Public Services Council Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, I'll call the meeting of the Public Services Committee to order. Chairman Gibson's out of town. We'll start with our roll call. You'll indicate your presence by hitting the button. Looks like we've got a quorum. Moving on to our minutes. Looks like we've got a couple sets of minutes. Minutes 26019. Entertain a motion to approve. So moved.

Second.

Got a motion and a second to approve minutes 26019. All those in favor, vote accordingly. All right, and that passes. Minutes 26039 from the meeting on Tuesday, April 21st, 2026. Entertain a motion to approve.

Make a motion to approve unless there's changes to be noted.

I have a motion and a second. If you'll vote accordingly. Okay, and approved. Next, minutes 26043. Minutes for the special call public services committee meeting on Tuesday, May 5th, 2026. Entertain a motion to approve.

I'll make a motion to approve unless there are changes to be noted.

I'll second.

Okay, motion made and seconded. If you'll vote on those minutes. And motion approved and let the record reflect. Dr. Anthony Coleman just walked in. All right, moving on to new business. Any new business for the committee? Anybody on the committee have any new business? All righty. Sorry, Dr. Coleman.

I did have a couple questions.

Yes, sir.

There'd be a new business on the agenda.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, we'll save it. What department is it for? Is it for parks? Okay, yeah, he's going to be up there in a little bit. Okay, any other new business? Nope. See, we have no pending items. So moving on to other business, we'll start with Lee. There's Lee. Start with Lee for a Gojo update.

How are y'all today? Did they get this, April, did y'all get this attached or printed? Okay, good. I do have additional copies if anyone does need that. So a couple of things I wanted to give, just some updates. But while I am kind of giving some updates, there are two documents that you have there. One is talking about our, a proposal for going to public notice for confirming some route changes, and then also a fair adjustment. The standard fairs that we operate now have been there since and from my knowledge since the initial starting of the system. So we're just looking at trying to build that into something that's more along the lines for what today's service is. The secondary page is going to talk about expanded fare and capping, fare capping, which will give some good definitions on what fare capping is and how that does work. So with the fare capping, when you have a pass, which is what we typically do now, so you can buy a one day pass, a seven day pass, or a 31 day pass, those passes are bought It is a physical copy that we have to actually purchase, print, and all of that. There's cost that is associated with that, but also the consumer has to come up with that money up front. They come in, they spend that amount for whatever that pass is, they purchase it up front, and that allows them to use it. With what fair capping is going to do is that is going to allow the consumer to get a trackable card that can have any amount of money they want on it. They can put $2 or $3 on it at a time. They can attach their credit card to it, whatever. Once that is that way, every time they use it, it tracks their collection. So if we have a one day pass at $5 and the standard fare is $2, their first ride, they'll pay. Their second ride, they'll pay. Their third ride, they'll only get charged a dollar. any additional ride that day, they won't be charged for. It will still swipe, it'll still register who that is as far as what type of service that is, but there's no actual fare being charged for that. That capping will carry over. So if someone caps on day one at $5, that $5 is already built in for that week cap. So that week cap of $20, when they reach $20 in that week period, it's again going to lock in. It's not going to charge them anymore. Once that week cap has been met, it'll start in on that month cap. Once that month cap is met, it'll stop charging them for that time period. um so these documents kind of explain what fair capping is how that process works and then again the public's notice proposal which i i will go over in just a moment just to give some other updates on things that we have the tap to pay credit card payment, things other than cash. We are still moving along on that. This is a part of that process. The fare capping, it will be required that we have this service before we're able to do the fare capping process. We are moving along through that. Hopefully, our goal is to have that actually live and working before the beginning of the next college school year, the fall year. I don't know the exact date, but I know it's in August, I believe. We have that in our paperwork, that our goal that we're looking for. The shelter project that we're currently working on, we have one shelter that is still not put up out of all of the shelters. The reason why that is not put up is for the electrical reason. We have some boring that has to be done in that location before the concrete can be poured. we only have i believe six more locations for boring to be completed once that is completed of course the concrete can be poured the shelter can be put up and then that will complete that shelter project for actually building and placing the shelters the electrical work we are currently still in process in we've been working with city water and live and a contracted electrician to be able to get all of that completed. We do have Monday message point media, which is who is handling the technology piece that is going into the shelters. They will be on site beginning Monday to start the hookup and connectivity process of getting all the technology rolled out. Barring any weather concerns, hopefully that should be a two week process to be able to get that completed on all of those stops to where we will have that active and operating like it needs to be operating completely. I guess on those topics, if anyone has any questions about that before I go into the public notice period that we wanna go to.

Thank you, Chairman. Thank you for sharing. So I want to go back to the capping thing for a minute. So help me understand. So when a person pays, I see the advantage of saying, OK, I'm going to give you $5 for the day, or I think you said $20 for the week. I understand that. But how is it advantageous for us if they don't do the cap, if I say I don't, and maybe you need to explain, if I don't pay for a $20 fare for the week and prefer to do it individually, but what if they reach the $20 for the week, will they continue to charge them?

No, no.

So they can, no one can give over $20 for that week.

not if they are using the system that is that's one of the keys that this is is in order to ensure your rides count you have to enroll in that pass ticketing program if you are just going in and swapping your credit card as a standard rider or if you're just dropping cash straight into there you're going to pay for every ride If you sign up and enroll in that and you get the little transit pass like you would see, that is when your fare capping process. So what you're looking at is you're reducing the wait time for loading and unloading of passengers. You're also reducing that upfront cost to the standard public that are using the route on a regular daily basis. because there is no upfront cost that allows anyone to get in on that program and utilize that fair capping. They don't have to necessarily come up with that $60 for a monthly pass right at the beginning. They can pay on it through the month to be able to use that as they're riding and they'll know I'm never gonna be charged more than $60 even if I'm going to and from work every single day and also going to the grocery store. So there's a benefit to those consumers. The key, however, is it only works if the system can track that payment. The only way it can track that payment is if they utilize the fair system that we're putting in place. For those that are just visiting, coming into town, or for those that are just riding once every once in a while, they're still going to pay. They're going to drop their cash in the box. They're going to load and move on. If we have a visitor that doesn't have cash, we now will have the ability for them to do tap pay or swap. However, because they don't have the app or the fare system, it's not going to track that. It doesn't know that John Doe is whose card was swapped. It just knows a card was swapped. But if they don't wanna get one of the cards to use, They can actually get that on their phone. They can utilize that same, tie their account to it just like your Apple Pay or whatever, and it'll still do the fare capping for them. so you're referring to this system being done or being completed before asu begins that's right that's what you're talking correct gotcha yes and this piece actually ties into our public notice that we want to go to what we're trying to do is to roll all of that in together So with this public notice piece that we have here, we have three items that we're basically looking at. So we are required by federal regulations that any changes that we make to our service, whether that be a route or whether that be a fair price, there has to be a public comment period. There has to be discussion on it before we move forward on that. This document was actually taken to our Citizens Advisory Board, where we had a discussion about what we were wanting to do. We did make some adjustments. We did lock in with accordance with what the Citizens Advisory Board suggested on the fair pricing that we wanted to move to. We did only discuss the actual fair, not the pass system because we're moving away from the passes that will be done on fair capping and that's based on trips and usage so that was just a percentage of how you calculate that that's how we came up with those numbers so the three items that we have number one is we want to make our successful pilot routes permanent So as y'all know, we have been performing some pilot routes for Arkansas State University. That has been a success. It's been utilized by the students. The students are enjoying it. We're getting a lot of positive feedback. Myself and Ryan, which is our marketing coordinator, we have been to almost every single NSO meeting for this new students that are coming in. And the feedback has just been fantastic. We're doing a lot more engagement with the students and the student organizations. And we're also getting a lot more positive feedback from the administration there on campus on how we wanna continue to drive this But we are only allowed to do a trial on a route for so long before we have to make that permit. So what we are wanting to do is to go to public notice on this permanent route, which would include the A-State service. Our number two would be our future route expansions and our alignment plans. These are just some adjustments that we're wanting to make to the current routes we have. And then also a proposal for a new I'm gonna call it kind of a special event route that will be available for us to grow into, which would be Craighead Forest Park. We would not utilize that on a regular basis as far as a day-to-day service. One, we would have to have the park operating hours at the same time that service operating hours are but this would allow us the ability to be able to put a vehicle on route for standard service when there are events going on at craighead forest this is an area of our of our town that we have not been able to get public transit to we're excited to be able to do that and this is something we want to be able to add We do have an expansion into Greensboro Village with the growth that is going on out there. We want to be able to do a little detour and get into that area for residential, business, recreational uses. Highland Drive, Culber House Drive, and Southwest Drive We wanna put some adjustments over into there to get some area in. One of the main two items that we were looking at was the revenue office, and then also there is a food pantry that is over there that gets a lot of usage. We wanted to get into that area, but also by getting over into that area, that's gonna allow us to get more more access to some of the residential areas to where we can find good alignments for bus stops for those individuals that wanna utilize public transit to be able to participate in what we have to offer. Of course, the A-State integration, I've included that on expansions and alignments because if we do make the pilot route a permanent route, What we want to do is to take the route that was originally utilized for campus and adjust it over to the Hilltop area. Right now currently we have one route that runs both Hilltop and the industrial park area. It goes all the way down to Martin Luther King and that is a large route. What we wanna do is split that in half by removing that A-State and focusing on the A-State campus routes. to service that population we will still be going through campus but it'll allow us to get up into hilltop better and also to decrease the wait times for customers waiting for the buses to be able to improve service for the different people in those areas will that go up to a nea hospital We do go all the way to NEA. We also want to look at an expansion alignment area into Matthews and Annie Camp. Right now we have a service route that we go down G Street to Hester and take Hester over to Nettleton. What we are wanting to do instead is to turn at Matthews at the red lot, go all the way down to My mind went blank. Thank you. Go down to Loberg. take it over to Nettleton, and then we will reposition one of the stops and add it as a sheltered area there for any camp. That will allow us again to use that Nettleton, Loberg, and Matthews area to look at more additional residential areas to increase the service of what we're providing to the population. And then lastly, what we have is our fair structure. Our standard fares currently are a dollar and a quarter. What we are proposing to go to is a $2 fare. That $2 fare, number one, it's a nice, easy number because we are switching over to a gravity feed fare collection. That's where they just literally drop it in. That machine will have no way to be able to give change back, so we want to make that as simplified as possible. Plus, with the... The way the system works, the rising prices of fuel, cost of labor, things like that, we have not done a fair adjustment at all since our initial start in 2006. This will just bring us a little bit better in line with other cities and other areas and what other fair rates are going. But, With the fare capping system we are putting in place, it will actually be saving a majority of our riders money because the system will automatically be tracking how they're utilizing the service. So those daily commuters, those daily usage riders, they are actually not going to pay any more, probably even less than what they were paying before because it will be easier for them to utilize that system as opposed to coming in and spending all the money up front to get that pass to be able to utilize on the system. That will adjust our adult students. Adult students, to clarify, are college users. This is a very low minority of our riders because A-State students do ride for free with us. However, ASU Newport is another organization that still rides with us. Plus, if we have visitors from other colleges that are coming back home that want to utilize the system, they will be able to utilize that reduced fare cost. And then our reduced fares, it would constitute seniors, veterans, youth, and then also Medicare participants. And they will no longer have to show the driver when they board a validation of what type of discount they are because they will be able to get that discounted card in advance to use on their route every time. The driver won't even have to ask. When they swap it, the system knows how much to charge them. It makes it much simpler. It'll really lower the time that we're spending on trying to get those customers boarded and taken care of. This, of course, does affect the paratransit. I did put an asterisk on there because that does fall within the purview of what the regulations are. Paratransit is its own separate entity, but it is still public transit. While the fare cost does have to be adjusted because the standard fare rate is changing, they have a lot of perks and benefits that they have access to as a paratransit rider that we are able to utilize to be able to get them those same types of incentives just done in a different format. And I do have a map here if anyone has questions about the way the routes look and what we were talking about. And I was very long-winded, I'm sorry.

No, no, Lee, thank you so much. And committee, we've got about 10 minutes. I know we have an update from the parks director, but do we have any other questions for Lee? I think my only comment, Lee, just kind of looking at the budget, I mean, we know this because it's the way public transit works. We're about, you know, 80 grand or so in fair revenue out of a $4 million budget. So, I think it's smart for us to adjust to pinch our pennies because it's definitely needed. I just think we need to watch our ridership and make sure it doesn't affect our ridership because it's a very small, you know, 2% of our revenue or whatever for Gojo. So I think it's smart. Let's just see what happens.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Lane. Thank you. Mr. Stearns.

Good afternoon, everybody. I got a lot for you. Are you ready? All right.

I saw you working Sunday morning at Craighead Forest.

Yeah, I have been. That's my happy place anyway, so it's not really work when I'm out there. So, hey, real quick, I'll give you a rundown of what's going on. We debuted Cashless Option on May 7th and have used that throughout the late spring sporting events, both court and field events. And I'll give you a report on kind of how that's going here in just a second when I get the numbers. Craig at Forest Park hosted an Iowa Children's Festival. We estimate about 3,000 people attended that weekend back in May. um great weekend um we had a benefit uh concert at the band shell craig forest park as well for casey sullivan raised quite a bit of money for there and then sunset session started in may on the 23rd and the next one is this saturday night at craig forest park um shooting sports A new youth shooting sports format trap shooting competition record. Had 215 competitors at the Big River Seal Trap Contest. Had competitors from Jonesboro, Westside, Brooklyn, Paragould, Highland, Ash Flat, Mountain Home, Cave City, Jackson County, Bald Knob, range was completely full. Know Your Limits 22 rifle competitions held every other week in May and June and July. The Jonesboro ATA Trap Tournament Memorial Day weekend had another 129 competitors from the Mid-South. We also hosted the high school trap team practices before they went to regional competition. And as you all should be aware, that Jonesboro High School, Westside High School, and Jonesboro, one of the junior highs, all did very well in trap. Joe Mack Campbell concluded spring sports on May 16th. We had 254 soccer games, 180 flag football games. We had 1,550 soccer participants for the spring season, 375 boys and girls for flag football, 90 in cheer. We had 13,488 spectators. We averaged 2,248 every Saturday. Spectators plus participants, we averaged 4,268 every Saturday at Joe Mack Campbell. 82% of the people used cash, 18% of the people used credit card at field sports throughout May. Baseball ends this week with their league. We have the next tournament will be scheduled for the fall. Fall baseball season will go on. The baseball league ends this week out at Joe McCamp as well. We hosted on May 9th a 90 baseball team or 50 team baseball tournament. On May 9th estimated about 900 participants. We had about 3,000 spectators. We hosted another tournament at Joe Mack Campbell for baseball on May 30th. We again had 90 baseball games, about the same, 3,000 spectators, 900 participants. Rugby at Joe McCampbell started June 11th. They've got 40 kids signed up for rugby this year, so we're excited about bringing rugby back to parks. We concluded May 21st, the youth spring volleyball. We had 340 participants, 5,075 spectators throughout the week. 86% of the spectators used cash, 14% of the spectators used credit card. Softball is ending their league this week, so late spring, early summer softball league ends this week. We'll be into the travel sport part of that season until the fall. We assisted with the Red Wolf Spring Fling Tournament with 17 teams, assisted with the Battle of the Bases Tournament with 33 teams, assisted with Softball Wars Tournament that had 28 teams. Those spectators are those Three respective tournaments were 850, 1575, 1260, respectively. And then we hosted and held the Mountain Dew Classic June 6th and 7th and had 55 teams, the largest in the last eight years. We had 864 participants. and I don't have the spectator numbers on that yet, but I will get those numbers. Miracle League Sports concluded May 23rd with the summer baseball season. Both the fire departments and the police departments had buddy weekends and are greatly supportive of our program. We averaged 65 Miracle League participants and their families over the six-week season, played 195 baseball games. um this past weekend we started uh debuted miracle league kickball um we're going to do a full week miracle league kickball season we had 60 participants and their families out for kickball this year which is a new program that we started we're really excited about that as well um In the pools, we had a second lifeguard training this past Monday. We closed the youth center for lifeguard training. We've added six more lifeguards to our team. Brings us to 32 total lifeguards for the summer. Pools are pooling. It's going great. We're averaging about 650. participants at each pool every week so far through the summer we're doing well a couple other things real quick with our thing we've added keyless entries to the community centers to make them a little more safe we had grant money available and we've added keyless entries that installed just finished this past week we'll start training on our staff and that we will have better able to control access to the community centers I don't know if you're familiar, but I think everybody in Jonesboro has a key to my community centers. If you don't have one, you're not getting one because we've changed the key list. But it just seemed like there was a lot of access to the community centers and we felt in best interest for safety and had grant money available that we've tried to reel that back in. And so we've concluded that project. the improvements at cricket forest park we had grant money available to improve the atv trail it was an emergency um access we we didn't have the ability to get emts into the trail system in the event something bad happened we had grant money and that project just concluded they're doing a little bit of cleanup and they'll be finishing that up but that project is concluded at cricket forest park and we've started the process of clearing land east of Joe Mack Campbell Park for the land that we own there on the Lacey Drive. We're gonna include a walking trail on that land preliminary, but we've started that as well, part of a grant. We received a tree grant program for $43,000 and we're gonna start adding 140 trees to our tree canopy in Jonesboro in the fall. And so I know time is limited. I'm gonna say questions or anything else I might need to bring to everybody's attention or answer?

Committee. I do have a question. Thank you, Jim. I heard a lot of numbers, and that's good. But in lieu of what's always happened in parks and recs, I'd just like to know, comparing last year's numbers with baseball tournaments and other tournaments, and particularly our city stars and all of that, compared to this year and last year, what those numbers are? If it's up, down, where are we on that?

So spectator numbers, I have nothing. There's no data at all for spectator numbers as you all are pretty aware of. Participant numbers, I know that soccer I currently have 3v3 soccer going on. We are 100% increased over last year participants. We know that soccer, because of World Cup and the excitement with soccer, we were 550 participants greater this spring than we were last spring. The rest of the sports, I certainly can get those numbers if you need them. I can compare. Participant numbers, I have that data, but I do not have spectator data. I mean, we're measuring, now that we have a ticketing system in place and the cashless option in place, we have the ability to, I can tell you at the end of each season how many spectators, but I have no previous data on that.

Yeah, I understand spectators. I was talking specifically about tournaments.

Yes, sir. I can certainly get, I can send that email out tomorrow. I can give you a comparison from 25 to 26. That'd be great.

So when you do that, also, if you can get the revenues of what you may have from last year compared to what we have this year, that'd be great, too.

I got nothing. OK. So in the past, when deposits were made for youth sports, it was one big, giant deposit that was never separated by event field or anything um that was one of the first recommendations by the fbi to make sure that we cleared that up i can tell you now we we can this in 26 i can tell you which facility had how much participants and so i i don't as far as gates and spectators I can't tell you where – I can tell you what the total amount of revenue was generated through youth sports, but I can't tell you where it came from. Just for example, the spring volleyball season went with the same time that Joe McCampbell soccer, cheer, and flag football was going on. And last year previously, that was deposited in one giant deposit at the end of the week.

And I ask because, you know, obviously it's because we love numbers. Right. And we like numbers and it's just a shaky situation. So I just want to make sure that we're transparent with all of it. And so if you have those figures, if you can send that out for. Someone probably listened to me and said, I want a FOIA. So I'm asking you now to just provide that so that we can see and compare.

We talk about it in our department regularly that now the way we account for everything, we're really starting from now. It's really hard to go back and look at how Previously, it was accounted per sport or per event or per field or per facility.

I understand the difficulty. Right. I do. And you weren't in lead or in charge at that time. I get it. I'm just asking you to provide what you can. Yes, sir. Certainly. Thank you.

And one quick question, if I may. The spectator admission, how is, is that put into one fund together, or how is that appropriated?

So at Joe McCampbell, we divide it up between football, it goes into an account for youth sports, and it's divided between football and soccer. Football and cheer together, and soccer's a cheer, and we divide that proportionally. We just divide it 50-50 between those two sports. If it's for volleyball, that goes into the youth sports account under volleyball as court sports.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Other committee members?

I'd just say, and I know Mr. Stearns and I talked about it over the weekend, you know, and I think that Beverly Parker says it best, you can't pick your way up out of trash. I mean, when people throw trash down, we couldn't have enough employees. If we had all the employees in the world, it wouldn't make a difference. Mr. Street has always kind of beat the drum. The nine years I've been on here about gates at Craighead, and I know we've had that discussion some, what's the latest thoughts on gates at Craighead?

So that's a project. We've met with our advisory board. We're putting together a top 10 capital improvement wish list, so to speak, and a gate is on there. Signage, will be part of that project, gates. I've got one bid for a swing gate I didn't like. I'm looking for a rolling gate now. I know it's gonna be a little more expensive, but yeah, that's a project that we're really gonna pursue heavily. We'd like to be able to close that off at 10 p.m. and really keep that.

opportunist out of it i know mr richardson and i talked about this on the signage we part we passed no smoking in parks under the last mayor and i don't think we ever thought hey maybe we should let people know so i mean that was who knows how many years ago six or seven years ago and i've really observed i'm at the park most every day with my little daughter and i've really observed people smoking in the kids area and stuff and maybe some of them don't know better yeah

so that's possible what we what we've got now is we're creating a signage um we're going to have a science at all the pavilions at the forest on how to contact the rangers if need be no smoking and we're going to just kind of kind of a kind reminder to please pick up after yourself and so those will go up probably in the next couple weeks where communications is working on the final sign design we're still trying to get everybody together um public safety, the ranger group, everyone, we're trying to see how the best way to notify them and what we need to do to get that information. So we're gonna get that group together this week. They're working on the sign design. I think probably when I get back from municipal league and then we'll hopefully get that up in the next week or so as soon as streets can get those done for us. But I think we're gonna start at Craighead Forest with putting those three signage up and then we're gonna get to all of our parks, probably go to our sport fields after that, just with that reminder and then get all our parks after that.

Chairman, you brought up something about the gates. Now, we may have to use AI to try to go back and see if we have them in the meeting, but it seems like I recall having some kind of grant or being in some proposal or maybe budget that we were looking to implement this gate. I do recall having that discussion even beyond, and I know Mr. Street has been asking about it for several times, but I remember us talking about, and my colleagues may remember, but I remember us approving some, either whether it was a grant or in our regular budget or something. Do y'all recall it?

Where am I? I vaguely recall this, and I'm not necessarily sure, like you said, probably what we'd have to go back to to find this. But for some reason, I feel like in the budgetary process, whenever we looked at park services or we were looking at access controls, that this did come up in conversation. I don't know if it was total appropriation to it, but I know that it was something that we were looking at as far as the yearly budget.

I don't know the process to look that up.

Mr. Emerson, I know we're cutting into your committee, so forgive us for that. I think as we look at the gate thing, and I know Mr. Richardson and I have talked about this, I think it would be really neat at all parks, but particularly Craighead Forest, since we're making a modification, particularly with the gate, to track visitors in and out just for numbers, you know, that X thousands of people came in July 26 versus X thousands of people come in July 27 or whatever. I think that would be good data to have for grants and stuff in the future. I agree.

I think it would be great data.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS, ANYTHING ELSE FROM MR. STEARNS?

THANK YOU, MR. STEARNS. THANK YOU.

I THINK THAT'S ALL FOR US. I THINK PUBLIC COMMENTS, DOES ANYBODY IN THE PUBLIC HAVE A COMMENT ON ANYTHING THAT WASN'T ON THE AGENDA FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICES COMMITTEE MEETING TODAY? IF NOT, ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO ADJOURN. SECOND. MOTION AND SECOND. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? AYE.