A&p Commission - Regular Meeting

Yeah. They're true watchers. So, what's that up there for?

That's prepared. Get prepared because it's almost except it's the wrong way. All right. I'm wait till Sammy's done so we get started. Let me know. You good? Proceed on. Okay. We call this meeting to order. Mr. Brown here. Mr. Hansen here. Mr. Gosh

here. We'll take a look at the minutes from the June 3rd meeting and approve them at your convenience. I'll make a motion we approve them. Second. All in favor? review their finances.

23. That's kind of odd, is it? your last meeting.

Yeah, just like with a great big old

28 still in business, I guess. So, what do we need to do to loosen your load? How do we do that? That's a city.

I bet doesn't take care of code enforcement. It used to be one function enforcement animal control police department. If the assistant was chasing this the way she chased that sidewalk,

we wouldn't have You're not an underperformer. Absolutely not. There is no way. You do do a lot of knitting and I don't know where you get all that crochet. I mean, sorry. Um, so really We have nobody that can go and enforce these no pay. Not at the moment. Not at the moment.

And the ordinance change we were looking at last night. That's going to make that pro I didn't read through all of it, but that's going to make it easier. Yeah. So, we're just going to

do it. Do it a different way.

But the amendments Definitely no repeal and a replace.

So So we're looking at an amendment and and what we were after was the penalty part.

Yeah. Without a code enforcement officer, it doesn't it doesn't matter what ordinance you have. There's no one there to enforce it, right? I mean, you can ordinance yourself to death, but there's nobody going to enforce it. Nobody's willing to enforce it, right? Well, it still takes time to get policy

in place. So what is what do we have to do? Quit having the financials up there and it's just red red. So you can't pay. It's becoming Tom's favorite color. Money is the problem then. Money's the problem with most things.

Uh we do, you know, we'll start going through budget and we should start seeing budgets in late October, November, right? So, so here in 10 weeks, 12 weeks, we're going to start going through budgets and see where we're at. Hopefully, our revenues are not declining the way they're declining now. He's going to talk more about it. Can you pull some money from the street department for pay? He pulls money from from the general

fund. But it doesn't matter still. I think it Well, I mean attorney's only here that are delinquent right now. It's just a few months. I don't know that they're

penalized. 37 39. Yeah. No, I mean you got 23. You've got Yeah. 16. Can the police department is that part of the what?

Why not? You're paying an officer to stand there. Why can't he get in his car and drive around? Huh? Please. Yes. Come up here and talk to us about code enforcement. I'm trying to get some money out of the street. He said no. but uh it's an important job not just because of grass and and vehicles and things like that but this is this is a big deal this could help immensely uh and to answer your question because I've talked to Chief Hobbs about this more than once several times so when I took the position and split it back used I mean I'm sorry code and animal control used to be it was one it was two it was one it was two talking to say that I'm not being sarcastic. He works for the city. But the police department, I don't want the police department to be labeled as the code enforcement officer because the the police department has enough to deal with negativity without code out there doing what code has to do. There's nothing that's going to be pleasant or good about a code enforcement job.

There's nothing you're not going to get thanked. It's kind of like being the mayor, right? You're not going to be thanked on a daily basis. You're you're the bad guy or the bad lady depending on the situation. So the police department not want to take on more of that that they already deal with every single day. So, the goal is my goal is to is is to hire somebody else, put them in a put them in a uniform as we talked about, put them arm them really. I mean, I don't and I'm not making fun or lie to it. I I think the code enforcement officer are going to deal with the same people at times and I don't mean this about restaurants or anything, but sometimes they're going to be dealing with the same folks that the police department are dealing with. So, there's no reason that a code enforcement officer can't be armed or shouldn't be. And they have been in the past. Casey was and we armed Casey. Uh, and so it just makes sense to have it. We've got to get the finances in order to make it happen. We've got to we've got to make it make sense. But it is a it is a need for the city. uh one help you guys or help this commission gain what they need from from the taxpayers or people that are supposed to be paying their taxes and then anal and then of course grass grass is a minor thing and then you got all these other

I mean I'm looking at this right here and I would estimate $10,000 just by looking at this people that hasn't and and and when I say being armed I'm not expecting a code any code enforcement officer to go up with his gun drawn at food court you you know, demanding it. But you I I would feel obligated to pay a little more if somebody showed by my place of business once a month or two months and say, "Hey, here's your here's this. You got to remit this and we can't ask the police to just drop off a letter for us." I mean, they're not afford anything. They're just dropping a letter off saying, "Hey, yeah, pay." I can testify that a letter is a good is a start, but it doesn't fix your problem. No, it doesn't. Absolutely. Most of them

Danielle sends out she sends out 150 letters every two weeks or a month and not everybody complies. I mean number 14 has always paid and now that it's changed they haven't been yet and they know it's so as we this is a council issue not a commission issue but we we got to get we got in we got to get in a position where we can hire what I'm afraid of is this getting so bad by the time we get a code enforcement officer. These people owes us tens of thousands. They're not they can't pay. They never pay.

I'd rather catch this earlier. I wish we would have caught it earlier, but you know, the longer we wait on this, the worse it's going to be. I mean, you know how it is when they get so far behind. They just don't think anybody's going to see anything. They owe so much money they can't pay back.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Takes care of ugly things in town. Grass is growing after people, but proper time to talk about it is during budget. You can look at a whole picture and doing something on the fly with revenues is kind of a little scary. And so budget will be coming up and we discussed then I would I think there's nothing we can do ourselves other than an attorney sending a letter. It's about the most we can do.

And a letter from city attorney is pretty scary. Course I might just be get scared too easy. Maybe maybe number 14 doesn't care. He just takes all the city attorney letters and throws them in the trash. He get my attention. Well, that's why I think 24 and 23 if we send them a letter might at least get them. Yeah. I mean, what's up with they've Yeah. Yeah. That's Yeah. Yeah. 243. I think if we send them a letter, it might just remind them. Oh, yeah. A letter. Those guys right there. Well, all three of them. All three.

I think I think so, but we have to ask for a letter. I mean, two of them you're dealing with. people. Good. Thanks. Okay. So, we're going to letter them up. That's our plan. Is there Is there anything can do to help you out? Take some burden off of you or Chris. Yeah. We can deliver a package if we need to. Why me? Why? Chris doesn't have all that much going on. You have You're fixing to be retired. I sit on my front porch.

Okay. So, um, finances. Do we want to hear from Tom? Baited breath. Unless you got good news. Have you got good news? We don't want to hear. Actually, I want to give you the city.

I do have some statistics that council saw last night. So first I want to quickly show you on cash sales tax right now we are recovering because our cumulative losses last year% although July over 1.1% we'reing It's just that we had a huge issue in February which city,000% doesn't mean that the sales retail sales drop. It just means that the tax rebate people So then what I've done is I've shown here budget budget is 3% growth we're averaging $290,000 a month the distribution over the remaining five months is 318,000 budget every month 365,000 you see over here that's never happened [Music]

last We would have to average 343,000 and there's a probability that it's less than 20%. So then when I look at the rebates and show you the impact we're showing on a cash basis because it's based on the distribution from July last year to July this year. So we've actually had to do what we know is within the city of Green for retail sales tax retail sales. So I wanted to look at the whole year for the city January through July when you adjust this is the amount that I told you we were at on cash basis. But what I wanted to show is what is basic months. So the city's actual taxes down. It's not as bad as it was. Just so you know, this is the trend line.

Even though this is January, February, March, April, May, June, it's because later January 2024 sales versus 2025's taxes. This is the good news right now. This is the county sales tax. One thing is that July was up. So that's positive that helped this negative deficit. We are all red started pretty much last year for us to be zero%,8 for both the city and the does not see. Okay. So, this is now coming back to your financials. and expend 237.

This is where we came up with 1154 beginning,000,000,000 brought in. So that outstanding fund balance 15,65 total outing depending what came in today total outing grants 12,74 12,0004. So here's your show. That's month 25. down. August 11.49% increase. So you're really looking at

these individuals here4 months 134,75 our collections this 119,247 of that money. So your amount that you would be looking at instead of 11 If we did meet at 140,000 that would have been 20,000 given up,0004,000 So that's what people are a little bit So there's your trend.

July is all July 2018 every July what July is your colle is your I cautioned the city council last night too much. So you're good. Except what you look at what happens there pulls that trend line down. As that continues to be negative that line requests are not necessarily the same. So what I wanted to do is show you each month rather stands for average monthly monthly collection. So you Your average per month 23 there's your trend line 2353 and it's slightly in your average month here's top number,000. We have 20,000.

So you can see we're below what we were. So I want to show you 213. But then you see the start that gives you a little bit This is the city restricted fund balances and you see what is facing. So that's money plus go out and that's necessary because of that producer. So that's the number that you see here. We are right now 317 all and really anticipating numberous.

So this is your freedom test. This is Right now, as you look at the budget for 53,000 $7,811 inviting it. The good news is that if they did spend 53,000, they would be still 53,000 fireworks. That's probably way I'll tell you what they have to buy. For instance, So that 7,000 and some change for the freedom fest is that all that you saved from cutting the freedom fest in half the time you only save 7,000

from the budget alone like 30 something00 you said So you were almost $30,000 from last year. Sure. I'll make a motion to approve those finances.

All in favor? Doesn't sound good, but it sounds accurate. All right. First request, Sebastian County Fair. I'm gonna go ahead and apologize because y'all got the same bad news we've got. I was gonna say that's a tough act to follow. do want to give you what we have

do want to give you a little bit of an update and that is uh our pageant took place 10 days ago on a Saturday had it at the pack went very well Arkansas Oklahoma fair did not have a pageant director so they joined ours so we did a joint pageant so we had 50 contestants and then we had our talent competition that went very well attended very well. Yeah, we had over 300. And the nice thing was is that we had with the addition of Arkansas, we had people from Northwest Arkansas, from Oklahoma

because they joined. It was happening here. Yes. Because our director is the one that could have director And I think that might continue because the facilities at Rogers with regards to not conducive especially when you dress Kenned did come and start. All right, give me the bad news, sir.

Uh, I can just go straight to a motion if you want. I mean, we've we've kind of discussed this, but I can make a motion. We can give you $6,500. Yes, sir. Appreciate it. That would be my motion. By the way, I I do want to say one other thing. years ago when I came here the attendance of the fair was under 8,000. It's over 13,000 last year. Excellent. Well, and I think Tom said too, we've got to I mean, unfortunately, the costs are going up for you guys and our money is going down. So, it's going to start turning into we're I mean, we normally have for years just given as much as we can and tried to talk them down a little bit, but at some point in time, it's just going to become we can only do so much. Well, hopefully we can turn that around for you.

We would hope. got a motion. All in favor 6,500.

Chamber of Commerce.

I guess with y'all's help, we're doing something right with races because we just keep going. I think you probably heard our our Fourth of July race was another alltime record. We had 400 runners enter our race for July. Way too much fre and you guys go along with us and doing things like the quality shirts. They tell us this is their favorite race they we got people race all over the country. U again over 70% of them are from out of town. So awesome. So this this is what we're asked for this year for the you run is the same as we had the last couple years. And if we're early And we are I think we're a month earlier than we usually come.

Yeah, we were going to make a motion to bump you to October. Yeah, that's fine. I took it into Charlotte to keep my own feeble mind from forgetting to take it in to Charlotte. So yeah, we can bump. I'll make a motion of that. Secondbody with that. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. By the way, Alma Does the code enforcement the same one take care of all or do they have somebody working for the

person or I don't know He didn't need I didn't mean I probably said she does all the collecting and everything like that.

Yes. But they still have people that don't pay that they have to go see. I'm sure

you get to carry gun and lean on people. Evidently, that's Mr. Horn. Arkansas Children's Hospital disc golf tournament.

How y'all doing? Good. Good.

So, you've heard me a few times. It's our 14th year to do this. Raise money for the children's hospital. Um, have people that come as far as Oklahoma City, central Arkansas, even some people from Missouri at times. I've already home city guys getting on to me wanting to know when I'm going to have my tournament. Um because I normally have it in August. We've actually moved it back to November the 8th and it won't be hot. Um so last year we actually had 92 participants. Still trying to aim for the 144 since we do have two courses now. So that would be the most we could well not the most we could have but really aiming point for now.

Any other questions? I know I I'm not a disc golfer. I'm a pickle ball player. When I'm at the bell park pickle ball, there's always somebody playing disc golf until I know that your favor and those people that come to play it from Oklahoma City, that's probably the only time they play it. But they are attracted to the course. Not only the tournament, but the course. It's not a good want to come. We have to be proud of that what what it was designed for. Well, I'll make a motion that we can give you 5,000.

Second everybody in favor for 5,000. National Honor Society candy for the Halloween trail.

Good afternoon. I'm Wagner. I'm from Greenwood High School and I'm the president of National Honor Society and I'm here to represent our Greenwood Halloween trail. Um, this event had over 3,000 attendees last year. 2,000 of those were trick-or-treaters and This has grown into a really large undertaking which requires a lot of candy. Um, a lot of organizations do donate candy but because of the large scale that's got to it takes a lot of money to get the amount of candy that's needed. How many people would you think comes through your trail? You give candy to

you say around 2,000 kids. Will the construction affect you this year? Will it

walk? So basically a buck 75 per kid is is what you're actually paying for your money. I mean that's that's not bad at all. I'm just taking up a rod. He always calculates what each person costs through the candy hater right here. Oh god. I mean, that's that's good money right there. 75 a person. Well, at this time, we don't have the money, but we want to support it. So, can you come back in October and see if we can help you then kind of, but we don't have anything big we don't see coming up. So, hopefully we can get enough money to at least give you guys some. You would probably be after the run

and then It would be tough planning because you'd only have a week to come up with all this candy. Were you in the Were you in the paper this past week? I don't think so.

He's just saying you're beautiful. Yeah, we need a motion to IT hands. All right,

I don't think anyone's ever called me beautiful from this podium before. Yeah, you're not get that. Mr. Pal's got my back. My name is Tim P. I'm the theater teacher, musical theater teacher at the high school. This is the same amount that we've requested for the past several years. Obviously, we know that um budgets are tight for everybody, but uh this year we'll be doing our Tarzan musical. We purchase t-shirts and then ads and whatever we can kind of find to pass out to anyone that we can that have dates and information on them just to help get the word out to people outside of our community that the date production dates are flying. Sorry. Um production dates are happening, the events are happening at those times. So, you're at $3.50 a person.

Oh, man. Um double the price of double the price of candy. Just letting you know it's a shirt versus a whole piece of 1,200 is about what you're getting coming to your uh that was our our predicted our our uh kind of overall over the past several years. Our ever average obviously some shows are going to have higher attendance depending on the title. Um I do feel like this one will do well. kids come free. Well, they're they're paid. Yes. Yeah. The kids that,00 are the two nights that we do the public show. Yes. Kids get to see those. We do. If we wanted to count per kid, that's a lot. However many kids are in Greenwood schools.

What is the date? Uh November 20th and 22nd, I believe. So, I'm going to make a motion that you come back. in October like $40. I understand. And I mean, you're you're third on the list. We'll definitely again, it's a great thing that we've always done to help you guys out. So, we can give you the $40 and that's it. That's a tough decision. So, okay. Thank you, gentlemen. We'll definitely do all we can. If you know anybody who wants to enforce codes, we might have more money for you. Experience with it. Not pointing fingers, Casey. Okay. Uh, inclusive park. We got anybody?

Oh, I'm sorry. I made the motion. All in favor?

All right. Happy. Don't you have a advocate for y'all now? It's pretty big or am I reading that wrong? Our new Miss Arkansas is she advocate for

Oh, yes. That's her platform.

Yeah, I think that that's I think that was our first big fundraising project or something like that. How did the fundraiser go down here across from the area? I don't know the rules around it, but our company owns a burger business in Fort Smith that does fundraising events and gives percentages of their sales to the fundraisers. I don't know what you would have to do to qualify if you know just being any old fundraiser is fine or if it has to have certain things but you might reach out to the orange and white

hamburger restaurant over on Talson. Oh wait no Talson Zero Street Rogers Waterburg he's trying to say water burger without saying water. So yeah I thought you were going to say barbecue trying to be nice. You said Rogers then you said I know and I got lost but I don't know what their rules are because it's it's our company but it's not our company but they do do fun. You have to be a 501c23 so I did have to wait until like last month but I did put in a request. Okay. All right. Because I know they've been doing a lot of it right now getting their name you know just getting

more involved in the community. They've actually hired somebody now that does the community involvement stuff. So they may be somebody to look at for a little bit of a fundraiser for you. Well, I I know you heard all our stuff, but when when the time comes, if we can, you've been super you you're raising money, you're coming to us, keeping us up to date. Those are things that tell us you're not waiting on us to write a check. You're trying to do everything you can.

I just came from Mercy Clinic today and I went down Veterans Road, you know, kind of t-bones right there to you to see the sign real well as you kind of sitting there at that stop sign. So, I think it's more visible from that direction as the people just, you know, driving by, you know, down Westwood or whatever. So, maybe that'll give that sign some visibility, too. Hey, that's where it's at.

Well, thank you for everything you Thank you for everything you do.

I'll make a motion. Yeah, they want to come. I'll second that. Everybody okay with that? I thought that was a standing policy

$4.

We don't have to operate the whole like my checking account. We're all good. We got We all All right. Number seven, discussion of the revenue of the parks department. Anybody kind of want to weigh in on this? I've got kind of an idea.

I know we can't do anything with the budget till December. Is that right? So whatever's coming out is coming out. And I mean I I know I I I think that at this point in time just blindly giving a certain percent out is not working for us. We're getting more and more people asking for events to come into the town and it seems like we I mean I understand we're helping the parks department but I feel like maybe we need to look at that and consider whether or not we need to lower that percentage in the future and then uh maybe come up with way to manage it a little bit more. I don't know. That's just my thought on it. I mean, I hate telling people they can't come in here to do an event, but and and nothing against the Boy Scouts, but the Boy Scout wants to build a pavilion and we've given the money for that, but we can't give money for a UK run or something like that. You know, that's what worries me is. So, that was something I thought of.

Well, for the longest time, we've been blessed with increasing absolutely revenues. You know, this is the kind of the first year that we're we're not, you know, so it kind of really makes you the number of quests have still kept Oh, yeah. increasing, you know, and so it makes us kind of I think really reevaluate everything. Well, and I don't think it would mean the parks department still can't come and ask for more money. That's not I we're not saying no, you can't come if you want if you got something going on, you could still come and do a separate grant request, but it would give us the opportunity to maybe issue it to other people that may need it or be able to give it to them if that's what they're asking for. That's just my thoughts.

I'm in the same boat as you are. I would like to have more. I mean, I love the Boy Scout projects, but I would figure that somethingout.

I mean, it's part of part of the learning. Yeah. Yeah. Get in front of some people and talk and ask. And I know Rod, you and I talked about it. Sometimes that may be had the Boy Scouts before. And sometimes timing for our meeting being at four o'clock may be difficult, but I, you know, even if they come at 4:30 and talk to us for 5:00, you know, I'm just kind of through some stuff here. $290 for stump grinding. I hate money.

So we don't When is our budget? December. So we have until December to decide. We can right now my idea was to put you know we can't change the amount of money we give till December anyway and I don't know if you want to do that but I would like for the money to go into a separate parks fund parks fund and then we can grant them money out of that account. So he's got two months worth of projects he wants to do. He comes up we'll approve projects and the money will come out of park fun. But yeah, the parks can

I want to stay and until we see a grand application. I mean, that's just me. Whatever you guys want to do, but that kind of I hate not having control of it. I mean, I wouldn't do that as a business. Just give somebody my checkbook and hope it we're the stewards of this money,

right? So come and ask me what I don't think it's exactly the way we anticip we wanted to spend but still I think it's still the same thing you know it's it's what really the purpose of money is to be you know At least we knew at time

right and I think that's what I think what he's kind of saying too like the Fox run I mean we at the AMP may have decided we don't want to fund another 180 or another that and then we could say we don't think that's important and you could then come to us with something else and switch the money and still find something that we would approve. But I don't know that be kind of a thing is let us kind of approve what we're doing. But if we're doing that then we could just ask them to come every month but test that out a lot maybe

I don't know I'll just read through this wood stain and brushes I mean, it's not a ton of money.

That's like $1,500. Yeah. Yeah, he did a beautiful job with that. He did. But I think I think what Mike's point was is that if someone said, "So what is what is the parks money you're given from the AP being spent on?" We're like, "We don't know." I mean, we get this report. I would just scout. I agree. It's part of the learning process, too. They may come to the parks commission. I don't know. They may just come talk to you. present what they're approved.

So they have to do a presentation from the benefactor. It's my work. Is Freedom Fest separate from our budget of 45% or is it

bottom line $50,000 The city always pay for the fireworks.

I don't think ever fireworks. otherwise.

But if we if we said, "Okay, we want to control it all, but we still want to do Freedom Fest." We could make Freedom Fest a annual thing that we take out and then do other things as you necessary or do we just give the money and he budgets it where he wants it on freedom fest if he if that's what they want to spend on us with a freedom grant like we used once a year that's what I'm saying he said this is what I want this is what we want to do for freedom fest we'll approve the grant your money's already in your account so she'll just write the check out

we used to do it yeah that's kind of what we're If they do that

still, same amount of money. The only thing we're changing is he had to come to us to ask for money instead of going to the parks commission. change the money's going to be there.

December and no chang that's something we want to we need to We need to be thinking about it. So transfer we transfer it into just another account. It's just can't get into it. It used to be

that's what you00 told you to put

what they're saying, but you can't give it to Casey and say, "Here's You got to come and ask you want to use it. That's what we can't do. We either have to keep the money in our own and have case come every time and ask or we have to give him the money and say just show up and tell us what you're doing. All we want is transparency. We want to know what's the problem right now. We don't. The only option is to not give money.

Don't give them the money. Just keep it aside. on it. I just want to know what's being spent on it.

I don't want it back. They can keep the money. I just want to know what they're spending it on. Right now, we've got no idea where the money's going. I'm just saying

we have we have three choices. Keep giving them 45% and let in case do whatever he wants to do with it. And we he can come tell us let parks sorry let parks do what they want and tell us what they've done. We can lower the amount to a different amount or we can We're not giving you anything anymore unless you come and ask for it just like every other. I hate that because and one of those three. Pick one of those.

I hate to do that because if there's no money left then this month. I just assume take 45% just like you're doing. Put it in a separate savings account. I want application for everything they want. The money still going over there. It's still there. We're not touching it. It's just like a savings account that they're drawing money out of.

That's we need to decide.

December, right? doesn't say that we have to give the money to the parks department.

Then it's been correct. They can do whatever they want to do with it. Yes.

When he talks about the ordinance, we copied that part of it out of state law. So you kind of enact part of state law when you enact the commission. So the but if Casey comes to us with a grant, he wants 10 shovels. We don't have to give him that. That's the way that's I mean y'all's different what do y'all want to do?

Well, I mean I was kind of like as you were going over this list, you know, showing uh you know me and Brian's projects and Michael Turner's projects. They were all I mean some way pretty detailed. You saw but then the very last one there said Liberty Bridge construction there was you know 8,000 but it was not really kind of broken down. It was just again, you know, just $8,000. Here you go. You know, I think again just kind of the transparency. That's what I say. You know, somebody ask you what money for that? I have no idea what I don't want to be. I like know.

Oh, is that right? There was another good me and Lee pushed for it to be the way it that that we were the drive pushers to try to give them 45%. Parks can be in a precarious position and they're probably in a probably the most precarious position now than they've been in. We've got if the sales tax doesn't pass, Casey won't be employed. There won't be a parks department. It it' be such a small it would probably be absorbed into something else. may be absorbed into the street department because they just want to go.

So that's what I mean by precarious position uh by giving them I mean Lee Lee was helping me push that if y'all can remember and we were pushing that 45%. I do understand the accountability portion and it seemed to start with the pickle ball court. Lights the lights the lights on the pickle. on the pickle ball. It's like we gave you money to do something else and you you did something we liked but we just you know we didn't know anything about it. We didn't know anything.

It wasn't you. We gave money for Freedom Fest. We did we didn't do Freedom Fest. So they used the money and put lights on the pickle ball court. And it was like well that's not what we paid for. We didn't we're not Now I used the heck out of the lights on the pickle ball court. There's still one out by the way. Uh one pole out but do Oh you fixed it today. I understand the part of accountability and accountability is more of communic and it's more about communication and and each each department directors had different personality

and you know some were a little more communicative with others but uh I'm a bit indifferent and I kind of listen to Chris and Sammy because y'all are the ones that collect it and I think to me you and Sammy have a little more weight than the rest of And I don't see any left. Again, my I just I feel like the AM is designed to help bring people into town and just immediately giving almost half of it to the parks department and saying do what you need. I understand I I understand what the parks department does, but it doesn't leave us a whole lot of money to give to other people. I mean, it gives us half, but they bring a ton of people. The fair brings a lot of people.

The rodeo brings a lot of people. I mean, you know, this there's a lot of stuff that goes on that brings people to our town and pavilions at the Boy Scout Park. I don't know that how many people are coming in town to go to that. And I'm I'm a boy scout, so I was I mean, so I I understand that Once we give the money to them, they can they can buy pet dogs.

You know, my mindset in the beginning was you you created you created the parks commission and create the commission. You give all the money to the parks. And I was copying after North Little Rock and Clarksville. They have one meeting a year. give all the money to the parks. That was my original mindset. So, a lot of other people mad at you. Well, but but I mean it didn't happen that way because I couldn't get the parks commission in place. I failed and then all of a sudden I got the AF commission in place and I was successful and then starting Wade Dunn's wife was the very first one. She wanted money for the uh Coleman for cure

and You know, I had two newspapers breathing down my neck saying they were going to make sure I didn't ever I was unelected and uh I didn't serve on it. And y'all started doing great things. All this stuff was just great things. And by the time I end up here, like y'all built it into something that's just great. It wasn't what I was originally intended to do. But then weren't me and Lee started talking about And we said it would be great if they had a percentage they could count on.

We're just in a lash

and was to deal with the law to where they went down and we went down. And that's the reason our conversation was about the percentage when we were talking about it and not just an amount because we talked about the amount. What if we have off years like we're doing now? They go down, we go down, but we still both function.

Chris, I'm back. You will collect whatever y'all I think we discussed it quite a bit, you know, and I think it's something to m over, you know, and bring back, you know, in the October meeting, but I think frustration all comes down to accountability and communication.

So then the question on the communication would be do you want to know before they spend it or after they spend it? I like the way they worked doing it. They were coming in even we're giving 45% and say we're going to do this, this, this, and this. And then they went out and did what they said they were going to do until the pickle ball.

And then that started the frustration and that was a little bit in Tammy's period. And but before that, we were very happy with the way they communicated. I think, you know, like said, you're the one that set the tone for like accountability, you know, like the cost per for, you know, attendance there, but also kind of what they're spending it on because, you know, it really should be advertising and promoting Greenwood, not just, you know,

it discourages me that, you know, we can't give money to the U, but we give money to them to buy paint brushes, paint a kind of looks bad. parks. It don't matter. They can do whatever they want. I know making it look better and all, but that's part of the parks money. The parks money should be spent on well like saying we are stewards of this and so we are accountable for how the money is spent and so I think we should have know exactly what it's going to be spent for. It all started with pickle ball courts and stuff. Wait a minute. You Not

bring it to us. let us be the ones because there again just like the money's you know the money is we're the ones supposed to be you know watching what's going weigh what's more important it's all about accounting I mean you say okay the man is going to for this so I'm gonna have to I do have some money over here that I'm have to allocate this over here to paint brushes and I can do you know this for you know the getting the people in here

I That's that communication component. just came up. Hey, this let

but it's just a courtesy thing.

You're not If you want obviously you want to keep the 45% we might need we might need obviously if you want 45% you are accountable

it's just these guys may not care I care this This is where we're planning on spending the money for the next, you know, two months until your next meeting. I'll come back next meeting, let you know what dos.

Hey, whatever y'all want to do. I'm cool. Just my opinion. Yes, I definitely think we need the other two guys here if we can. I'll make a motion to table it until October to discuss it some more. No, no, I know. Definitely not. I mean, you really can. I mean, it's somewhere. There's a paper trail, you know.

But just me personally, I don't I don't feel comfortable not knowing where. And again, like Rod said, we're in a unique situation where we've normally been able to keep people coming and now we're not. And now we're looking at it going, we can't give this, but we did that really probably wouldn't be as important as what we're not able to fun. You know what I mean? So that's kind of where it comes in.

I think frustrated with them because we can't give these other guys money to the level we were to kind of frustr Amen.

That pain won't go on forever. And boy, there there's a lot of kids using that thing. Four more years because we did it for five years. Three more years. Okay. Three more years. Three more years.

They they have stepped out. You think about the parks was here 10 years ago. Boy, they have really jumped out. There's a lot going on in parks and that that department probably does more with little money than any other department. They they get more done with smaller amounts of money. They they use a lot of people. I mean, when you're talking about scouts, all this other stuff, they're using all these groups to get things done and

and some of my frustration maybe with the cutting the freedom short, which I'm over that because I'm not I got anything to do with that. You know, that may be some of my frustration, but I don't want to take any money away from parks. I think I do spend it on stuff that you think is the best. I just like to know where it's going. That's just me. Accountability is 100% for me because if someone asked me, I won't be able to tell them. Yeah, Casey came up. He told that you know that's just me. I wish we could afford a 10 because the city the rest of the city bears the b the burden of the cost of that guy. girl.

Well, that's true. Insurance. So, yeah, sitting on that commission. I'm with you. Those sorry jerks. They won't hire somebody collect. We can't. There's nothing we can do. Truly, nobody in town has to pay that. They could just all quit tomorrow and our job would be really easy then. Like someone told me, I mean sales tax, you know, the state shuts you down if you're not paying your sales tax, but taxes,

it's kind of the same thing. We just got to work state get, like Bob said, a guy that looks like Guido to go up there with a big chrome chain and stuff. A little less red, a little more black. We'll be all right. Okay, we're good with commission comments. Anybody ready to adjourn?

I'll make a motion, too. What's that? Say that one more time. And then shortly thereafter So you have to get a vote of the people to change that. So you say a vote of the people, you're talking about the vote of the council representing the people or has to go to a vote.

So the original law which was I mean as a citizen Arkansas I think it's a little unfair that you know a council can you know, put in taxes without asking them. And in that one case, AMP commission, you could go in and put a maximum of 3% on a hotel motel and a maximum 3% on restaurants and not ask people, four councilmen could do it in that community. That was the major fight when it was all happening. But the law said you could do it. We did it. And we put 3% on for hotel motel and put 1% on And that's what started commission. Well, it's been picked up other places in the state and they've gone in and said that you can't do that anymore. It has to go to the vote of people. So, if we were to repeal the ordinance, we can't do a repeal and replace. It's all got to go to the to the citizens.

So, what we don't ever want to do is repeal the original ordinance or we don't or this commission doesn't exist anymore. Greenwood as a whole. Every time for tries to increase their

There were conversations here several years ago about sticking another quarter% or another half percent on to try to get an aquatics center or something like that. We could not do that now. Not in today's world. That's the city. We couldn't send it to the city council and say we want to repeal that ordinance and add a quarter to that 1%. So now it's one and a quarter, one and a half. We're going to use that for aquatics or whatever. We can't do that.

We're lucky that sleeping is there and we need to always leave it alone.

Yeah. And he was here. Yes. Waterburg. make a motion to

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