City Meeting - Regular Meeting

Andrew. Here. Rex. Here. Clayton. Here. Pastor Ken, tonight I'd like to have our new chief start us off in pleasantry. Father, thank you for another beautiful day. Thank you for your hand upon us and our families and our great community. We thank you for your presence here at this meeting tonight. We pray for each and every person, whether they're elected or whether they're a citizen or whether they serve at the pleasure of the community. Lord, we pray your blessing on each and every one. We pray for wisdom and understanding for the decisions that are going to be made and the progress that we make to bring peace and prosperity for our great community. I lift up our new police chief, Chief Sizemore. We pray your blessing upon him and his family and your hand of protection upon him and the officers of our community to do our best, as I prayed before, to bring peace and prosperity to Jonesboro. And through this, we will bring you glory. Amen.

I'll make motion we approve the meeting minutes for August 11th as written.

I'll second that.

Motion second for the minutes of August 11th for approval. Roll call.

Andrea? Aye. Rex?

Aye.

Clayton? Aye.

says the bikes and scooters

I mean, sorry, but should the budget discussion be part of the new business, or is that going to be afterwards, or when are we going to discuss it?

No, I set up a special session, so I thought that's what we decided on. That's fine.

I just wanted to be clear. Great. That's what you asked last time. Okay. Thank you. Did you set a date for that? Tonight, right after this meeting. Okay.

So I made the change to the hours 18 aren't allowed between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. I think that's the only thing that we're changing.

Did we disrupt the animal?

On the noise, yes. So here I have assigned in this copy. So you guys can see that.

And we're on second reading on the device. Okay.

Yeah, we passed the noise. It just did have the animal.

Yes, you just show the change.

Yeah.

I think it's better to give us some control. And we can always address it in the end if there's other issues.

But we've got to enforce the law in our books while we go crazy about our names. Anybody want to make a motion?

I'll make a motion.

Second.

We've got a motion and a second for the second reading on the e-mic ordinance, e-scooters. Roll call, please.

Adrian. Aye. Rex. Aye. Clayton. Aye. Gerald. Yeah, I'm going to make a decision.

I can't. Okay. I think I'm in town.

Oh, that's good.

And it's menus, right? It's menus.

Pressure will be open. Concession stand will be open. Limited concession stand because we're running out of a lot of funds. We're going to have a lot left over from here. And menus will be shown the 5th of September, so ready your... Bring your AT note, bring your key back down here. And leave by 10 p.m. Leave by 10 p.m. It's a good event down here. A lot of fun. I hope we get some more people down here to show the names.

He called me and I gave him a couple of concrete people I don't know what he found out. I don't know why he called me but he did.

Case construction will give us a bid. He was just worried about the circumstances as far as pay. But that can get in this situation if Soms is already being paid to do it and then him giving us a bid to do it. I guess that was his concern.

For the case guy?

Yeah. Case construction will come and give us a bid. I just told him to hold off. because I was told last week that someone was coming.

Yeah, I gave him those two people I knew a month ago, at least.

Well, I heard what I'd like to happen. I'd like you to call a case and tell them not to do the test. They'll do it. Again, if we get a resolution, I'll call Sons of Conduct. He followed on. He has to take a case to this level. And we'll go from there. Yep. Because the floods, or the rain, it was...

Just for my clarity, are we mowing the land where J.C. Knight was at this hour? Is Caden supposed to mow that? Have we discussed that?

We've never even mowed it.

Okay.

Well, I don't know either.

I don't understand what the question is. Okay, because sometimes I go there and it seems like it's a king's land, it's mowed, and then it's high, and sometimes I go and it's mowed, so I didn't know if it's, I don't know if it's R, I don't know.

It would be R on mowed, but it was mowed the other day when I was over here.

I went by at noon, and you could tell where they mowed and left R square, and it was getting pretty high.

But maybe, I mean, I'm happy that, I mean, my son goes there now, I can discuss with him, like, We don't mind if people walk across it, if they park, or, you know, kids can come around there and just mow it. Are we okay with something like that? Or should we have that discussion?

I know Friday and Monday our guys mowed. I just don't know if they mowed yet. Because I said I'm off this week, so.

Okay. I've seen two lone mowers going down Water Street there without an hour. Okay.

It's possible they've done it, but.

there for that so okay uh the weeds we talked about seeing about the thing for the county anyone up there you know we have a i have a point i have to present a piece of equipment to take those weeds out okay and i haven't got the quote yet but we're looking at a thing that will take down trees and small trees and weeds and everything because we are overgrown

It's $4,000 for the attachment. But I will tell you, we've already paid Jackson $4,000 to do two areas. So if we buy this piece of equipment, it'll save us a lot of money and we'll get a lot done.

Does it go like, can you pick it up like they do with that thing and go sideways with it?

We can buy that one, but it's a little bit more. I don't know if it'll work on our skid stair because our skid stair is not a high flow, it's only a low flow.

The piece of equipment that we're looking at, we need to clean out. We clean out so many small trees around the property. Most people know that the green way down here, where we want to put the mud and fire garden, we need to clean it out. And we want that piece of property. We have to clean it out. I go to spend $4,000 and our guys do it, and spend $20,000 and ask somebody else to do it, and next year we have to do it again.

Which Rob was asking when he can start on the east side. Do we wait until it's recorded? Since we already did the exchange.

We exchanged the cash. We bought the piece of property. Can we do work on it now? Yeah. Okay. And I know some of you are concerned about buying too much equipment. And I get that. But some of these equipment for like just the weeds and everything are just over, they're just growing up everywhere. Every community is like that. But I'll ask Dave why don't you go down and cut that. But you can hold Dave.

Usually he won't get that out until all when the weeds start because you can't see the phone boxes, this, that.

I saw the other day when we were recycling, it was there. Since we took over the road

But we don't own the property. It's still counting. Who needs to cut them wheat? Usually with the road, you have so much of a right-of-way, so we'd have to go so far back. And I know where that old pond is. People's complaining it's hitting their vehicles. Yeah. You can't see coming around the corner.

Well, you've got to be careful because the last guy put a bunch of old blocks and stuff in there. You can't see. Right.

I called Dave on that. That come from a fire from 6th Street. And they dumped all that in that side dish, and the guy was supposed to use it around his pond, and they never did. They left it in the side dish. Okay.

But you get back to that quote that we made pretty new. Some of that stuff is, we, cosmetically, this town needs some of the brushes cleaned up and everything. So I'll bring that to you.

Okay. And one more thing. I think with our new police chief, I'd like for us to think about a new police car. I know we talked about it in the past. I don't know what Brittany's thinking. She's probably yelling at me, but, you know, I think there's some grants out there available. You can get a grant. I think it'd be nice to start him out with a new police car. And if things are going away, hopefully we're thinking they will, or we're probably going to need them. So, there's something to think about.

Okay. All right, good. You have to send this money, please Yeah

He's a nice guy. And I think he would be receptive to the idea that his predecessor was working on that with us. And I called him to get the information that I gave him, and then he left. So make sure they understand that they were working on it before he left. If we don't get that, it's going to be interesting for future projects.

I think they will come around. I think they will too. What I don't understand is that everyone we talk to says, oh yeah, just send the invoice. Nobody, everybody seems willing. It's like, so who's cutting the check? I mean, I'm just confused.

I will call the secretary tomorrow. She was real nice about sending the receipt, the invoice, the minutes, where they showed where they approved it, the city, or the commission approved the 30, and the council approved the 70. So where's the check?

Yeah. Well, I can schedule it. I'll try to get on the general release at public comment.

I would really like that.

Yeah, I'll take care of that. I'll try to do it tomorrow.

Anything else on rural business? Greg?

Yep.

Gerald, you got anything to add, sir? I don't think so. Okay. All right, let's move on.

talk a little bit about CCMG. We are, we've got actually four, three projects, one of which is we've closed out, so we're working on closing out the other two projects, the Gulick Street, Boyd and 4th Avenue. So there is a round coming up September 1st. I'm going to get with the mayor. We're going to pick and choose and prioritize the next round of streets. We do have 3rd Avenue from 2nd Street to 6th Street slated for paving. So we're going to work through and see what other streets we can budget in.

Before Friday, if anybody has any comments where they think we should behave, it doesn't matter how big or small, I think I'm going to add 450 south on that. I'll try to highlight. We extend it on 4th Avenue. Go ahead, go around the corner and finish that.

Okay. Are you looking at by the railroad tracks here by the canyons? That road is really bad. Oh, 6th Street? Yeah. Well, the one side we did a few years back. It's nice. The other side, look.

It looks like an alley pretty much. Yeah, but it looks like it was paid at one point. It's a road.

It looks like an alley.

Well, we need to pay them because eventually they're going to block the road off.

Supposedly, yes.

So, you need that $450,000. We'll talk more about the rest of it. Anything you guys

This is probably more like a case thing, right?

Yeah, they can come in and do it. I mean, if we have the money in our budget, they will probably want to take all that concrete out, because that's what's killing us. Concrete with asphalt, and they're not going to stick to one another.

And that's not what, that's not our half of it. The problem is, we've got two properties right up against each other in half.

Yeah. You want to get an estimate? Just zoom around with it? Sure.

Okay.

The only other thing I have is tomorrow night we've scheduled a public information meeting for the annexation for the area west of Wichita. That's 6.30 p.m. at the community center. The public is welcome. Council, you're welcome as well. It's more, again, it's just an informative meeting. We are moving forward with annexation. The mayor is pretty adamant that we put this on the forefront, so I feel like it's going to be a very beneficial meeting, informative, so I encourage everyone to attend this.

Can I defend it, please? I feel it's time that I can keep our eyes so we can have our services now. So I just think it would be okay. And we give a tax abatement for giving a little incentive.

Will they save a lot on trash if they do that one thing? So do we have all this? Do we have those all listed? Okay.

There's a lot of savings in that. And I think it's time that people realize that Annexation is not a bad word when you're offering some services and everything, potential services. You're not just getting it for, hey, we need your tax money. We really need it for the, we just need it for the future for all of us. So, there we go.

That's all I have.

If you guys have questions for me. Any questions for Brad?

Thank you, Brad.

Thank you, Brad. I've got one question, but not for Brad, but for what you guys are wanting. The alley beside this store, how far back are you want to go all the way around the race where it comes back off the 6th or just to that first alley? Probably just the first alley.

The problem is, and you might ask him, what do you think about the rest of it?

Yeah.

Not the alley coming back off the first alley, but going all the way up to race and back out to 6th. Is that what you're talking about?

where that bad spot was. You just want to go from Maine to that first alley behind the school. I don't want to go that far. Like 10 feet? If they think that's long, I think it will.

That way we don't have no more trouble paying out money on tire.

Okay. Just a comment. The superintendent of the schools will be here at our next meeting to talk about the proposed vote that will happen this year for the referendum. So please get above it. People want to show up at that. He'll have a short speech. Most of the information he has is online. And most of us know exactly how much it's going to cost us. But as we sit here, I want him to tell us that this is going to cost homeowners this amount of money. And then we turn around and be we have to ask them for maybe a possible rate case in our increase in our utilities. We have to be a little bit on top of things to make sure we, the annexation needs to come through. It will keep us from having to raise anything over there. This is my comment. So the problem is provided, I mean, of course these won't be on our agenda, so having questions, it's not gonna be an adverse question and answer. It's just gonna be information only, but he wants to get it out there. But I feel like we, as a small group, even though there's only 1,600 residents, we need to know the information just face-to-face like everybody else. So I invite him, and here we are. Thank you. Thank you. Clerk Treasurer.

Just a request. No. We can't do that yet. He's going to redo it. Okay. The only thing I have is I gave you guys a bunch of budget information. Greg, Bob, and myself are meeting. We're doing the exit conference for the audit Friday morning. So once I get all of that information, I will send it on to you guys.

Even this INM power, we talked to him about fixing that pole over here on 6th Street. It's not there. Okay. Thank you.

City Joe for roll call, please.

Andrew. Aye. Rex.

Aye.

Clayton.

Aye.

Gerald. Aye. Lincolnt.

Aye.

I want everybody to be aware that the county council is, I think, currently still having their budget meetings. So again, encourage anyone who's interested in both GRE and taxation matters,

Oh, yes.

September 2nd is the last meeting in the county. But they're only requesting fiscal officers for each city and town. So if there's anything you want me to take with me, any comments you want me to, just let me know.

Given the response that there was at that meeting we had, I don't know that it will be relevant. Also, regarding area plan and things, the discussion of CAFOs is coming up again. Also, you may have heard the mayor of Marion announced that there's a proposed data center going up in the city of Marion. So, I'm just letting you aware, whether you feel positive, negative, there's development happening in Grant County. Things are always changing, of course. It's a changing world. If you like that, go there and support it. If you don't like that, go there and speak against it. Not in the City of Marion, there's nothing to do about City of Marion, but if you're interested in Grant County, having KFOs or things like that.

Most of it is outside of the City of Marion. It's almost halfway to the map I saw today.

Yes, but they would have to annex, I think the plan is annexed. Not for, I mean, yeah, this, in order for the city of Marion to do it, it'd have to be, but yeah, there are discussions about annexing significant land to the west of Marion, so.

That's something to do tonight, thanks to you. All right, anything else, sir? All right, if nothing else, we will, I'd like for the, the new police chief to come up. He's got a few words he'd like to say to us. You ready? Chief Sizemore.

Good evening, Mayor Goins, Court Treasurer Kaus, members of the Council, Board of Works, officers, employees, family, friends, and members of the general brokerage community. I'm honored and humbled to accept the opportunity to serve as your Chief of Police. I want to begin by thanking Mayor Goins, Court Treasurer Kaus, the Council, Board of Works, and everyone who has placed their trust and confidence in me. I understand that this appointment is much more than a title or a personal accomplishment. It's a responsibility. You are entrusting me with the leadership of this department, with public resources, and most importantly, with a role in protecting and serving the people of Jonesboro. I understand the weight of that responsibility and I do not take it lightly. I also want to thank my family, friends, mentors, and colleagues who have supported me throughout my career. None of us reaches a moment like this entirely on our own. Their encouragement, guidance, patience, and sacrifices have helped me prepare me for this opportunity, and I am incredibly grateful. I'm grateful for that. To the officers, staff, and the Jonesboro Police Department, I want to speak directly to you. You deserve to know what kind of chief I intend to be. I will support you. I will listen to you. I will advocate for you and work to make sure that you have the training, resources, equipment, and leadership you need to do your jobs safely and professionally. I will give you clear expectations, and I will hold you accountable to those expectations. But I will never ask you to meet a standard that I'm not unwilling to meet myself. Leadership starts at the top. If I expect professionalism, I must demonstrate professionalism. If I expect accountability, I must be accountable. If I expect our officers to be present, engaged, respectful, and willing to do the work, then you should expect exactly the same thing from me. I believe in leading from the front. That means being present. That means being accessible. That means knowing what is happening within this department and throughout this community. It means being willing to have difficult conversations when they are necessary and be willing to stand beside our officers when they are doing their jobs the right way. We will recognize and celebrate good police work. We will support one another. We will learn from one another. When we make mistakes or fall short of the standards we set for ourselves, we will own it, correct it, learn from it, and become better because of it. That is how strong organizations operate, and that is how trust is built. To the people of Jonesboro, this is your police department. Every call we answer, every traffic stop we make, every investigation we conduct, and every interaction we have with a resident is an opportunity to demonstrate who we are and what we stand for. You have a right to expect professionalism from us. You have a right to expect fairness. You have a right to expect that you will be treated with dignity and respect. And you have the right to expect that the people entrusted with enforcing the law will also hold themselves to a high standard. Trust cannot simply be requested because we wear a badge. Trust is earned through our actions, our decisions, and the way we treat people day after day. I want the Jonesboro Police Department to be known not simply because we respond when something goes wrong, but because we are part of this community And when things are going right, you will see us in your neighborhoods. You will see us interacting with businesses, schools, families, and young people. You will see a department that understands that community policing is not a program or a slogan. It's a relationship. Public safety cannot be accomplished by the police department alone. It requires partnerships. between law enforcement, residents, businesses, schools, churches, elected officials, and community organizations. I want to hear your concerns, I want to hear your ideas, and yes, I also want to hear when you believe we can do something better. We may not always agree, and there may be times when the answer someone receives is not the answer they hoped for. But my commitment is that we will listen, we will communicate honestly, and we will treat people with respect. I especially want our young people to know that the Jonesboro Police Department is here for you. Our responsibility is certainly to protect you, but I want it to go beyond that. I want our officers to be people who you know. I want us to encourage you, interact with you, mentor you when we have the opportunity, and help you understand that the men and women wearing this uniform are members of this community too. Those relationships matter. To Mayor Gillespie, Treasurer Kautz, the Council, the Board of Works, and the taxpayers of Jonesboro, I also want you to know that I understand the responsibility that comes with managing a public department. Public safety requires resources, but it also requires accountability for those resources. I will communicate with you, I will be straightforward about the needs of this department, work with you to solve problems, plan for the future, and make responsible decisions that serve both our officers and the people who ultimately pay the bills. I believe the best relationship between department heads and elected officials are built on communication, mutual respect, and the understanding that we are all here for the same reason, to serve this community. As I begin this new chapter, I can't promise that every day will be easy. There will be challenges, there will be difficult decisions, there will be situations where there's no perfect answer. But I can promise you how I will approach them. I will show up, I will listen, I will communicate, I will make decisions based on what I believe is right, fair, and in the best interest of this department and this community. I will support the men and women who serve this city, and I will hold myself and this department accountable to the people we serve. Most importantly, I will never forget that being chief of police is an opportunity to serve, not an opportunity to be served. I am excited about what we can build together here in Jonesboro. I am grateful for the confidence you have placed in me, and I'm ready to get to work. Thank you for your trust, your partnership, and the opportunity to serve as your chief of police. It is an honor, and I will work every day to earn it. Thank you, and may God bless the Jonesboro Police Department and the entire Jonesboro community.

Any questions for him while he's standing up? Any questions? Yeah. He, like you said, he was a Marine. Yay.

Some of us weren't here, so you could give the spiel again. Seriously? Neither Andrea nor I were here.

Go ahead.

I graduated from Missoula in 1991. I grew up on 7th Street in the 500 block. I went in the Marine Corps and served six years in the Marine Corps. When I got out, I come back to Grant County. and hired on the Marion Police Department in 2005, and retired June 1st of 2005, and I retired June 2nd of 2025. Tried to go into the banking business, working at Riverside Credit Union, and that's just for me, and the opportunity arose when Mayor Goins reached out to me for this opportunity, and it's an opportunity for me to come back to the community I grew up in and try to make a difference. for however long I choose to work here.

I'm getting up there in age.

I'm not going to work until I'm 90. So I'm not going to work as long as the mayor. I'm going to be here for a while because there's a lot of work to do. There's a lot of work to do within the police department. Brittany and I have been working together to do some different changes over there. You're going to see some different changes within the police department with the uniforms, the badges, the patches, the decals on the cars. We want a new look. We want a new department. Once all that gets done, I'll bring you guys in. We'll take a tour of the small department and let you see where things are at and how things are going to be going from this point forward. But I'm really, really excited to be here and really look forward to working with you. And hopefully here in the next couple weeks when my uniforms are ready and I can get out here and really get involved in the community and introduce myself and get for the people to get to know me. So if you don't have any questions.

Do you have any brothers? I have an older brother who passed away in 2020.

Okay, how old would he be? He would now be 56, 57.

Because your name sounds familiar. I grew up in a community and there was only the two of us.

I had a rough growing up. I lived right in the middle between Claire McDaniel and Ralph McDaniel on 7th Street. I could not do anything. I was a pretty good kid at home.

We do have a reach alert system that we can send out text to the community and you get your feet on the ground. I'll come up and we'll get you signed into that. It's a pretty nice tool. It sends emails or however the people choose. I think we have 350, 360 people that are signed up for it. So it's just a nice thing and we can give you access to that so you can send out an alert if you have something or whatever. Absolutely.

I will say this, he is taxed. When he puts his teeth into something, it's going to get done. So don't ask him to do something because it's going to be done. You saw his room back here. His office went from whatever it was. It's like, oh wow, can I take this office? He won't give it up. I didn't know the office even existed. He's the guy, he's the person for Thank you. Yeah, welcome.

Thank you.

Anything else from the board? That's exciting. If not, we can't adjourn. Can we adjourn to view the budget or do we go ahead?

Yeah, it's a special session.

We've got one question to remember we talked about that I need to bring up to the Former Chief Edgington, his last day was yesterday at 4 PM. And one of his requests from me was for him to be able to purchase his firearm from the department in the city. I advised him that I would bring it for tonight. I did some research on the cost of the firearm and a fair cost or trade-in value of a used firearm would be $400. I told him that I would bring it to the council for approval for that amount and if it was approved that I would reach out to him and turn the firearm over to him if that was the consensus of the council. My personal opinion is he was here for five or six years, however long he was here. So this is kind of a gesture of thank you for your service. I'm going to do some other things for him once we get things moving at the police department, but this is just a step of saying thank you. He is purchasing it. We're not giving it to him. But with your approval, I ask that... You authorized me to sign a receipt showing that he paid $400 that we turned over to Brittany and put in his personnel file that he paid that amount. It'll be on official letterhead with my signature and the mayor's signature. I assume this wouldn't leave us short on firearms? No, we currently have three firearms available. I'm currently carrying my one that I got when I retired. until I get my uniform and then I'll issue myself one that we have. There's two back there in the locker and then one of the part-time guys currently has one issued to him. None of the reserves have any of that stuff issued to them.

We will have an expense of something we will be giving Colton for his service.

I'm going to do a shadow box with a couple patches in his chief badge once we get new equipment in and a small little plaque from the department thanking him for his service.

I move we approve that. That's fine.

Me too. Also second? Or if she can, it doesn't matter?

No.

So we have a motion and a second.

The floor is yours. I approve the session. I arm for $400. And it will be sold accordingly to the state wall, correct? Correct. Yes. Thank you very much. Roll call, please.

Andrea. Aye. Rex.

Aye.

Clayton. Aye. Gerald.