same tools, I think. I mean, chief and I discussed it briefly and, and reread what he said and and while we're appreciative that that they'll back us in if we get sued, I don't know that it changed any of the rules that we're currently following, which is violations of law or violations of city ordinance as far as impeding traffic flow.

I mean, obviously, if anybody's harassing or threatening, we want the public to call the police, let the police come identify the person, and be willing to come to court and testify that that was happening so that we can charge that person. I don't know that that I think that's probably more rare if you know, what I observed just driving around town, they're not really coming up knocking on your window or threatening you in any way. They're just they're just standing there, which is why we've tried to educate that, you know, we've got good charities in town that feed people and and donate there. And, you know, I mean, if they're if they're not getting a lot of money, the people these people coming in from out of town will quit coming. But unless there's 10 of them on an island I mean, the court case Hot Springs tried to do it.

And the case was pretty specific on what you had to prove to get them off that street, which was you had to show how many, you know, injury or fatality accidents had happened with pedestrians at that location to show that it was unsafe for them to be on that island. And that's kinda hard.

Yeah.

I mean, in some places, it might be easier, but that's kinda case by case. It's not a citywide solution. You have to prove it street by street, which really tied the hands of a lot of cities in their ability to. And that's why people have just kind of felt like the laudering statute didn't have any teeth in it. Now certain parts of it do. It can't have anything to do with asking for money though. It has to do with their other activities at the intersection because asking for money has been considered protected free speech by

the court.

We cannot limit But I have noticed an increase in litter left behind at those intersections as well.

It used to be worse I think. I think it got better for a while and maybe it's getting worse again. I mean if we can catch them littering, we can certainly cite them with a littering ticket. But I don't know that it gave us any extra tools that we didn't already have and that we weren't already trying to implement as best we could. But yeah, I mean if the public feels that they've been unsafe or threatened, they need to call the police so that they can identify that person.

Because if you don't know who they are, we can't charge them. And then come see us and we'll try to press charges on them. I mean, we can already do that. Or if I think there are enough of them there that they're obstructing their ability to see traffic, call the police and let them come out and deal with that on the spot and we can we can do that. We've already got those tools and I think we're willing to do that.

So right now, you're just waiting on AML to give us an opinion on?

If there's any legal change we can make to our ordinances.

Okay.

That's that's more effective but I don't know that there's anything that in that statement that gives us more teeth than what we already had. But if there is, I'll let you know that we can and we'll work on an ordinance to strengthen that.

Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Anything else Councilman McLean? Not at all. Gotcha. Thank you, sir. Anything else from committee in other business? Okay that brings us to our final item on the agenda tonight which is public comments. This is an opportunity for anybody from the general public to come and speak before the Public Safety Committee. Is there anybody in the audience that would like to speak tonight? Okay, seeing none, that brings us to the final item on the agenda which is adjournment. So moved.

Second.

Okay I have

a first and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay we do stand adjourned. Thank you all very much.