Code Enforcement - Regular Meeting

council committee meeting for the city of Jonesboro. First on our agenda, we have our roll call. So if you are on this committee and you are present, if you will denote your attendance on the device in front of you. I do show five members present, so that is a quorum. Do appreciate everybody who had time to make it to the meeting today. Next coming up on our agenda is the approval of minutes from the meeting on Tuesday, August 19th.

Move to adopt unless any changes are noted. Second.

OK, I have a motion and a second to adopt the minutes as presented. Do I have any questions or comments from anybody on the committee? Any from the public in attendance? OK, seeing none, I will call a vote on approval of minutes from the previous meeting. That item does carry, thank you everybody. Moving on to our next item on the agenda, we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna start with ordinance 26039 underneath the ordinances to be introduced section. which is an ordinance to 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, that the following changes be made as recommended by the Traffic Control Committee. Installing stop signs at the following locations, Wellington Court at Kathleen Road, Rochester Drive at Kathleen Road, Rochester Drive at Coclisher Drive, Dayton Avenue at Fair Park Boulevard, and establishing a 25 mile an hour speed limit at the following locations of Rochester Drive, Wellington Court, and Dayton Avenue.

Move forward to full council. Second.

I have a motion and a second to move this ordinance on to full council. Do I have any questions from anybody on the committee? Any from the public in attendance? All right, seeing no questions from either, we'll go ahead and we will call a vote on this item. And that item does pass. Thank you, everybody. Which brings us to our next item on the agenda. And I'm just going to do something a little bit out of the ordinary on this one. This is resolutions to be introduced. And this kind of is focused around our pedestrian safety initiatives that we've been talking about over the past six months, I would say, which is where we see this resolution necessarily coming to us from. Of course, with pedestrian safety being a foundational piece of our public safety plan, That's something that we wanted to have a little bit of further discussion today, so I appreciate Chairman Gibson letting us move around the schedule today to allow for some extra time for us to focus on this today. I thought that it would be a good idea that if, as we move ahead through this discussion, that if we would have Chief Elliott, he's prepared some data for us to kind of give us an idea of how we've gotten here today, what we've seen over the last couple of years, what Jonesboro Police Department is currently doing. And then, of course, as we move forward through this, we can answer any questions or anything else that we possibly have.

Sure. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Mr. Emerson, for that. So we pulled some data for the past four years on pedestrian accidents or pedestrian-involved accidents. And I think... The number in four years is 94 pedestrians have been involved in some kind of motor vehicle accident. During that time, 11 of them were fatal. So we start running data and start mapping it out and we want to look, is there any specific areas of concern in which obviously Johnson was a big area of concern As a city, we addressed that by adding the hawk signal there on Johnson and Melrose area. We had a couple of fatals there in a short period of time before that signal went in. Johnson itself, further down the corridor, there's been some other pedestrians hit. So after speaking with Craig, I know there's some plans for some additional signalization along Johnson to help in that aspect. And then back towards the university, we're looking at that area also. Johnson and Carraway, there's a lot of pedestrian traffic. We're looking to see what else we can do to add more signalization to that area, just to make it more visible for people crossing. And then up in, further down that corridor. The second area of course of concern is obviously Main Street. We've had issues in our downtown traffic with people trying to cross. We know cars have zipped through Main Street. We've tried a different traffic pattern down Main Street. I'm not sure how much that has helped. I think Craig can elaborate on that. There is some other things, according to Craig and the engineering department, that we're looking at to make those enhancements. Working with Craig and Andy and the committee, I think we're at the point of we need to sit down and probably come up with a good comprehensive plan. And what does that look like? what kind of studies that take, and then what kind of appropriation of money that need to be made for additional signalization to make our pedestrians more safer. But one of the biggest components in all of this is pedestrian education. We can only do so much as a city as far as putting mechanisms in place, but I can't make people walk and cross where they're supposed to cross. We see this. from time to time if as a police officer if we can see it and address it they do but often you know not there's not enough officers to be around when the people are zipping across crossing and going to high school in the morning instead of using that fancy crosswalk they just cross wherever just to get to school and that's problematic we've had kids almost get hit in that area And we've added additional lighting in that area. But again, there's an educational component. So that brings us to getting back working with the schools, maybe get the schools to get their East Labs together and come up with some educational videos and material to put out, some things we kind of talked about. So we're going to... As a city, we do our part. But again, we're going to put a lot of this burden back on to the schools to help educate your kids on pedestrian safety, how to get to school safely, coming and going.

DAVID BURRAGE. Gotcha. Is there any questions from anybody on the Committee for Chief?

No.

DAVID BURRAGE. OK, gotcha. Chief, I did have a couple of questions. I know that we were talking about a little bit of data before the meeting today. Regarding that, we were going through as far as like the number of citations that have been issued. Would you mind to kind of give us an overview of that and necessarily how many times a pedestrian was found at fault, how many times a driver was found at fault, and what crimes that they were charged with and what they were ticketed to?

Sure. So we look at that number. And I just got this report from Sergeant Bush. So 33 of these resulted in the pedestrian being the contributing factor. Now exactly what that factor is, I don't know. I just got a breakdown from Sergeant Bush who oversees our traffic unit. 16 were hit and runs and six of them were turned over to Criminal Investigation Division for prosecution. There was one arrest for DWI. Two were criminal, felony charges are still pending. In two of these cases, both parties were found to have contributing factors, so therefore no tickets were issued. One information report was submitted for prosecution. That would be the fail at Main and Washington. One was a juvenile that fell off the float in the Christmas parade. So again, no citation issued on that. Officer discretion was used on two other incidents based on the totality of the incident. Three of the incidents, pedestrians either fled or became uncooperative with police conducting the investigation. Then 12, there was unable to determine an explanation just from reviewing the force, according to Sergeant Bush. So that was on 79 pedestrian accidents that he reviewed.

Thank you, Chief.

So it just, it warranted a further look of, you know, what citations being issued, not issued, and the reason why not. And I've stressed to staff, like, it's important that, you know, if we can determine on any accident that somebody's at fault, that the citation be issued.

So. Thank you, and let the record reflect, Councilman McLean is here. Another follow-up question I guess I have, and I don't expect you to have this data in front of you, I kind of requested my stuff late yesterday, was that as far as, and I understand that Our police officers have a lot of crimes to investigate in our city. We have to know how to triage when it comes to these things, but are we actively writing any kind of jaywalking citations or anything else, or is it just more of a stop and educate?

That would be called proactive policing. And we're not in a really good state to be proactive policing right now. We're currently 13 short as far as openings. But totality, we're about 35, what I call, in a non-functioning capacity. And non-functioning means they may be hired. They may be at the academy. They may be in some foreign training. They're just not out on the road by themselves or their own injury leave. So you take that kind of shortage and our call volume has not decreased. So they're pretty much running call to call. And for them to have time to sit and run proactive radar enforcement or proactive anything, those times get very slim. So as I said earlier in other statements, yeah, we are kind of coming out of a hole. especially with the hiring incentives. We just hired seven last week. I got seven in the academy. I got 13 openings. We've got 25 in the backgrounds to fill the 13 openings. know openings we got my end goal is by december to be fully staffed but even when you're fully staffed a new officer there's eight months of training before they're out on their own so we may be full by numbers but that does not necessarily mean everybody's up and working in a full capacity and then injury leaves they come and go we've been as high as 10 on leave and now i'm down to four so That just only compounds the problem. Bottom line is, everything is on the path to getting caught up and where we can get out and start doing more. There are some mechanisms in place, like we have the STEP grant that The Highway Department pays for where officers can come in and work overtime for time and a half pay to work seatbelt enforcement, speeding enforcement, and DWI enforcement. So bringing them together to do some proactive measures on maybe pedestrian crossing. And at the same time, they'll be doing seatbelt checks. So if we're watching a pedestrian crossing, say, on Main Street or whatever, well, at the same time, we're going to be checking for seat belts. So it's kind of a twofer, which is being funded by the STEP grant. So there's some things we're looking at that we've talked about that we're trying to do. But again, I think with committee input on things, looking across the city what we need to do, I know there will be a component that the council will need to earmark some money for some public safety items that engineering and committee sees fit for.

Thank you, Chief.

Chair?

Yes, sir.

On the hawk signalizations that you referenced earlier and the education piece, we got some good data on the crossings of the hawk a few weeks ago. But do we have an idea of the utilization of that as opposed to the people that are not utilizing that? I mean, because I've been down Johnson on my way home from council meetings several times. and seeing people 30 feet from the hall just running across the street.

You know, it still happens, and no matter what you do, no matter whatever you put up, people are going to take the shortest path, the path of least resistance. That's just human nature sometimes. Not the safest option, but again, there's an educational component. Some people you can educate on these things, some just not going to pay attention. But I think overall the usage of that signal since it's been in place, I know Mr. Richardson had some numbers on that that was quite impressive. So the system itself has paid off and I'm curious to see the data on the one we put on North Main, what that looks like, especially when the summer and the pool and that kind of activity. So we got that one in place about the right time with that pool opening up to help out up there before it became a problem. So I think as we look at this data, again, taking a more proactive approach in addressing the problem, I think that's where we need to be in life. So again, whatever committees, what they look like, and whoever's on those, as we move forward, we'll just take the data and identify the problematic areas and take a multifaceted approach to addressing the issue.

Thanks, Chief.

Chief, I will say that I like the idea, the proactive side of it, as you were speaking about. One of the main ones, especially, is by visiting with our school districts. I was driving, this is probably the better part of 60 to 90 days ago, and I was going down Nettleton at about seven o'clock in the morning, of course, have the sun facing directly at me, and there was a local team that was running down Nettleton, and I mean, It's no fun whenever you got two people in front of you and you're not part of the conversation trailing in third. That's probably where I would have been. But as far as that being said, the person that was in third place decided that they wanted to run in the road of Nettleton to be up there with the other two people that were running beside each other. So I think that basic education that we can be doing with all of the school districts is a good step forward.

You're absolutely correct. And as the city progresses to more walking, more walking paths, more cycling, we really need to get ahead of this instead of behind it. So I think it's important now that we start on this and get like you said, a proactive approach to dealing with this problem because we're laying the infrastructure for more walkability in town, which is a good thing. But we want to keep the walkers and our cyclists safe in what they do.

And another thing, just from the pedestrian safety side of it, I think, on the same wavelength as you just described. I cannot tell you how many, probably 75% of the time, whenever I see people pull up to red lights, they're stopping right in the middle of a pedestrian path and pedestrians are then having to exit the path to be able to get around the vehicle.

That does create another problem and that is another educational piece. Again, these educational pieces, they come out time to time and we have to realize that you have to, re-educate about every three or four months. Say the same thing over and over and over. It's kind of like locking your cars at night. Well, I've been preaching that for 45 years. But yet, we still have people have things taken out of their cars because it wasn't locked. So when you're dealing with the public, there's these educational components. It just has to be redundant for it to hopefully kick in at some point. DAVID BURRAGE.

Sure. Yes, sir. Are there any other questions for Chief?

not for chief okay gotcha i got one if i can sure yes sir um and y'all may have touched on it help me chief when it comes to a pedestrian and crosswalk um they have it right away correct correct Have we cited, and y'all may have touched on this, have we cited those drivers that have struck pedestrians?

We did. I just ran over the stats before you came in, I guess. I can send you that report. Please, please. That Sergeant Bush kind of did a breakdown on those accidents and what was done.

Got it. All right, cool.

Thank you. Okay, anything else? Yes, sir. Okay, thank you.

Chairman, while we're on this topic, city attorney, are we good on local ordinances on this? Do we need to do anything related to ordinances on this to strengthen anything?

I don't think we need local ordinances on it. We have state laws on it already. I mean, they could be cited for failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. That's a state law. And it's really just failure to yield. But it applies whether it's a pedestrian or whether it's other. And they can be cited for sure for careless and prohibited driving, which involves failure to keep a proper lookout, right? That's part of a careless and prohibited driving ticket. So, and then, you know, depending on other outlying issues, whether they might have been under the influence, whether they might, there are other citations that can be issued and other charges that can go, but for sure those two are available under state law, and I don't know a reason to add a city ordinance that does the same thing as what we already have on state law. And hazardous driving city ordinance is kind of a catch-all. You know, you can cite most things under hazardous driving city ordinance if you chose to. And then you also have jaywalking and those types of, you know, for the pedestrian part of it. So I think there's plenty out there. We just need to enforce what we have and educate on what we have. I don't think we're doing as horrible a job of enforcing it as we are. Education to me is the big part of this, both for the pedestrian and for the drivers.

And I'll say, too, and Mr. Richardson's educated me on this, and I know that's our next topic about the all-way signals and all of that. I really think, and it's not very complicated on the education front, but I think too many people don't think about, drivers included, pedestrians included, that what rides on reds can do. You know, like, I mean, people aren't thinking, well, I've made a ride on red. Well, yeah, you still got pedestrians and pedestrians sometimes see the little walking man and feel good about it. It's like, well, you got yellowed greens and you got rats on reds. And so there's some little nuances that you don't really think about unless you're If you're a frequent walker, frequent runner, whatever, you become pretty educated on that, but if you're occasional, you might feel really good about that white walking man, and it's not as safe as you think it is.

And we were talking about that earlier, about some signage, and that may be something that the committee wants to look at, and that might be an ordinance that would be worth passing if there are certain signs intersections where there are so many more pedestrians that we want to pass a city ordinance that at that intersection there is no right on red. And then put up the proper signage for that, where we could issue citations for turning right on red. And I don't think it needs to be at every intersection in the city of Jonesboro, but there could be certain ones where it's just such a higher pedestrian walkway or a dangerous intersection where it's harder to see a pedestrian if there is one. I mean, I think the committee could look at something like that and designate certain intersections in Jonesboro where you can't turn right on red. But then we need to have the proper signage to make sure that, because we have to, First of all, we have to assume that not all citizens of Jonesboro know what we do as far as traffic laws, but a lot of people come into Jonesboro from other places and drive here, and you're gonna have to have really good education and signage on where we put that. But I do think that could be an ordinance that might be worth considering at certain intersections in Jonesboro. That would be a different one from state law.

Since we're having this conversation, is there any more questions for Ms. Carroll? Seeing none, we'll move.

I feel really old when he says miscarried.

I'm sorry.

I mean, I am old.

Does anyone have any further questions for the city attorney?

I am really old. It's okay.

You know, it's our pleasure to have also in the audience today, we have Mr. Shatley from the Connectivity Committee. Andy, would you like to come up and kind of tell us the conversations going along in the Connectivity Committee regarding pedestrian traffic?

Sure. Andy Shatley, Chairman of our Connectivity Committee. Obviously, this is a topic that we talk about on a monthly basis. It's part of what we try to do is to keep active transportation, anybody who needs to get around Jonesboro, trying to create safe routes so to where they can get to entities or places in Jonesboro around the schools or the supermarket or the coffee shop or whatever. This has fallen into our agenda mainly because of connectivity could be various things as Chief talked about. Transportation is changing. There's lots of ways to get around Jonesboro right now. You can walk, you can roll, you can ride a bike, you can ride a scooter, you can ride an electric scooter. There's all kinds of ways that people are choosing to move around Jonesboro. And as Jonesboro grows, there's going to be more interactions that happen. And so it behooves all of us to think ahead and where our town is going five years, 10 years, 20 years from now, what that looks like, what that interaction looks like at the ground level. And so these are great conversations. I almost think that we're probably a little behind on some of these conversations to where, you know, we talked about having some sort of comprehensive safety plan moving forward to try to think in the future, what does Jonesboro need to look like so the interactions are safe for those types of citizens? This is gonna be one of those that you're gonna talk about here, this all stop. It's very interesting to us. As Ms. Carroll talked about, the no right turn on red, there's lots of different ways to shut things down to protect the drivers and also to protect the pedestrians at the same time. So I'm very excited to hear that y'all are taking on this conversation. It's gonna take money, it's gonna take focus, it's gonna take some creativity in planning to try to figure out what the new infrastructure looks like. But our committee, the Connectivity Committee, we presented a couple years ago executive summary to y'all about 10 different routes around town we've knocked a bunch of those off that's going to be very exciting at some point i'm going to come back in front of you and update that executive summary and we've got spots four five six spots that are going to open up on that list that we're going to need feedback from the community or from this committee that There are places to where we need to safely connect that we're gonna wanna hear your ideas. The community needs to chime in on this also. It's one of the coolest things to be able to look at our map, and you can actually move around Jonesboro, relatively protected and dedicated bike paths or multi-use side paths, and you can traverse miles And as soon as you go through Arkansas State's campus and that connectivity, you're talking about going all the way across town safely. So those are the types of routes that we have to protect and look at in the future so that these interactions can be much more safe for the pedestrians. So I'll entertain any questions. At some point, I'm going to update this committee with that updated executive summary and also talk about all the projects that we've completed and the routes that we've completed, but also the ones that we have planned in the future.

That would be great. You always got an open invitation, Chairman.

Yeah, absolutely.

Hey, is there any questions for Mr. Shatley? Thank you, Andy. All right, next I'm going to have Mr. Craig Lott come up and talk to us a little bit about this all-stop project that we're currently working on along with the you know, the comprehensive safety plan. I think that you've got some notes on that as well today, Craig.

Yes, I do. Thank you. To talk about the pedestrian all stops on Washington Avenue, what we're proposing is doing some improvements to three intersections along Washington, so Union Street, Main Street, and Church Street. They will be interconnected, so if you push a pedestrian button at any of the three intersections, intersections, you will actually stop the traffic at all three intersections. And the reason that's the case is because there's so much traffic at the peak hours through there that if you allow the intersections to move, cause backups in the system. And so they will be interconnected, which requires a little bit more communications between the signals, but we have that included. We had a consultant make sure that the system could recover after a pedestrian did push the button, that it wouldn't take a half hour to recover from something like that. And it will recover fairly quickly from it, but it will create delays to motorists. so when we push the the idea is that when a pedestrian pushes the button and asks for the crosswalk that it will stop all traffic north and south and east and west at those three intersections so the pedestrian has free flow to go across the intersection so there'll be no moving vehicles We actually have one of these intersections that we've been operating for a while at Marion Berry and Johnson. It's been a pedestrian all-stop for quite a few years. It's not interconnected with any adjacent signals, so it's not, you know, may not be as obvious that that's what it's doing, but it's been doing that for several years, and it's worked fine. So what we need is an estimated $300,000 investment to buy the additional equipment that's needed for it, because none of these crosswalks or none of the intersections downtown have push buttons now. They just service. pedestrians every cycle, and so it's always a passive type. They're not protected, so we would need to put in audible pedestrian push buttons that are required for ADA compliance now, and then some communication pieces as well, so there's gonna be several new push buttons put around the intersection. And then there'll be some additional concrete work to improve the crosswalks or the curb cuts for the crossings. So the ask is for $300,000. We're at 30% plans. It will take probably 16 weeks or better to get the equipment in after it's ordered. So it's not something that's going to happen next week. But the sooner we get something ordered, the sooner we can actually see it happen out there. That's with the pedestrian all stop projects if anybody has any questions about that.

Chairman. Yes sir. Greg, the city attorney just hit this. Given what you just said that the goal with this is to no free flowing vehicles, would it make sense with the three intersections we're talking about on Washington, would it make sense like what the city attorney said to do no rights on red?

there will be no rights on red. There will be a sign that will light up that says no right on red when you push that button.

That'll happen at those institutions. So I'm driving a vehicle, and when the signal's upgraded, it's gonna tell me I can't make a right on red.

Yeah, there'll be a square sign, new sign, that'll light up with a right-hand turn, X'd out, that'll show you, that'll light up just when that's the case.

And I think that we have that where Maine comes around, Is it Maine that comes around and hits Union, or hits Church? Where is that? No, it's where Union comes around and hits Maine. You have a no ride on red when you're there trying to make your right. And I think where we're doing the all stops, I don't know that we would need a special ordinance for it. I was thinking if we wanna think outside of the box at other places around town where we're not gonna put these all stops, there might be certain intersections that the committee thinks it would be beneficial to put a no ride on red just because of the level of pedestrian traffic there. And that's what we could discuss.

as far as an ordinance. The Southwest Drive and South Culver House intersection, when we build those pedestrian improvements, there'll be a no right turn on red because the stop bar for the southbound is so far back from the intersection that it's not safe to make that right hand turn. So there'll be a no.

Some of them will happen as part of light upgrades, but some of them could also happen just because we know it's an intersection with a lot of pedestrians.

This is a slightly adjacent comment, but basically on topic. So the push button light up we just did on Washington, if I can remember, Brian Richardson told me it cost $15,000, $16,000, something like that maybe. Do we see using more of those various places because it's relatively low cost?

That is our fourth or third rapid flashing beacon that we have in the city. Our DOT is going to install a fourth one on Johnson Avenue at Dean Street. We can begin to use those, but I think that kind of leads into the next thing that we really need to start looking at is our roadway safety action plan update. It was last, it was written in 2022. It needs to be updated, but those type projects and those locations would be, would come out of a study like that, a report like that. We'd start identifying those things and, It would identify the hotspot areas, kind of the data that Chief Elliott presented. We would have all the accident data for the last five years, pedestrian and vehicle, and identify all those roadway safety hazards and kind of lay out plans. But most importantly, lay out a structure for an active, proactive response or proactive plan rather than reacting to things as they happen. The education piece is a really big piece. We've been talking with Jonesboro Public Schools for a while now about getting the Argot Safe Streets curriculum started being taught to the elementary school and to high school students. And they're saying that it's gonna start in October of this year, and I hope that they do follow through with that. But we need to push the other school districts to pick up that curriculum also. But we really need an active or a transportation safety committee that's really pushing this stuff on a regular basis. And I think that safety action plan would get us there. and identify all the other measures. October is Pedestrian Safety Month, and we really need a big push. I think May of next year is Bicycle Safety Month, and we really need some big pushes there to educate the public about what's going on and keep it in front of them. And I think by funding the Safety Action Plan would help us get there be able to live in a solution rather than just reacting to when things happen to us but uh the estimated cost for that's about 125 000 and i i've actually written a resolution requesting that money i'd love to bring it to the to city council very soon if if there's support for that because i really do believe that's something that we really need to be working on and getting done and i know mr richardson's talked about this before too some of those

for lack of a better word the automatic signals like i'm thinking like at cricket forest there right when you're in the roundabout and if you're making a right you got mountain bikers kind of coming across right there and of course there's pedestrian markings but you're riding a mountain bike or something fairly quickly and you're kind of popping out of the woods i don't know mr richardson i've talked about some of those that just automatically light up because you're on a mountain bike and you know there's really no way to hit the button

There are some technologies, and we haven't found one that we've purchased yet, but there are some technologies out there that are beginning to do those sort of things.

I've seen a few in Bentonville, like riding in Bentonville, and they're not even, honestly, the one I'm thinking of, it's not even needed. I mean, but you just come up, it automatically lights up, it's not even hidden, it's just there.

Sometimes our traffic consultants are more conservative than... They are in northwest Arkansas and those sorts of things that Everybody's looking for proven technologies when you're talking about spending thousands of dollars for a piece of equipment that they'd like to see some longevity in their use. But there are some technologies, and we're definitely looking at those and seeing what we can do. We've talked about doing it at Southwest Drive and Main Street in Highland, which is a, if you've not seen the videos of all the pedestrians that use that intersection, please come see those. It's bad at times. But we've talked about trying to put something in there so the pedestrians wouldn't even have to push the button. They would just know that they were there. So that may be the next upgrade that we look at at that intersection.

Maybe one we want to look at for no ride on red as well because the way R DOT has put those turn lanes, which I know is to help traffic flow, it's super confusing. There's a light here and then there's a light here. But there's a crosswalk in between those. people think that, and I think we've reached an agreement that we're not writing tickets if you go through that first red light to make your right on red at the second red light, but I think that's dangerous for that pedestrian. I don't know, it's just something that needs to be looked at. It's dangerous there, for sure.

Mr. Chairman, I think the one thing I'm hearing, I mean, we keep I think we're saying we put in different lights and signals and things like that, but one thing I think is missing is we haven't talked about how do we design in terms of, so we had the landscape architect students that were here last week from University of Arkansas. I think one thing we gotta make sure we start to do is design. for our pedestrian safety, but at the same time, maybe we look at, like Arkansas State did, when they closed Carraway, maybe there's some roads that we need to look at, some roadways that we say, okay, this is, even down in this area, that we know this is high pedestrian, how do we redesign this area to make it even more pedestrian friendly? Maybe we close some roads off. I mean, these are our roads. I mean, I know some of them are state highways, but at the same time, we can do what we want to with them. I feel like we need to start to consider that and start to look at that and even get a full-time landscape architect on the staff where we have someone that is dedicated to this. Because I feel like different signals and different things we can put in place, but at the same time, I think we gotta be intentional with our design.

Some of that comes from the report that he's talking about where they study it and look at where you need to focus your energy.

I would think so. You just talked about Southwest and Highland. Is that what you said? I drive through there every morning and watch the kids go from McDonald's to JHS every single day in waves. Again, I think our design, we like the five lane, make it go fast. and also slowing traffic down through different measures. But anyway, that's why I said the design piece has to be.

A lot of that is being covered in the comprehensive plan that's currently being developed. They're looking at particularly that intersection and a few others with some concepts. Seeing the concepts, those are some big money projects.

And last thing I'll say, talk about crosswalks and stuff like that. If you look out our door, we've got a crosswalk where people drive through it like that.

You can watch that all day long. All day long.

All day long.

At least they're stopping at the stop sign.

Sometimes. I watch them in council and he's just right through it. Right. But maybe we just, I mean, we can move. Yeah, thank you. I was about to say, it's little stuff, man. It's not big stuff. I mean, it's just little things.

It should be on the opposite side.

That's all I got. Anything else for Mr. Lyon? Before you leave, I just wanted to say, that $125,000 number that you described, what all did that entail? Was that just standing up the Comprehensive Safety Committee and updating the plan?

Yes. That was to update the plan to get it something that's usable, do all the public meetings, do all the public engagements, everything that's needed to to have this with the final plan.

I would say if you have resolution language that's already drafted up, I would say that's something that the committee's definitely, I know I'm interested in hearing, I can't speak for the rest of the members on the committee, but I know anything that we can do to help the pedestrian traffic along with also educating the motorist in the city and everything else, I think it's something that, I mean, even whenever we put something like that into place before we can actually make it actionable, it's probably six to 12 months down the road before we can actually pull a trigger on anything that that committee would come up with. Personally, I think the sooner the better. $125,000 isn't something I had in my back pocket, but that's something that I think is definitely open for conversation at this point.

Chairman, I think that's wise. It reminds me of that Seinfeld episode. You remember when Kramer went and redrew the lines one night on all the roads on Seinfeld? So, yeah, I mean, I think what Craig's saying is we need to be smart about what we do. Because, I mean, if you just gave me the line truck or whatever, I mean, I'd go do a bunch of them, but that doesn't mean I did them in the right spots.

Gotcha. Okay, Mr. Light, thank you so much. Appreciate you, sir. All right, before we get into the, first of all, is there any more questions from anybody else on the committee as it pertains to public safety, pedestrian safety? Okay, I'm seeing none. You know, next thing we have is the actual resolution that we have for the All Stops Project, but at this point, I'm gonna look out to the public and see is there anybody that has any questions or comments or anything else as it pertains to the pedestrian safety conversation? I promise we will find a seat for you, yes. Okay, seeing no other questions or comments, I'm gonna go ahead and we will go ahead and move on to the next item on our agenda being resolution 26-130, being a resolution to amend the 2026 capital improvement budget and allocate funds for the pedestrian all stops project for three downtown intersections. Whereas the city of Jonesboro has identified three intersections along Washington Avenue in downtown Jonesboro that are in immediate need of pedestrian all stops. Whereas pedestrian all stops is a traffic control method that stops vehicular traffic at the intersection in all directions while pedestrians request a walk interval to allow pedestrian traffic to cross safely in the downtown area. And whereas estimated cost per intersection for the project based off the 30% construction plans are approximately $100,000 per intersection for equipment, infrastructure, work, and labor. And whereas the city of Jonesboro desires to allocate $300,000 for the pedestrian all stops project to ensure the safety of pedestrian traffic in the downtown area. Now, therefore be it resolved by the city council for the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas, that section one, the city of Jonesboro approves allocating additional funds in the amount of $300,000 for the pedestrian all stops project section two, the mayor, Harold Copenhaver and city clerk, April Leggett, are hereby authorized by the city council for the city of Jonesboro to execute all documents necessary to amend the 2026 capital improvement budget and allocate funds.

Move forward to full council. Second.

I have a motion and a second to move this resolution on to full council. Do I have any questions from the committee? And any from the public in attendance? Seeing none, we will call a vote on this item. That motion does pass. Thank you, everybody. Okay, that brings us on to our next item on the agenda, being pending items. I know of none, followed by other business. If you haven't had an opportunity to take a look at the vector mosquito control report for August of 26, it's another good read. Of course, we haven't had much rain, so the mosquito numbers are down. And from my understanding, I think the production of rice also plays into a lot of those numbers. And since corn is being harvested a lot more than rice these days, We're also seeing lesser mosquito numbers coming in from the outlying communities that is, as we expected, it was contributing a lot to our mosquito abatement numbers that we were seeing in the past. Any questions from, or concerns from anybody else on the council?

Chairman, Mr. Richardson, I think you mentioned this, that AMP was doing an RFP or something. I know that wasn't very long ago you mentioned that, so there's probably not really any update there, is there?

that RFP has been issued. I believe the closing date on that is at the end of this month. And so at that point, the A&P Commission will actually review those applications. And I think they've got a mechanism created for reviewing those. No idea how many submissions they're going to get. So when that's done and those are reviewed, I'm sure that the next step will be for it to be discussed at the annual, monthly A&P committee meeting. So until then, I don't really know how that's gonna go.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Okay, next on the agenda is public comments. This is an opportunity from anybody in the general public that wants to come up and discuss anything that was not on the agenda today. Seeing none, that moves us on to our final item on the agenda being adjournment.

So moved.

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

Aye.

Any nays? All right. And we do stand adjourned. Thank you very much, everybody, for your time.