Code Enforcement - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. It's 05:00. So we'll go ahead. We will call this meeting of the Public Safety Committee of the City of Jonesboro to order. First on our agenda coming up is going to be roll call. So if you will mark your attendance on the device in front of you. Seeing that we do have six members present, we do have a quorum. So we'll go ahead and we'll proceed. Next item on the agenda is going to be the approval of minutes from our previous meeting on Tuesday, August 19.

I move to approve unless there's change to be noted, Mr. Chair. I second that.

Okay, I have a motion and second to approve the minutes as presented. Do I have any questions or concern? If not, we'll go ahead and we will take a vote to approve those minutes. Thank you everybody. That motion does pass bringing us on to the next item on our agenda which is new business which are resolutions to be introduced. First resolution to be introduced is a resolution by the City Council of the City of Jonesboro, Arkansas to condemn property located at 711 Burke Avenue, Jonesboro, Arkansas 72401. Parcel number 0114313403400.

Move to recommend to the full council. Second.

Okay, I have a motion and a second to recommend to the full council. Do I have any questions from anybody on the committee? Okay, any comments, questions from the administration? And any from the public in attendance? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and we will take a vote on this item.

That resolution does pass and does forward on to the full council. Moving on to the next resolution to be presented this evening is resolution by the city council of the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas to condemn property located at 2620 Crawford Drive Number 11, Jonesboro, Arkansas 72401, parcel Number 1140 Four-two 70 Three-two Thousand 200.

I make a motion that this be forwarded to full council.

Second. Okay. I have a motion and a second to forward this item on to full council. Do I have any questions or comments from anybody on the committee? Okay. Any questions or comments from the administration? And anything from the public in attendance? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and call a vote on this item. That resolution does pass on to full council.

Moving on to the final resolution on our agenda today is resolution twenty five one twenty three. A resolution by the city council of the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas to condemn property located at 2017 Belt Street, Jonesboro, Arkansas 72401. Parcel number 0114417102600.

Make a motion to recommend to the full

council. I'll second.

Okay. I have a motion and a second to recommend this resolution on to the full council. Do I have any questions or comments from anybody on the committee? Any from the administration? And any from the public in attendance?

Okay. Seeing none, we'll go ahead and we will call vote on this item. And that resolution does pass and forwards on to the full council. Moving on to the next item on our agenda, we have number five which is pending items and knowing of none, we will move on to number six, other business, which first we have on the agenda is the vector mosquito control report for August 2025. Does anybody have any questions or comments concerning that report?

I will say in reviewing this, I did have a question. I'm going to submit this over to Victor. I was reviewing this over the weekend. Noticed that we had more total mosquitoes collected from year to year, about five fifty, but what was different was the total average mosquitoes collected jumped from 7.3 to 73 per day. So I feel like we missed the decimal point on that, but just as a point of clarification, I'm going to send that back over to Victor.

But from year over year in 'twenty four, we also had 12 total inspected sites compared to having 60 this year. So I know that we're seeing quite a significant jump in the total sites inspected. So I feel like that number should be down, maybe they just didn't check those traps as frequent. Maybe something's changed on that point. But I did notice that the total spray miles have remained about the same.

There's about 41 more approximately there from year over year, but I did notice a considerable uptick in our aerial sprays. We had five this past month compared to two the previous year encompassing a difference of about 40,000 square acres that was covered in the previous month. But just a couple of points that I think we need to clarify with Vector as we continue to go forward with them, especially with the discrepancy between the total per day numbers going from 7.3 up to 73 mosquitoes. I feel like that warrants a little bit of a broader conversation.

It made me think of just, I guess, next year, they're up this year. Contract up this year? I believe so. I'd love to hear what they plan to do differently going forward. I know we've seen some dry times and I know it's even dry right now. So things aren't really equal to wet season. But I would really like to see what they're going to do differently next year as compared to this year. Hopefully they give us a different answer than we'll just add more spraying or maybe some controlled or some focused areas and using some different techniques. I'd love to for them to give us a presentation on that.

Yes sir. Thank you, Councilman. Okay, any other questions or concerns from anybody on the committee? Mr. Chairman? Yes sir?

I'm just a broken record. I mean they do business in nine states. I just think they could do a better job making presentation and maybe as Councilman McLean said with them being it forbid, maybe they'll be more interested. But I mean, the two Harvard MBAs that own the company, maybe they could at least zoom in and talk to us a little bit and have a real conversation and doing business in nine states there to have some metrics for us to measure ourselves against. Because when you read the data, I have no idea what any of it means. Mean, I understand it's very difficult to compare. I mean, they're doing work in Mississippi and Louisiana and Colorado and all these places and topography and weather and there's so many different variables, surely they can educate us a little bit so we know what are we up against and how are we really doing because we, I mean, I don't think anybody up here, I mean, how do you even know what their report means?

Sure, right. And I know one of the things whenever I look at their website not too long ago is that they did talk about data reporting and some of the things that they'd outlined on the data reporting segmentation, it didn't seem to be reflected in these reports just from the way I look at the titling and the way that I interpret it as well. But I think that's something that we focus heavily on whenever we do file an RFP for coming up for future bids to give us some sample reporting and give us the capability to go through it and make sure it's the information that we want to see on an ongoing basis. Okay. Any other questions or comments from anybody on the committee?

Any from the administration? And any from the general public regarding vector mosquito control? Okay. That is everything for that item on other business. Does anybody else have any other business for the committee today?

Chairman, In I responding to a citizen's query, I engaged in dialogue with the chief and he has prepared some remarks concerning our entertainment district. Chief?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, briefly this afternoon, Council Member Ford and I had a discussion about the Entertainment District and we're at that one year mark since we started the entertainment quarter

was I

the nineteen. Years of study prior to this due to the late afternoon. I didn't get a chance to get those numbers pulled. But overall, during from last August till September, police received 965 calls for service in the Entertainment District area. Now, that could be a traffic stop, it could be pedestrian issue, it could be a dog, anything for any reason somebody calls the police department for whatever reason that goes under this tick mark, 965.

From that number, there was a 146 criminal reports made from that that list of calls. And these were where somebody was arrested due to or some kind of report was made due to a criminal activity. Out of that criminal activity of 146 report, 18 of those were alcohol related. It could be a DWI or public intoxication. And then 30 of those were drug related.

So people and drug issues a little bit bigger than the alcohol issues down there. So again, know there's not much to compare it to previous years. Just in general conversation, I don't really see that there's a whole lot of big uptick in numbers as we're looking at across the board. I think overall our DWIs seem to be down. I think people are getting wiser about using Ubers and the cabs.

And so I commend the community for doing better in that aspect of drinking and being responsible. But again, here we are at that year threshold or mark for the entertainment district and just want to kind of lay some things out there and see if anybody has any questions. If you'd like further analysis then we can certainly get that and send it out.

If I may, so you said that's inside the boundary of the district. Doesn't necessarily mean it was downtown, walking around. It's just inside the

Whatever we've defined as the entertainment district and using that geo fencing, I had the analyst to pull the calls for that area. So it could be a traffic stop. It could be anything. And it's all broke down to every call. And I can send you this if you want to look through the data. But most of that is non criminal related. A lot of it's traffic. It could be somebody homeless standing on the corner, somebody who wants a welfare check on or whatever. That goes in that it is a call for service. So what that call for service is, it varies across the whole board or whatever.

But when you break down the second sheet, there was a 146 calls generated into something criminal.

Any other questions for the chief?

Has the Park Ranger program been in effect long enough to have an impact?

We're seeing a relief on having to send officers to certain calls, especially downtown or at the parks. Sometimes we get calls of just welfare concern, welfare check. So the rangers are able to help us out on that call and fill those calls for us. So we're starting to get some relief in that respect, yes. So the rangers had to go through training phase and now they're out on their own, starting to do the thing. They're getting more in tune of what's going on. And so yes, the benefits starting to pay off. Good

information. Thank you, chief.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

That's our, does anybody else have anything for the other business segment of our meeting today? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to the next item on the agenda being public comment. This is the opportunity where anybody from the public would like to come up and talk about anything that was not on today's agenda. Okay, seeing none that moves us on to our final item today being adjournment.

So moved.

Okay, I have a motion and a second for adjournment. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, we do stand adjourned. Thank you everybody for your time today.