Board of Directors - Regular Meeting

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Members of city board, I want to welcome everyone to our Tuesday, March the 10th agenda meeting that sets the agenda for March 17th. Uh want to welcome those that are watching and streaming online at home and those here in the building today. Uh we have one modification for today's agenda which we see. Uh are there any questions on the consent agenda for items 1 through 16? And and before you all leave, uh, excuse me, y'all come on back. Just I know you're gonna come back, but you still came down here at 4. Come here. Come on. No. You still came down here at 4 o'clock. Uh, we know each year for the, uh, government finance officials. Uh, Miss Donna FA is one of our members, uh, who who's represented with you all. Uh, we'll have the proclamation on the business meeting day, which is next Tuesday at six o'clock. But I want to give you a strong 60 seconds to use the microphone since you drove all the way down here. Whoever's a strong 60 seconds.

Yeah. Yeah. Certainly, Mayor Scott and to the council, we thank you for your time and the effort that we put in being a CFGM for the month of March. It's a beautiful thing and we thank you for the invitation. We'll come back Tuesday next week. Thank you. With a nice proclamation. With a nice proclamation. All right, sir. [laughter] Thank you, sir. All right. Yall have a blessed day. Thank you. All right. Any questions on items 1 through 16? Vice Mayor Wy. Thank you, Mayor. Um, can I have a presentation on two items? One of them is item 12 and the other one is item 14.

All right. Item 12. If we'll have Leland and I'll do the presentation on item 14 or Alicia, I'll I'll do it.

Good afternoon, mayor and um members of the board. Uh number 12 is a safe room grant that came out of the 2023 tornado that hit city of Little Rock. Uh as part of that, we were offered to apply for two different safe rooms. Uh one of them was to be located at Resmond Tennis, which is this one. Another one is at Jim Dailyaly. Um I bring this one to the board today for this is an application approval process only. So this gives us full um city manager the approval to apply for this grant. It's a 25 75% u matching grant. We're asking for a total of 7.5. Um what questions can I answer?

Okay. So this is um we're asking for the grant now. Yes. We haven't gone through the process. We have started the process with this granting agency just to see um we've gone to this far to say uh city of Little Rock looks really good for this project. Um and that there wasn't a lot of other entrance from other um cities that were in the area. Okay. Is it two sites or one?

We have two sites, but I'm bringing to them to you separately. Uh this is our most important site. This is our biggest site. And what's interesting and what I think is exciting about this opportunity is it's not just a safe room for tornado and disasters. We're actually able to turn this into um hopefully four indoor tennis courts, which we definitely need at our tennis facility.

Okay. How did we come up with the sites? [snorts] uh the sites came up with uh slightly on um available land that we have and the opportunity of that. Um the biggest reason for resment tennis is because of uh it also will be able to double as that function. It's readily available off of a four-lane road and and uh highway being university. Um those are some of the initial scenarios. So it but it's for the general public. It's not a targeted group. No. Okay. So, capacity is 5,500 people and Right. Huh.

Yes, ma'am. Based off of the fact that it's planned to be roughly 5,000 square feet. Yeah. And we have uh parking for 5,500 people.

Um it's not going to be parking for 5,500. It would be parking uh that is associated already with our facilities there. So, as you're aware, we have the Little Rock Open there, which is a a tournament larger size. So, we have adequate parking for that. There is a parking uh lot there already that we would be improving as part of this project, but obviously it's not going to be able to hold that. I mean, the golf course for the stadium only holds 3,000 cars and the stadium holds 50,000 people. So, um there's going to be people coming from other means of travel.

Okay. Um well, I read a little bit about FEMA requirements and stuff and it said that it should be set up where your um the people that come would be within 5 to 10 miles of the location. Maybe you'd have walkers that would be say 1,000 ft from where the location is. And so that's the reason why I was asking that. Okay. So, um obviously you're going to be in charge of this. It's gonna bend our parks and wreck in terms of a safe of how it actually operates. Yes. Okay.

It's similar to our other locations. Uh currently we have two other shelters. Um and you can access those. Um the the details of how this would be actually open to the public is not 100% I mean finalized but typically the way these operate is with our NOX boxes that our emergency management team has. Fire and Lorac police have access to it. So they'll be able to go open the facility and let people come into the facility.

Okay. Um so um in this facility we would have um first aid and all that kind of stuff. And so that would be your responsibility to make sure that it's monitored, that it's fit for potential emergency with first aid and other sorted stuff that's needed.

Correct. All of our facilities currently have AEDs and first aid equipment. So, that's not something new to us. Um, that that would be in this facility as well, but I don't want to um mislead you here. This facility is not made for emergency operations in terms of people that have been injured, per se. This is to get to safety. Um, and realistically, this is an opportunity that landed at at uh Matt Burks brought this to us in our emergency management, and I ran with the idea that I thought it'd be a great opportunity to be able to provide something for the city from a safe standpoint for our citizens as well as double down and use it for our tennis facility that we desperately need for indoor tennis.

A lot of people are doing safe houses. So, I mean, it's it's it's the trend. Um so do we have any idea for what the maintenance upkeep would be once the project is completed for the facility itself? Right.

Um actually because the whole facility would be be made out of concrete is my understanding the maintenance would be minimal. Um there would be the ongoing cost of air conditioning and other um HVAC which you understand is a is a cost to us. Uh but we would be putting those kind of units in also for a indoor tennis facility. Um so the overall maintenance of it would be low, but you're using it as an an event center or events also. Yes.

So there should be some maintenance with that. I'm just hopeful that we thought about that whenever we decided we're going to build one and y'all were getting it for 7.5 million. Those kinds of things that we look at the Yes, ma'am. Okay, that's all my questions. Thank you very much. Thank you.

All right. Um, Vice Mayor Wley, you had a question about item number 14. Item number 14 is a housing crisis resolution. It's a declaration that uh due to a number of different things. There's a housing crisis here in the city of Little Rock as well as what we know across the nation as it relates to affordability uh particularly as it relates to Little Rock uh not having strong landlord tenant laws uh which is creating a number of different evictions particularly from um rental uh renters. And so just in 2025 we had about 4,300 uh evictions. And this is part of the process to bring highlight to this as uh there are legislative opportunities to address stronger create stronger landlord tenant laws particularly for our renters as we move forward. So this is a step along a legislative process. This is a resolution and we it also has the full support of the Arkansas community organization. I'll pass out a support letter to the members of the board uh as well. And so again, just a resolution uh to be in support of this and this came from a number of our residents in our neighborhoods there.

Okay. The the reason I asked is because we did the framework or ordinance to set up a committee to work on this and then we have this coming up as a separate item. So it really is just depicting what our what our issues are and what our plans are. Um I'm not aware of a You have to speak a bit more to I'm not aware of a a committee to address this. We did an ordinance um sometime last year that um had some of this same language in it. I forget what we called it. I believe you may be referring to uh city director Antoine Phillips had the renters's rights ordinance and so um I'm not it's a different one. Um

are you talking about the housing trust fund? Yes, that's completely different. Uh the housing trust fund will and thank you um um Mr. Sarpie. You you normally don't speak up like that. I appreciate that. [laughter] I couldn't think of the name of it either.

And I know Director Kevin Howard is gonna be very happy as well as Alicia. Um, no. But what you passed in December is a housing trust fund that will help scale what we have been doing uh with our housing strategies with our CDBG and HUD dollars, which accounts for uh anywhere between 500 800 families that we've impacted from the building of 591 homes, I believe, of new of new homes. Okay. Then you add in the renovation of existing homes that are with renters uh that they receive uh resources from us as well in addition to housing assistant for those who have existing who are actual home owners but cannot afford different renovation. Am I doing well? And down payment down payment assistance.

That's what that one was about. Okay. Well, the language seemed to be similar to what we had before. Okay. So, this is really just a statement. It's a resolution. That's it. Thank you. All right. Any more questions on on uh the consent agenda? Seeing none, any planning and development uh item questions 17 through 26. Um Director Director Web, you don't have anything. I was looking at some. I thought you may have some.

All right. Thank you. All right. All right. We'll keep it moving. This may be we may beat the record today. Let's try. All right. Uh, any questions on item number 27? Going once, going twice. Uh, do you have anything you want to ask? Uh, Susan, is there like a the that list not on there? Okay. All right. All right, director and then director look.

Thank you. I wanted to remind everybody that on Saturday is our annual cleanup. We'll be meet meeting at the Clinton School of Public Service from 9 to 12. I don't think it's going to rain. Uh we'll be working uh a lot of the downtown neighborhoods, East Village. We supply uh garbage bags, vest, picker uppers, gloves, all those things. So, and we'll feed you lunch afterward. So, come join us to to pick it up. Pick it up, Little Rock. Is that that what you're saying? That's right. Right. Saturday night. You're going to be there 9 to 12. Saturday. I'll be looking for you. Actually, I got a t-shirt for you.

I'm likely going to be in Hot Springs. Um because I'll be rooting for the Little Rock Parkview Patriots likely. That's in the state championship. Oh, well that's that's an that I accept that excuse. Nobody else's excuses. But I know direct I believe director Hans went to Central for a little bit as well. Central's in the in state championship. Park View still Central's in 5A. Parkview No, Central's in 6A. Parkview is in 5A. Hall is in 4A which is their last year with the ability. I know how many Hall graduates do we have? Three. Three. And I know Director Adcock is a Central graduate. So every Little Rock is shining in the state basketball championship.

But we still got to clean it up. [laughter] You went to Hall, didn't you? To really shine. I absolutely went to Hall. I will say this, though. Uh we we'll talk about offline. Never mind. All right. Meeting adjourned. Oh, wait. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, Director Computures. My apologies, directors. The uh I got a call from uh Julie Jones that we have an invitation from 2 to 4 on Thursday to go look at an exhibit they're putting on about Bush Creek and what's going on down there at the Little Rock Country Club. if you hadn't got the invitation

that Little Rock is it garden club is that to go they're very anxious for us to see what they think we can do to help Fush Creek so I just wanted to remind you yes sir meeting journal

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