City Meeting - Regular Meeting

Okay, let's go ahead and get the city of Jonesboro City Council March 10th, 2026 meeting. Call of order, please. Roll call. Rex here. Clayton here. Okay, we're going to rise say the pledge of allegiance and prayer the prayer given by Pastor Ken and uh remove all your hats and uh George will you lead us in the pledge of allegiance please

allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Bow your hands with me would you please? Gracious Father, we come before you this evening thanking you for this day, thanking you for this season that we're in. Thank you for the warmer weather, but we know that bad weather comes with that. And so, Father, we pray your continued hand of protection upon our community. We thank you for the opportunity to gather here as the citizens and elected officials of Jonesboro. We pray your blessing on this meeting, on the decisions that are made. Help us to do all that we can to bring peace and prosperity to Jonesboro. And father, I lift up Brad Klein and his family and the loss of his stepfather. Lord, draw close to them as they grieve. And may they sense your presence daily as they remember and as they move forward. Lord, we pray your blessing on all this in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you very much.

Item six, approve of the min. February 24th in front of you gentlemen approval. So

we accept I'll pass. We can't pass. We have to take

I'm not sure that's entirely true, but we'll go. Generally, you can, especially since the meetings are recorded, you can approve minutes even if you weren't there. Even if it's just two. I could vote. I could vote on it. It's customary to abstain, but if you guys want to do that, gentlemen, is this a f presentation of what happened on February 24th. I agree. Yeah. Go ahead. Rex. Rex. Okay. Call please. Rex. Yeah. Clayton.

Yes. And don't have a lot tonight. New business. I most old business. Gentlemen, does who has any new business? Please speak up. If not, we'll move on to old business. Sorry, I didn't have much tonight. I was on vacation. might just be worth noting since it's a quiet night that data centers are a discussion right now and the county commissioners just passed a moratorum on data centers um so that we can draft an amendment and if there are any community members are you still looking for people for the subcommittee we welcome anyone who wanted to

okay that so uh there are there's a subcommittee we know that we're going to have our first meeting following the regular meeting tomorrow. I kind of added that in because I felt the need to get rolling since that moratorum was put in place. Perfect. Thank you. So, if anybody is interested in going to any of those meetings, the first one is tomorrow uh evening to help draft that or if you want to be on the committee to help draft that and speak into it, your voice would be welcome. I got a question to you. Where where would the resources be in Grant County that they could get the infrastructure of water and sewage to them?

Why do they have no let me let me specify what where would be that land? I mean gas city can't go out that way because they're already there and 26 there's no utilities out there. So why is it just a chance of it would likely be a closed loop and that's one of the things that the ordinance would have to look at what type of water and what type of cooling would be supportable and you can do a closed loop water system. Oh, they could do it on their own instead of getting the cities to Right. In theory. In theory. That would be if we made an ordinance making them do that. Okay. Correct. And that's straight.

Yeah. Thank you. Go ahead. Do you know that that gas city has annexed out to the river down 69 on all of the older and racial ground? Yeah, I know. But that's not a cooling or that's a right. That's what you know. I don't want to say what it is because I don't want to put solar. They'll have trouble putting solar in flood plane, but I don't you know but I don't think they I don't think they can annex all the way to and I'm not I'm not saying I'm for against I'm just saying how could you get the infrastructure

power is the question water I think could be solved with a closed loop system but that's precisely the type of input we're looking for from the community so thank you also

Marian has told there's a west mar development in the works either on the old Dana site that was just sold by the county redevelopment commission or several hundred acres that was marked out of the tiff that there is a purchase agreement with a data center there and Marian is trying to sell them on the idea that they can take that water back to their um water plant and trade it. Mary wants to sell water. We're talking about millions of gallons a day depending on the size of the dat.

So it's not 26 that you're really concerned with. Well, I am concerned about 26 because Yeah, you're out there. I am out there and it's our understanding that there's been uh some promotion with some land owners out there from Delaware County. And rumor on the street is that they have purchase agreements with some of the land out there at 255, exit 255 or data centers.

And speaking of annexing, if we as to speak to what you were saying in the last meeting, if Jonesboro wants to be up and coming and uh express itself and flex its muscles in Grant County, Gas City is expanding along 69. We have reason to believe that Marian is expanding westward along 18 and south of 18 very soon towards Sweetzer. So, uh, annex is the word of the day in Grant County. Lansancy did some research on annexation because it's understanding that Vener was able to annex right down State Road 22 and capture the interchange there at 22 without necessarily annexing the land that came later. U we thought that maybe you know Fair could take 26 and go out there and grab that also but research indicates that that now that has hit it that now you have to annex land joins in order to get where you want to end up.

Yeah, you can't you can't land. They changed I think they changed that cuz fissers and all that down there was fighting and all the caramel area and stuff.

Good compensation. Yes. One thing I have to say about these days s I don't like if they come in like we said water but it's your electric grid is not up the par IM cuz we got IM or A to P they will be down to the state asking for rate height and it's not if it just happened Jones it's going to be the whole county is going to pay for that infrastructure it's not going to be one little community where it's going in. It's going to be the whole county paying for it. We're not we're not the only county fighting this or excuse me looking into this.

Yeah. Well, sound is another problem because if power goes down, they have standby diesel generators and think of the number of diesel generators that they're going to have to have running in order to provide the power that they're need. They do not want their data center to go down. No. Okay. Anything else have to do with business? Thank you very much. You guys want to move along with old business? Sure. Uh I want to talk about Dollar General if you don't mind. Isn't that redevelopment or you want to right now?

I think it involves some other things with you guys. I just want to tell you I'm moving forward with that. I've contacted all the land owners over here. I've contacted area plan and talked to Todd at length yesterday about what we're proposing to get the Dollar General. I talked to a a meeting me tomorrow about the poll back here. Uh yeah, it's under it's under this, but I want to make it's it's funny that you guys are the same people on the same council, but

I have to speak both of them because I feel like you should have input as the council and as a redevelopment. But I want to make sure that everybody knows that this is not a done deal, but it's looking very promising. And uh hopefully we can get the land purchased and that'll be the next conversation we have. But I am moving forward everything and I hope we can get this done. So don't pat ourselves in the back yet, but it looks very good. Promising,

right? That's this redevelopment, too. So I don't have anything under other new businesses. Let me check my notes. I'm sorry. I'm not very prepared tonight with everybody being gone. Uh, no. I don't have anything else. I know. Business gentleman, you got something? Do when when will we know if we get the grant for fixing the sewers sewer lines? Well, that I'm glad you brought that up because I forgot to speak to that. I met with the AR or the engineering firm Brad and Ken and we're moving forward with that. Yeah.

And we're moving forward with everything and we're also moving forward annexation.

We got a plan. They're going to have a meeting very soon. And uh we got some things we need to talk about with some other people about possibly uh tax abatement to get people to get on board because we have to get the 51% of the voter. However, it is the largest land owners, the most assessed valuation. However, it's going to be the 51% vote because we don't have any mansions out there. We don't have three people with mansion that we control the whole assess value of it. So, we're moving toward annexation. So, I'm going to ask you guys and we're going to start working with groups of meeting with people. We're not going to have just one meeting. U we're going to have it where we can have where be pallet with everybody's time frame, you know, but we're not going to we're going to give a They they're going to write it up where we would hook them up uh not forced give them a 10-year exemption and then they can reapply after 10 years and most of us won't be here in 10 years unfortunately but

that's why we're looking at talk about us every meeting it comes up every meeting you say one thing it is a concern yeah we play sports against each other too so we don't look like that But anyway, the annexation part is going to be I think if we can get it done. If we don't, this city could actually default as far as the the wastewater fund and stuff. We don't have we just can't keep going like that. We can't go keep going in the negative. So, we'll be discussing that with you. So,

another thing, please start looking at your Jonesboro.net emails. I'm not going I'm gonna stop sending the emails out to your personal addresses about business. I might send like, hey, you might want to go to this dinner, blah blah blah. But as far as notification of like meetings and stuff, does everybody have access? I have access, but I've known people have had not had access. Great. Great. Yep. I got my phone. Sorry to be so disorganized. That's what Anything else business?

Um, the wastewater rate study is almost done. he wants to meet next week. I don't have a date yet. As soon as I get that, I will forward that to you if you want to be here. Um I'm assuming it's going to be a phone call or a team's meeting or something like that. Um but you're more than welcome to send in on that. Yeah, we need we need some help with that because we're a rate study is a rate increase down. Oh, I know. I mean, we got one We have one upstream from us. So, we're kind of we there's only so much we can do.

He did, however, do it several different ways. Um number of employees, uh if we get our own plant, right? He he's done different scenarios. Is there any more promise with sorry other old business? I suppose is there anything more about vacating the well a about the Circle K and B about vacating the alley next to the Circle K if that's an option. I went down there three times and every time I tried to talk to the owner about vacating the alley. I don't know if we can vacate the alley or not. Okay. But Circle K will be up and running in about two weeks

because people excuse me that business because because people that alley. We can't vacate it. If you vacate that alley, you got to split it in half. The homeowner on that side's going to get half. The home, the business is going to go out. So, that only leaves them that little tiny drive to get into the store. That homeowner uses that as their driveway, too. House is just to the south of Circle K. But, like I said, you also you could only vacate back to the other alley. Yeah. Because then that's our main water line, sewer line, all runs right through here. So then we need to figure something out with that. How we can fix that?

Since they're just coming in, we need to have some kind of agreement to grade off or have gravel or something. Okay. Nothing else under old business. We once again we're going to move into public works and safety. Brad's not here tonight to talk about all the things we're doing, but I'll give you an update like I did with the board of works. JC night's going to be filled in pretty soon. Great. Uh, we do need to talk to the Grant County Council about the $75,000 that they pledged to us a long time ago. We've never received those funds. And it's so funny he's here tonight. Well, I'm not on the council yet, but I can speak publicly for you.

You asked for our vote, so you got I will speak publicly for you, Bob. But we have $75,000 that we all know this past and it was given to the city and we gave it to them to get the the the blight taken care of. So we they've not paid us yet. And I don't know where Brad's at with it. He was supposed to talk to them about it, see what we know. But I think it's I think the auditor has actually won it, but I have to cut the check if I'm not mistaken. And I think she knows it's due to us, but she's not got any paperwork to from the council. I remember a lot of that. Well, when I'm talking about JC Knight, when they get done filling that in, are they responsible to see that grass that or we are?

I think he is. Okay. I didn't know. I hope so. We want to ask Brad about that. I'd like to put a pavilion on there and I'll ask Brad gives us a grant for it. Well, we can't put a pavilion on it for 5 years. It has to be an empty green space. We'll have to talk to our okra representative about what is and isn't must be green for 5 years after their completion date. Yeah. And there's not supposed to be any permanent structures. Now, that's not permanent. What's Well, yeah, exactly. That's what we'll discuss. We'll discuss that. It it it's going it looks really nice down there with our new water plant. It looks very, very nice. Thank you.

Um, so I don't have any recommendations tonight. So, Britney, you got anything? Um, we do need to pass this through this board because of the funds they approved. Is that for you? Did you gentlemen understand three different funds to buy the power rate up and stuff? I came in in the middle of that discussion. So you said part of it is from the park.

So I' I've decided on four funds. If you guys want to change that and get out of a different fund. That's called um MVH Park, river boat and water. Yeah, because river boat hasn't been used for anything. That's great.

We're pretty excited. I hate keep talking about the power, but to clean up the alleys in this town and clean up the around the blight we got around here is going to be so nice. And we we bought we bought the skid steer. We need to Wow. Yeah, let's use that for the vote. All right, you talked me into it. Good job. So, we have approval for I would recommend you would take her recommendation. I don't want to touch general. We want to approve up to 16 just in case. Up to 16.

I think We were going to get another quote possibly from somewhere else. See if there's something better. I want make something I want to make sure we purchase something that's got a long warranty on it. Yeah. And I do because we've always purchased stuff used and we're not doing that as long as we can afford to do. And I would like to have another executive session sometime soon similar to one we had last year. But I want to go over all the equipment we have because I I'd love to have an inventory cuz we say we don't have things or we do have things or things break and I'm like so if we make sure we're making good use of what we have

sure yeah I'll make the motion we set set the bid up to what 16 I'll Got a motion second to approve the up6,000 for the power rate. Roll call, please. Rex. Hi. Clayton. Hi. And Gerald. Hi. Thank you, Jim. Questions. Go ahead. On Gateway, the assets on there. Is that a detailed listing or what?

No, but I have that in my office and I can email it to all Excel spreadsheets. So it's pretty easy. Um but in gateway it is not itemized. It's just vehicles buildings. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Let's move along. Move along to our attorney. Do you have anything tonight? Nothing tonight. All right. Special committees. I don't have any reports on anybody tonight other than We would be addressing some special committees. I will change that. I did have a special committee. I did appoint Gerald and Greg to head up anything to do help me with the Donald general project because we need to get everybody involved in everything. So, they're they're going to help me with that project and do some leg work for me because, you know, way life is nowadays, you never know when you need some help. And we we're all in this together. We talk about it all the time. Absolutely.

We're going to be we're going to be in this. We're going to do this. So, it it's not an official committee, but Was there a meeting? Was there a meeting with River Rally? Where are we with with that? I thought we were going to have an open executive session about River Rally. An open executive session. Well, executive session. Oh, yeah. That's You guys were thought we tonight. No. Sure. Yeah. Whatever. I wasn't here in the last meeting, so you No, I wasn't either. Oh, okay. See, that's why I'm confused. Did they bring that up or something? No. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, when when do you guys want to do that?

Yeah. Okay. Um, I'll just We'll do a special session, not an executive. Yeah. So, it will be open. Yeah. Okay. That That's the question if it's open to the public or not. We could have that to the community building. Yeah, it's happening here. I mean, can we just do it? Gosh. I mean, can we just do it after the next meeting because we don't have redevelopment commission? I mean, can we just put it on the agenda to talk about? Why a special meeting just because it's going to be that long to talk about? Probably. Cool. Do you want to do it in April? Because the next meeting falls on spring break and a lot of people are gone.

If if April's not too late, then April's way better for me. Yeah. Yeah. March is because nobody the contract's so old. Well, yeah. I have one thing I just thought about. We want to clean up properties in town and the other day I took a ride. I went up to the chiropractor's property net.

I think we need to do something. It's trashy up there. You look up down that parking lot. You walk up that parking lot. The garage doors cracked open the door. Trash is laying everywhere. He's not taking care of it. The building's not looking good. I think we need to start looking. Is it is it good enough to save or is it time that we approach?

Me and Quinton have talked about this at length about some of these parcels around here. Got some stuff. We're going to allow people to start taking stuff down to the barn to either burn or put in our dumpster. So, we're not going to lay back and just say, "Hey, you got all this dirt around here. We got all this trash around here." We're going to start being aggressive. Hey, look, we're going to bring the back wheel down here on our truck. We're going to start load if you got help. We'll load it up. I mean, you load it up and we'll take it down there. So, you got a good point. It's not the only place. We talked about something on one of the avenues out here. I won't say West Street. They got some trash bags in the alley. We were out there with a sewage problem. Well, I figure if it's condemned, that's bad enough to be condemned. That'd be a nice little property for something.

Well, somebody just inherited that, didn't he? And I talked to him a little bit about that. And I I'm going to give him a chance because I did complain about the bushes in front of his property and he cut it the next day. So, let me next. I will follow up with that one. I know what you're talking about. 308. Yeah. And and I was going to say to me, the first before we can do much, we need to start going through the code enforcement process. We have in theory someone who's partially doing some code. No, our last day is Thursday. Oh, love that. Yeah. So, we're back to square one.

Well, in theory, in theory, some at some points we'll have someone who can do some code enforcement, but we need to start writing citations, official notices, cuz like that has to happen before people are going to clean stuff up. Yeah. Because everybody goes, "What about them?" That's the first thing to say. They're going clean up. What about their property down there? Yes. Thank you, Rex, for bringing that up. And let's move along. Nothing from special approval of the claims.

Somebody read the general fund. $40,3343.

No general fund claims need to be approved. Was that the last one? Oh, maybe that was No, that's not the right one. It's 45,000. 45,000 amount of $45,8914. Wrong one. He's approved. So, please make that motion. I'll second that. Motion second. The claims General fund for the city of Jonesboro. Roll call, please. Rex. Hi. Clayton. Hi. And Gerald.

Any comments from questions from the crowd? Anybody that's running for public office wants to make sure that they get their name out there. Anybody running for public office and they should come to the mic if they want to do so. Yeah. Come on up. I want to ask a couple questions.

Sure. Because we're we're serious about this. We Jonesboro has always been tagged a dying community and and I am in agreement with it. But we're not dying anymore. As you can see, we got some fine people here. Very well, you know, they're very highly educated, very smart people and good clerk treasure. And I think we need to embrace that. Grant County, we need to help Grant County as much as we can, but we need to rely on Grant County to support us and not considered a a stepchild and uh hopefully we can get that stigma, you know, taken away. We we got to find we got to find people working here. So, we're here to help you. You got any concerns? Anything else you want to say? Like, you know, you're going to lower our taxes and like that?

Well, um how do you feel about that?

We're going to make sure that the tax dollars are spent wisely and efficiently. You know, one of the reasons that I think I've become interested in politics at the age of 71 and been retired from the school business at East for the last I don't know how many 10 years, 12 years is the fact that when I became involved in the area planning commission, I became knowledgeable of how county government operates and I just shake my head with the inefficiency of that. uh you know having been in the school business as a principal I was responsible for hundreds of children's education and I took that very seriously and and it frustrates me the way that uh county government operates. It's like they're not spending their own money and and they need, you know, when you're in a public office, you need to accept that responsibility as if it is your money.

And that that's the attitude that I want to have, you know, when I go into this. There there are needs that we have and it's very easy to recognize where those needs are and and I agree that we've got blight in this county and um I believe that it's necessary that we do what we can, you know, to help clean this place up to make it respectable. In Bob and I's day, this was a thriving uh county. I mean, there were businesses everywhere. The populations in school systems were huge. Um and you know, we're losing population in school systems today. We've got to figure out how to keep people here.

I went to a nice thing at IW the other day and they were talking about once again manufacturing. And if I was voting for somebody for county council, I would be voting for a person that says I'm looking at trade school. I'm looking at manufacturing jobs. I'm looking at buying land that to get people to bring businesses in. And I don't mean I don't mean uh I love achilles, but I don't want to use that one. I I think manufacturing and infrastructure has to be right up there. I mean, we need and we need to make sure that the farmers are taken care of, but we also need to make sure that that everybody's paying their right amount of taxes, too. And and I'll be the first to admit that I fought the solar fight. I mean, there were there were thousands of acres in my neighborhood that was going to be turned into industrial solar. uh of all the acres leased in Grant County, my my neighboring or my home school district, Eastbrook, it had 74% of all the acres in that school district. They were going to turn that district into an industrial solar park, you know, and and that's what generated my fight for that. Solar doesn't bring jobs to Grant County. Solar gives politicians the opportunity to spend that redevelopment money and I'm not sure they spend it wisely. You know, I would rather bring uh population back with jobs because jobs are going to support the small businesses that we have. Solar panels not going to go buy gas at the station. They're not going to buy groceries at the station. You know, data centers are not going to do that either. We need to bring people back to this county. That's what we need to do. We need to keep the ones that we have. We need to keep the students we have here with good jobs.

I'm working with IW now with my alumni foundation for scholarships to get some trade school kids working here. We still need electricians. We still need plumbers. We need HVAC guys. We need we need to look at this. County is I'm just going to put it right out there. You're going to lead us and we're going to be down there screaming at you. You need to lead us. We're I mean serious. I've taken a different now that you're gonna be down there probably. I'm not there yet, Bob.

And I want to talk about some things in the past that we need to clean up about Jonesboro. We are not going to be laughed at or looked at any different. We're we're I mean, we're a it's a good community, but we we are going to look at annexation. I want you all to know about how you feel about annexation.

I have no problem with annexation. I mean, what what I learned about annexation is that when it comes to the the county um land, we are to roll the red carpet out for municipalities like you in order for development to occur. There isn't any way that the county government can keep a city from wanting to annex and and do developments. involved just like you said work like Fort Jeff child that's always irked me with the county because two cities here in this county and I'm not going to mention the name seems like they can ask and get their hands filled and then the rest of them that trying to make their community better and bring they get stepped on and I think that needs to change a little bit. Why should two communities get everything and nobody get nothing?

I understand that completely. I was principal of Van Beard Elementary. We had the highest poverty rate uh and the free and reduced lunch count. And I would tell my teachers, we can accomplish the same thing. We're just going to have to work harder to get there. Yeah. So, I'm with that. I'm always I'm I'm the underdog. Mrs. Beat us in basketball every year we played. We were always the underdog with good plans, too. They quit playing after we played. Did you guys fight? No, we actually my senior year I played against them. We beat them like you better back.

But the thing about it, they their field was so muddy. I felt sorry for them. Remember how muddy that field was? You'll show all you guys sliding in front of me and I it was fun. It was good. We had a good and I'd like to get back to your point in our day in our day in our life and the lawyer's life probably. This was a great community and Marian was a great place to go from the Na'vi Grill to the Marinire Theater to the Paramount all these places. I can keep going. I mean, it was just great to be downtown Mary and you know what the thing about the county and Marian there has to be this agreement that it's Grant County first and Gas C's got to run. is Grant County first because we're all in the county and that just I don't want to do trickle down because I don't want I can't believe in that but we're gonna count on you guys. We're going to be down there. We're going to start attending the meetings.

You got my hair. Okay, Randy. One thing I got to ask you. I just thought about it. I know sometimes county wants to build new buildings and they talk about new buildings. Why don't the county start realizing they should utilize some of the land they already have instead of spending money somewhere else to buy a piece of land? Are we talking about the jail

and it's a project exactly what my rehearsed uh thing the first time is. Yeah. When when you tell me that you're going to provide rehabilitation to help those inmates who can be be saved, they can be made better. Okay. When when you tell me that you've got a plan on how to not arrest uh folks for minor minor incidents, you know, when you when you tell me how we're going to help people because I'm not convinced that putting them in jail, incarcerating them and leaving them for years. Yeah. No speed trial. Amen. Yeah. That's

I agree with you. But like I say, they talk about want to build this type of new building and but there are certain people say it's got to be in a certain area and then they want to buy land when they already have land. Why don't they use the land they already have? Save taxpayers dollars. If this election goes well, I assure you that uh we will not be $120 million in debt for a new jail in Grant County. And I I assure you that we will utilize the facilities that we've already spent money on and that we still have debt on

before we take on that additional debt. And I assure you that there'll be um rehabilitation and there'll be a a different perspective on who we arrest and place in jail and who we try and figure out with either home detention or other means of addressing that. Now, am I am I in favor of people breaking the law? No, I'm not. But do I think that everybody needs to be incarcerated and put on a year term before they can be, you know, have a court hearing? No, I can't I can't bring up a real good subject. We're going to bring up real good subject for everybody in this room.

I think the county council should look at the healthcare in this community in our county. Marian G Marian Health and all these companies are fine, but they're it's like the portal. You go there and you get transferred out because there's no specialist town. I think you guys should take a concerted effort to try to get specialist doctors in this town. We all go out of town for specialists. And I know that's kind of a broad thing for you guys look into, but I don't think it is. I think it's something the welfare of this community. It it needs the blight's bad, but we also need doctors here. And that's right.

And the sad part about that, Bob, is the the medical industry is just as hungry for the dollar as anybody else. And they don't feel that, you know, population is here to support those specialists. Uh it's going to be difficult to get them here. But the specialists we do have, they won't they don't take new they don't take new patients either. Is that right? Oh yeah. Anyway, I'll keep throwing answers. You might want to say I'm tired. I'm okay. Keep I'm here. I signed up. Okay. Thank you, R. You guys have my ear. Thank you. Thank you. So, we're going ahead and adjourn and we will reconvene for the redevelop commission. We should see if there's any more. Are there any other public comments? Oh. Yeah. Is any other opposing comments of that person up there or unrelated? Anybody ask anything?

George, you okay? All right, we're getting cutting trees now. adjourn and we'll reconvene in two minutes for the redevelopment commission.