Finance & Administration Council Committee - Regular Meeting

Yep.

The minutes are approved. We'll move into new business. First up is resolution twenty five one sixty two. A resolution by city council of the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas to enter into an agreement with Bailey Contractors Incorporated to provide construction management services for the nine one one and real time crime center project. Whereas on 10/21/2025, the Public Safety Center task force endorsed constructing an e nine one one slash real time crime center on the 400 block of West Washington Avenue.

Whereas the city of Jonesboro issued a request for qualifications for a construction manager of the project per the required professional services process detailed in the City Of Jonesboro code of ordinances. Whereas the selection committee has determined that Bailey Contractors Incorporated is the most qualified firm for the project, whereas Bailey Contractors Incorporated has agreed to provide construction management services for the nine one one and real time crime center project, And whereas the funding of the execution of the agreement shall come from the capital improvement, revenue bonds, budget, and compensation shall be paid in accordance with the agreement. Therefore, be resolved by city council, city of Jonesboro, Arkansas that section one, the city of Jonesboro shall enter into an agreement with Bailey Contractors Incorporated to provide construction management services for the nine one one and real time crime center project. Section two, the funding for the execution of the agreement shall come from the capital improvement revenue bonds budget and compensation shall be paid in accordance with the agreement. Section three, the mayor and the city clerk are hereby authorized by the city council for the city of Jonesboro to execute all documents necessary to effectuate the agreement.

Move forward to full council. Second.

Motion forward for full council. Any questions or comments from the committee regarding this resolution? Anything from staff or the public If not, please record your vote on whether or not to forward to full council. Item number resolution twenty five one sixty three, resolution by city council of the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas for the city of Jonesboro to enter into an agreement with the Northeast Arkansas Industrial Development Commission for funding of economic development services, whereas NAIDC was established under ordinance 86

oh, sorry.

One oh, no problem. 157 15 hey. Madam Clerk, can you let the record reflect that doctor Anthony Coleman is in attendance now?

Yes.

So we're on resolution forty five one sixty three. Resolution by city council, the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas for the city of Jonesboro to enter into an agreement with the Northeast Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, NAIDC, for funding of economic development services, whereas NAIDC was established under ordinance eighty six fifteen fifty seven to oversee the expenditure of public funds directed to industrial development and to promote economic development and whereas the City Of Jonesboro appoints four members to the NAIDC of the total of seven. Whereas the annually adopted budget for the City Of Jonesboro currently includes funding for industrial development in the general outside agencies fund and for NEA development in the capital improvements otherannual obligations fund for a combined total of $338,500 and whereas no increases proposed for year two of this agreement with the same allocation slated for inclusion in the 2026 budget. And whereas the terms and conditions of services provided by the NAIDC are defined in the attached agreement. Now therefore be resolved by city council of city the of Jonesboro, Arkansas that the mayor and city clerk are hereby authorized to execute said agreement.

Moving forward to full council. Second.

Motion seconded for the full council. Any questions or comments from the committee?

Anything from staff or the public in attendance? If not, please record your vote on whether or not to forward resolution 20 five-one 163 to full council. It'll go to full council. That was the last item under new business. I'm not aware of any pending items, so we'll move into other business. Before we do the Jets update, I would like to ask that we walk on, that we weigh the rules and walk on resolution twenty five thousand one sixty five.

I'll make a motion.

Second. Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Alright, resolution twenty five one sixty five, resolution by the city council of the City of Jonesboro, Arkansas requesting city water and light to provide contribution commitments towards the purchase of two new fire trucks for the Jonesboro Fire Department, whereas city of Jonesboro Fire Department administration has performed comparative pricing and secured the commitment for a reasonable delivery timeline to facilitate the replacement of a 2,005 model 100 foot aerial ladder truck and a twenty eleven model pumper truck within the department. Whereas the purchase price of the aerial truck will be $1,558,852 and the pumper truck will be $860,915 for a total cost of $2,419,767 And whereas upon delivery of the two new units, the replacement units will be sold, the replaced units maybe, the replaced units will be sold through the assistance of a listing agent and the resulting sale proceeds being returned to the depreciation fund and whereas the initial apparatus pricing estimated detailed in the FY 2025 has since been reviewed by fire administration, extensive brand and supplier comparisons have resulted in the identification of a similar unit from a different manufacturer at a significant price savings and whereas the city appropriated 625,000 in the 2024 depreciation fund to fund the anticipated future purchase.

And whereas additional $625,000 funding will be appropriated in the 2025 depreciation fund and whereas City Waterlot has indicated a willingness to commit a two year funding program including an annual contribution of $600,000 towards the purchase of the fire trucks and requires a resolution from the city council to enable the annual contributions and whereas the future resolution will be presented to approve the purchase. Now therefore be resolved by city council of the city of Jonesboro that section one, city of Waterloo is hereby requested to contribute $600,000 in 2025 and June in 2026 from its surplus funds to be used towards the purchase of two new fire trucks for the Jonesboro Fire Department. Section two that mayor Harold Copenhaver and city clerk April Leggett are authorized to execute the necessary documents to effectuate these contributions.

I'd like a motion to approve and send the full council.

Second.

Second to forward a full council. Just for clarification, we're talking about a total of two different trucks, the aerial truck and the pumper truck and which trucks the 06/25 that was appropriated?

So the FY twenty five budget allocated a plan $2,400,000 that was spread across a two year time frame for a ladder apparatus truck. And the chief in the fire administration did a lot of digging around and basically found another supplier that could supply two of these trucks for that original estimated cost for the one aerial apparatus. So I'll let Chief Hamrick give some detail.

No. So

originally, we were looking to replace the 2005 platform that we had. Due to its age, it's coming on about 25 years old, 20 plus years old, it's time to replace that unit. We've spent over $100,000 over the last year keeping that thing running. So it's just time. It's time to get rid of it.

Originally, we were going to stay with peers who have we have purchased our trucks from for the last twenty years. The way the market is now, Pierce has got a lot of proprietary parts, and I think well, they charge an exuberant amount of money for what they provide. It was going to be a four year build time if we went with them for the single truck at a cost of $2,500,000 So as time went on, we decided it was time to start looking and see what else is out there. We found these other companies that were able to produce the trucks within twenty months and be able to get us a ladder that we need and a pumper to keep us on schedule moving forward for the same amount of money as the original. It's a much better product, I think, because of the parts availability and some things that go in with that.

So we're going to be ahead in the long run versus staying with a Pierce product. Any other questions I can answer for you?

I do. So help me. You said that the trucks themselves is a better quality than the ones that you would than the one that you would get.

They're gonna be the same. Forest quality, I misspoke on that a

little bit.

Okay.

What's better about it is the parts road, right now, what we're into with with Pierce manufacturing is anything on those trucks that we have to replace, something as simple as a generic fan belt. It has to be a Pierce part to go back on a Cummins engine. With Rosenbauer, what they're doing with it is pretty much they give you all the parts on a jump drive, and I can go to Napa and buy those common parts that we need. And that's the problem with Pierce right now. We can't do that. We're stuck going with them for a much more expensive product.

And is that typical for trucks to go twenty, twenty five years?

On a ladder truck, look at it's a combination of mileage that you put on, engine hours, the depreciation part, NFPA nineteen ten actually dictates that any truck twenty five years or older, which you'd remove from service, they want you to have nothing on the front line less or older than ten years. After it's ten years old, you can move it into reserve status and that's with City Water and Light's help. We've been on that schedule for quite a while now. So it's worked out, but it's just time to get this one replaced and up to speed with new one.

Great. So and then this is I don't know if this is a Brian question but the 1.2 coming from CWL and then the other was it 1.2, 1.3 coming from reserves or depreciation funds from 2024, 2025 and then is that 600,000 from both? So that's another 1.2 from both.

Is that what

I read?

Yeah, 06/25. So yeah, 1.5. Okay, it makes sense. Got it.

Else from chief? Anything else from staff or?

For the record, I'd ask I'll be refusing discussion or vote, due to being on board of directors, see why not.

Does that mean I need to vote?

Yes, please.

We still have four voting members, I don't need to vote, do Seven counts me. Yeah. Four still majority of seven. Alright. If there's no further questions or comments from anybody in council chambers, please cast your vote on whether or not to forward resolution twenty five one hundred sixty five.

Voice vote. Oh, Voice Voice vote.

I'll walk on. Okay. Go ahead.

Mister Emerson? Yes. Doctor Charles Coleman?

Yes.

Miss Williams? Yes. Doctor Anthony Coleman?

Hey.

Did you say yes? Yes. Okay. That's four. So

now we'll move on to the next item on the agenda which is a update regarding JETS from Director Lee Wells.

Aye. You said aye.

Good evening. Have a limit of three minutes.

I just realized what you said. So I just put together a brief information to try to give you all an update. I did have some slides put together here. I can get any of this information as well for you if you'd like to get that. But some of the things we have going on is we have just now recently started the process of our streets program.

That's the software that we have gotten. One of the benefits of that is some much more detailed accountability of our ridership, which is something I have put on the slide here that shows you where our ridership has been. So since we started this process, which was about the October and through now, not including today, we've had just over 3,700 riders. And you can see a number of those riders have actually been the A State riders. But this breakdown is something that we will see a lot more information from in the future on not only what type of rider we have, but also where these riders are riding.

So we'll be able to get a lot better data moving forward on this. I do want to point out that these numbers are probably skewed a little bit on the lower side because this is we're still in the process of making this live. We have not gotten all the bugs worked out. We do have a vehicle every once in a while that may not be reporting correctly, things like that. But we are gathering as much of this data as we can.

I also put this together in kind of a little easier to read pie chart here. I say I, my team and I, we put this together. But you can see here, and again, with this, you can see that there is a large number of free ridership. That also is skewed a little bit because of this new system. Not all of those are actually free, it's just a misrepresentation through the system of gathering that data that we're trying to get all worked out.

We do have some pass riders that are using that, but also I believe when the system picks up a transfer where they're going from one bus to another bus, that registers it as a free ride. So we're trying to get all of those kind of those kinks and bugs worked out that we're working through. I'm not sure if we have audio, but I do have a quick video of something else that I wanted to show on our buses. So this is a picture of one of our buses and we have, if you look right above the front glass window, there's a little black box up there. That is a in passenger, an onboard passenger reader board that is going to be get

to

So, next

get to

to the to stop or whatever. So these are some cool features that are gonna be coming. Let me see if we can get

Next stop, Patrick Street and Pat Circle. Next stop, East Washington Avenue and South Patrick Street.

So this is just one of the newer features that we have been able to implement into our vehicles. We do have this actively going right now in all of our buses. And something else with this is this reader board, this system is very similar to what we will be able to see in our shelters once we get that shelter project done. There will be a very similar board that is in there that will tell the riders when they're waiting on the bus what bus coming next and when it will arrive.

Gonna put that in a case so that nobody can pull it out?

100%. Yes,

sir. Yeah.

And I believe we just have a slide show here of some various pictures for me to talk over. But we're really excited about some of the opportunities that we have with these upgrades that we're making. The data collection is gonna be a huge benefit for the entire city and for our department because we're gonna be able to gather this information in a more specific way to tell where our passengers are riding, what areas are going to be more active in our ridership. We can then identify areas that we need to work on improvement on, areas that maybe we're not getting to right away. We can look increasing our service in certain areas.

All of these things will help us for future planning. You can also see with these that we do have some new technology that's coming on to the system. One other thing I will I like to highlight with this new software, it is it is much more hands off for the driver. Now, our drivers never had to mess with anything while they were driving. But now, the only time they ever have to touch anything other than the steering wheel is whenever someone loads in and loads off.

And we are working on some other upgrades in the future that will allow that to register automatically whenever they get on by just swiping or whatever. So that's just more future progress that we're working towards. Not sure why my slides aren't playing, so we'll get to look at this real, oh, there they go. We're always actively involved community. We try to get out as much as we can to educate the community on who we are and what we have to offer.

Public transportation is here for the public. So we wanna increase that, we wanna let everyone know about what that is. And with that, we're really happy to say that we've increased our paratransit ridership. We have almost two fifty active riders now. We have went through all of our ridership and we have recently recertified a lot of the clients that were still in the system that maybe had been carried over, and then also added new riders, and then also cleared out any ridership that was in our system that maybe are no longer using the service.

So we're getting again much better data for what we're able to present to anyone whenever they ask questions. We're also coming up on our anniversary in case anyone has forgotten. 2006 I believe is whenever our service started. So that means next year will be a great time for J. T. And hopefully we will be able to continue to add these enhancements, add new technology to everything that we're doing and possibly even refresh who we are and get out some new information on what we're going to be in the future.

Anniversary, you're going to be able to pick up people at the house like me?

We can we can sign you up for paratransit. I got you an application if

you need one. I mean, you know, we could do curb service, you know.

That may be a future possibility, but it'll be a little while down the road.

I can handle that, brother.

I

do have a question, Mr. Chairman. So I'd also like to see and I know I saw the numbers on the October versus November and I know a lot of the SQ with ASU and Halloween and all that kind of stuff. But I know we went into that agreement with A State and I'd like to as you're moving forward before you get because I know you have to report to A State. I'd like to know some of that information as you move forward before you have to turn it into a state just to kind of see what's happening and if it's working and improving whatever.

Yeah, we'll continue to gather this data as we continue to get better with this and get everything fully functional and where there's no more kinks and bugs and everything, we'll have much, much better data that we can then bring to the table, bring to you guys and then also take to A State as well. As I said, not just total numbers.

Yeah.

But also more specific as far as not only how many riders are A State students, faculty, and staff but also how many are getting on on campus, how many are getting on off of campus, how many are using it for school, how many are using it for their personal day to day. As we continue to go, we'll be able to get more and more data like that.

Follow-up, I'm sorry, follow-up, I know Ms. Williams always asks about this as far as payment. I think that's you Ms. Williams, but asks about payment coming here versus having it in other places or other locations, number one. And you may not be able to answer that today, but that but then you mentioned shelters. I'm always asked about that, where we are on the shelters, where we are on the pavement for these bus riders and the convenience of the payments instead of having to come all the way here to make those payments?

So as far as the payments, we are currently in the process of working towards a solid solution that will not only give an easier time for the consumer to buy or purchase tickets, but also to just walk on and pay for a bus ride. We're just in the early stages of that yet that I can't give a definitive timeframe on when that will be finalized. Hopefully, we can get that sooner as opposed to later. It's just there's a lot of things to work with that. And then as far as the shelter project, we are currently under contract with a contractor that is working towards this and they are working on building all of these shelters and then they will send those shelters to us.

Once we receive those shelters, it should be fairly quick process of actually getting them installed at the site and then all of the other pieces like the technology and things like that can, it'll all move really quickly once that happens. I think we're looking at an estimate of early December for delivery of the physical shelters to be in place. So hopefully by the end of the year, weather permitting, we'll have all of those shelters in place and be able to start the new year off strong with that. I hope that answers your question.

I have a question. I guess I'm always wanted to ask the odd questions and the questions being when you speak from the patent standpoint, how much security are we having on those lines? Are they unsecured at all?

Are are you asking how much security we have on the bus itself?

Well, if if you know, if they're paying money, if they're paying to to to do the ride, do we have videos enough for security?

We have video in every vehicle. That's regardless of if it is a revenue vehicle, there is video that is not only live, recorded, it's accessible by myself and my team, but it's also accessible by Jonesboro Police Department.

I think some people get this to Jonesboro USA and we still in the hood. Okay.

We do have a we have we have at least three cameras, I believe, on every vehicle. So you have a lot of high quality, high resolution video in those vehicles of what's going on. But also the physical money itself, it goes into a lockbox that then drops into another lockbox that is inside of another lockbox. It would be a big challenge for anyone to be able to access that easily and that in of itself is one of the biggest deterrents.

And I appreciate you saying that and this is not really a joke. That needs to be known.

100%. And that is one of the reasons why we have the system of payment that we have is we don't have a way to do change because that's not safe viable option for And the that's why we're looking at alternative options for fare collections to be able to give a variety of means to do that. That's why we offer the pass sale option here at the collections office at City Hall or even contacting our office if there's some help that we need to do because we can sell you those advance and that way you're just having a card basically to account for your trip instead of actual money. We unfortunately don't have anything that we can take other than cash on the bus and we cannot offer change on the buses. But we.

I I guess the excuse me cutting you off but you know, believe it or not, a lot of council person didn't know that and a lot of community didn't know that and since we're talking publicly, people need to know that at the same time because we are going to a digital age. Yes. But at the same time, you know, people who moved into Jonesboro don't know that. And so when they find it out, I guess I look more as not from a joke standpoint, but from a security standpoint for the bus drivers themselves.

Yes, and not just the drivers but also the passengers. Know, it's good to know as a passenger to know that you don't have to worry about anything like that going on, on the bus. And it's a great point that you mentioned. And I'm glad that we have meetings like this and conversations and question like that are brought up because on the day to day basis, I don't think about some of those things. I don't, I see it every day, so I may not think of the simple things of how important they are to be given to the public. So I do appreciate you bringing that up.

Any other questions? Alright, thank you.

Thank you.

Alright, we'll move into the next item. Is there any other business from the committee today before we move on to the next item? I didn't mean to be presumptuous. Alright, we'll move into the next item which is public comment.

What does that mean?

I read it this morning. Anybody from the public want to make a comment about something that was not already discussed on today's agenda? Seeing none, next item's adjournment.

So moved. Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?