City Council - Regular Meeting

Council meeting.

If you are here to speak on an agenda item, there is a sign-up sheet for that.

And if you want to speak on a non-agenda item, there's a sign-up for that as well for after voting agenda. So we will give everybody to sign up if they would like. If I don't see anybody running over there, then I will go ahead and call us to order. I don't believe that we have a scout this evening to lead us in the pledge. Has anybody seen one? Okay. Now if you'll stand with me for the pledge and remain standing for a moment of silence for our military.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

Roll call, please.

Sanchez? Patterson?

Here.

Acree? Present. Thiebaud? Here. Souter? Here. Grover? Here. McCart?

We have a motion to... Oh, sorry. Here. A motion to approve the minutes of the July 28, 2026 Bentonville City Council meeting.

So moved.

Second. A motion and a second. Roll call, please.

Patterson? Yes. Acree? Yes. Sitter? Yes. Grover? Yes. Cook?

Yes.

Sanchez? Yes.

Would any member like to make a preliminary motion?

I make a motion to suspend the rules requiring ordinances re-read on three separate days and further move all ordinances and resolutions veer over their title only. Second.

A motion and a second. Roll call, please.

Acree? Yes. Yeah. Souter? Yes. Yes. Hook? Yes. Sanchez? Yes. Patterson?

Yes. With that, we get a motion to adjourn from our city council meeting into committee of the whole. Motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? With that, I'll turn it over to Chris.

Okay, we'll start with our quarterly financial update. Patrick?

So since you all, a week ago, the quarterly financial updates, I asked if anybody had any questions. I didn't receive anything. I wondered if anybody had any statements or questions this evening.

I would like, in addition to quarterly financial update, I would love to see some kind of a regular KPI report that is a quick digestible version of how is the city doing. We're seeing some kind of a five or six lines, like a dashboard, something that is just easy to digest, easy to read. And then if there's questions from that, then we can dig into something.

Sort of maybe like five, six line executive summary at this, just if we're seeing where we're expecting. So, okay.

Revenues, expenses. And great job on your audit.

Great job on the audit.

Thank you. Patrick, did we get the award for the best budget income? We did for a

Last year, but we still have to do next year's budget. So yeah, I guess we didn't ever bring that board. I guess we never bring the GFOA board, but we did. We did. And we can send that out.

I will have that sent.

So beautiful. Thank you. So beautiful. So would you like to talk about the audit?

Yeah, I send you all the audit, the link to the audit. It's available out there. So if you have any commentary on it, please let us know.

And then we'll vote on approving that in 30 days or how does that work? We don't vote.

Don't vote on it. You just.

Any questions on the audit or the financials before we way to eat the punch.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay.

We're going to have now an update on the water system performance Preston Preston.

It's going to be Donnie and Bo.

Donnie and Bo.

They are the team tonight.

We're just hiding back there.

I'm interested to know if Preston is actually listening in. Leaving you all on your own.

Did not see him logged on. Hello, everyone. I know that he kind of gave you all an overview last meeting. I'm sorry. I apologize. We weren't. for that. But we're here now. So he gave you all the overview. I kind of want to give some details to kind of support all of that. So make sure this thing works. Checked it earlier. So what we want to do is compare the first half of 26 to the first half of 25. Everybody kind of knows where we were in 25. That's when we very first kind of kicked off our contractors to help us out with our water loss situation. So I thought that that would be a really good starting point. So this will be January through June of 25 and 26. So we'll go ahead and get started. I'm actually really proud of this slide. There's a lot of information here. 2026, you can see that's 2.8 billion gallons purchased compared to 3.4 billion in 25. That's a decrease of, you know, 600 million gallons. That's 18% decrease. I actually don't have that on there, but I did put a dollar amount to that. I calculated the wholesale price from last year's $1.67, what we bought in 25 from Beaver Water, to $1.82 per thousand for this year. And that's a savings of $603,000. So that's money that we didn't have to spend to buy extra water.

Okay.

That's the entire system. So that includes that Bella Vista and Cape Springs. Yeah, this is just a sheer volume that we purchased.

What was that number again?

The dollar amount? $603,421. So that's just based off of the reduction. Our daily averages. I'm pretty proud of this one, too. So you can see in 25, our daily average for that six months was almost 19 million gallons a day. Now we're at 15.7. Our max day now is 18.4 compared to 23 back then. I will say that this was, again, through June, the end of June. It was crazy. July 1st, the very next day is actually whenever it just turned immediately hot and the rain turned off. So we're actually, our biggest day was 24-1 and we hit that yesterday. So this is just slightly out of date, but I wanted to go ahead and let you guys know that we did hit our biggest day yesterday. Until today. Yeah.

Until today. That's probably worse.

Actually, today's looking like it's going to be slightly less. Really? Based on what I've seen before I left the office. So I think it'll be 23-something tomorrow. Um, the gallons build. So this is, uh, this is kind of talking about the growth, um, obviously the meter management that we've continued to do, but, uh, this is more driven towards growth, uh, an increase of 40 million gallons that's built. So 3%. So we're buying less water, selling more water. So that's really cool. And then the gallons lost. So put that at the very bottom. So in 26, we're losing still, you know, or we lost, sorry, during this period of 1.4 billion. But I mean, that's down. 500 million compared to the year before. So 32% reduction savings of almost $1.2 million. So really proud of this slide. This has the majority of the information. You can see the graph to the right where the contractor started, where the rate increase is. I know that that's important to note. You can see in the summer months where the purchases went up because that's irrigation season and it's hot and everything. And then it's tapering back down. But if you kind of look towards the right and compare that to the left, you can see that overall it's still down. It's just kind of a visual to go along with those numbers. This next slide is our district metering summary. So this is kind of a snapshot of our system. This is nine subdivisions. You guys probably remember we started this Highland Park that was kind of our flagship early in 2025. So we saved a lot of money in there. We're really proud of that one. We were, you know, The master meter was registering a half million gallons a day across. It was 54 lots. So that's a ton of water. We knocked that down to just almost 13,000 gallons a day. So that was a huge win. You can see these other sun divisions. It's not quite that great of a story, but it's still a good story all in all. You can see at the bottom, you know, we're down 2.6%. Million gallons purchased across those nine, or the demand, sorry, those nine subdivisions, and it's down to well below a million. So I know I've got on here a return on investment in just under two years. This started in 2025, so we've already started to make some of that money back. But just overall, those nine subdivisions, the loss that we had in there and the progress we've made, we're saving, you know, 1.8 million gallons and about a million dollars annually in not having to purchase that water. I'm really proud of that one too. Yes, sir.

Maybe you can talk on the next slide, but I see the contractor status. I'm just curious to know how much more is left to do.

I've got that at the very last slide. We're getting there. So I have a lot to do. So IDIQ contractors, this is, again, just for the first six months of the year. They both have done eight work assignments. CalCon continues to be our best performing contractor. They're right at 400 service line replacements, averaging slightly higher than MoARC. MoARC, obviously, 315 service line replacements. They both have a 45 service replacement minimum per month. You can see MoARC's right there. Added CalCon is exceeding. The difference in the pricing, because they're both working under the same bid, is really one contractor may have more concrete to replace than the other. This contractor may have more source size versus alongside, which requires a bore under the road. It's an added expense, so... That's kind of how there's a difference in the pricing. But you can see we've spent so far in 26 about $3.5 million, averaging just under $4,900 a service. We're really happy with the work these guys are doing. They're really doing a lot for us. Customer complaints are less than they were last year. Everybody's really starting to figure this thing out. They're doing a really good job, and we're glad to have these guys. So this is our last slide, Dan. This is where we sit as of this was updated last week. We're actually slightly lower. I think we're at 560 on the active leaks, that blue number to the left. When we started this thing, we were over 1,500. Some of you'll remember we had CEI come in. We had a contractor come in and find all the leaks. And that's kind of what kicked this thing off. We've seen what we were up against, realized the need, and then we're able to build a path forward. So in just over a year, this is where we're at now with the, with the active leaks over 3,400 service line replacements. And keep in mind, these are not just leak clamps. This is not just a bandaid. These are full on service line replacements.

So we don't have to go back and take care of these.

We're also being proactive. So we're not just replacing leaking lines. We're replacing sister lines as well. So when we, Us and the contractor, when there's excavated, the service lines are excavated, the one that's leaking, if there's another one in the hole, which there generally is based on our subdivision layout, we're going ahead and replacing it as well. And if there's two long sides as well. So we don't have to go back in and dig up the yard or tear up a sidewalk again for the next one that's going to leak six months from now or two years from now.

Do you have like a specific metrics for when they're repaired and when they're replaced? Like for the contractor, is it the size or what determines that?

So for the most part up to this point, it's been, hey, I've got a leak in my yard. I've got a leak going everywhere. Going down the road, there's been people have been really good about letting us know where it's at. And so we kind of focus on those, the ones that are really garnering a lot of attention. 311 has been big, too. And then also because a lot of time they're in the location of the CEI leaks, we're going ahead and taking care of those as well. But we've minimized or we've knocked those down severely. The ones that we call them screamers, but the ones where everybody's like, hey, get this thing fixed now. That's really backed off a lot. So now we're really able to focus more on that original list and get these knocked down. So, sorry, to answer your question, we are focusing on these subdivisions that we identified before that were built in 04 to 08 in that first initial boom. That's where we've seen the most of the leaks and that's where we're really focusing.

And those are the ones you're replacing, kind of the ones that we identified, we know they need to be replaced. The ones in the repair number are others that have kind of popped up, but that can be addressed just with the repair. Is that what you're saying?

So this is the original list that the contractor provided us of all the leaks. But then also as we generate new leaks, when a work order is created, the script picks it up and it puts it on the dispatcher.

every week so when we update this dashboard that's capturing new leaks as well so remember we had this we did the smoke testing to find all the leaks with the company but then also through 311 just like the lady that came at our last council meeting immediately contacted you I think you guys that night you guys were off the next day for the irrigation they were able to turn off the irrigation system be in contact with it's the private property owner needs to fix it but they were able to turn the irrigation off yes ma'am yeah Yeah, they follow up on the one that came. And so the public does, I will say, they do a good job of using 311. Because if they can see it and get a picture of it and put it in 311, I've had many comments that they were like, they were out here this day. I put it in 311 and they were out there. I can't promise we can always do that. But I will say the feedback from the public is that the team is on it. So.

It's good to hear. We're definitely, we do get a lot and we try to address them as quick as we can.

Yes, ma'am. City lines, not.

Correct. Correct. Yes, ma'am.

So if we're doing 100 a month, is that what you said on the slide before? Yeah. 45 and 50 something. Does that mean we're like six months from the end of the road or do they keep adding up faster than we're fixing them?

I would love to say that, Chris. Unfortunately, that's not quite the case. We are gaining. We are obviously gaining because a year ago we fixed well over 1,000. But we are generating new leaks every single day. The number goes up every day. It does. And then, yeah, so we throw a bunch at it and then we back up a little bit and then we throw more at it. And so it's kind of two steps forward, one step back sometimes. But we are generating new leaks every day.

What's the timeline on the contracts with the?

So they're yearly contracts. We're planning on renewing both contractors in November. I think November 20th is when this one's up, and this will be the third year. So we will have to bid it again after this, after 27. So it will come up. November of 27, if the need is still there, we will have to re-bid.

I would also say on the homeowner side, utility billing has stepped up their notifications.

They have.

Well, and our homeowners have been very responsive on that.

And we're working with Mueller to actually tighten that up even tighter than it already is as far as the leak alerts on the meters. We've got a request in now to see if we can kind of shrink that window when the meter identifies a leak so that we can kind of notify a little sooner if we can.

This is great news.

Thank you so much. Good work, guys. Thank you. That's great. And that's all I had. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Okay. The RFP for commercial real estate brokerage transaction and business recruitment services, Tyler. Okay.

Yeah, so I'm just here to answer any questions that y'all have about it, but really at a broad base. I know we've talked about our properties that we own as the city here a number of times over the course of the past few years. And as we reflected on it, we came to an understanding that, you know what, we really need to bring someone on board. who's a subject matter expert in this, to help tell... One, serve the purpose of the strategic advisor. What's the highest and best use of some of these properties? How should we be marketing them? Really helping to serve that side of real estate investment. But then also... being that point of contact and our representative if we are entering into an agreement for a property sale or if we are entering into agreement for a land lease and so on and so forth. So any actions they take would ultimately come before you all through that process. But it's really as opposed to us sitting around and trying to figure it out as we go. It was let's bring on somebody who does this every single day of the week and serve as – the city's advisor and point of contact through these things.

Yes.

So that's what we'd be establishing with this firm is like, what is the consistent process of both that's in the city's best interests, the customer's best interest, and then ultimately what's best practice based on what else is going on out there. It varies based on the property. Some of them have been within the last one to two years. Others, it's been some amount of time. Which would be, I think, part of the initial discovery phase is providing all those previous appraisals to whatever firm we bring on board.

Also, we are getting ideas brought to us and I think what we've come to think it would be great to have entity that does the full day line kind of listening to those and then bringing towards you guys the best recommendations from that i think they're also the other thing would we would if there are properties that we would like to see certain things be addressed or whatever we can give them that feedback they can help try to make sure we find that right but so um

Yep. So let's say if the city did have property that we say it's already available, but we're looking for a tenant to fill it or a potential developer to redevelop it. That would be another piece that we would lean on this person for is for business and developer recruitment purposes as well.

So I was going to mention, would proactive economic development be the scope of what these folks would do?

I think a lot of their focus would be focused on city assets, city real estate. But yes, it is an ongoing conversation and thought process about, okay, how do we get more active with those properties that are privately owned as well?

That's great.

Yep.

Do you all have an RFP you're ready to send out?

This is a draft framework that I provided. We've still got to put it on our typical city format.

Yeah, well, and that's... Tonight was to get some feedback from y'all if there's anything in that you want to make sure that is included in that, but hopefully we're pretty close with the RFP.

Yeah, that's what I want to make sure is included is private development recruiting businesses.

I think this is great. I did not feel comfortable kind of with kind of just taking offers and we didn't really have a good plan. And it's, you know, we bring in consultants when things are kind of outside our scope of expertise. So I think this was such a great idea. I think this is definitely the way to go. So thank you for putting this together.

Any other questions for Tyler on this matter? Are you doing the desktop update?

No.

Sorry.

Okay.

That's Dan.

Ready.

Going to give an update on the 26 bus stop program. We were installing bus stops at four different locations, which is what you had budgeted for us to do. The first one is on J Street at the high school on the east side of the road across from the football stadium. And then there's two on I Street at 8th where the entry to the new park is. Both those stops on both sides of the road are getting heavy usage right now for pickups, so they're at the top of the list. And then the other one is south on I Street to 102 where the Casey's is. So kind of across the street from Planet Fitness. And those are the ones that are the top of the list right now. We have pretty good growth in the whole program, but those are the ones that are the top of the list for pickups. We've got those selected. Just wanted to give you an update on that. You'd earmarked money, $5,000 a site for them. Last year, we spent a little less than that. But at the end of the day, depending on just what the soil conditions are, we're estimating we'll still spend that amount. I didn't know if you had any questions about that. I just wanted to give you a quick update on that. Do you have any metrics or insight on who's using the buses? Because it's our free service, there's no identification required to get off and on. The drivers are clicking a counter. So if you got to the point where they were charging for the service and we had cards and those things, we could do that. Right now it's just a head count.

Okay, very good. The headcount and the calculations that Dan explained to me a few days ago are so very well thought in order to determine the priorities that each one of those places have in the sense for the installation of structures that will make it easier for the passengers to occupy them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

Those are the four locations. They'll go get started on that. The goal is to have them done. Yeah, we'll have them done.

This year. Yeah. And they're, I mean, they're fairly, they're good locations for us to work into because most of, they're all in the right of way. So it's already, we already got property acquisitions and everything done.

I have a quick question. Since you're here and I just noticed this yesterday. I noticed that we are putting in some new stops for, There was a sign saying upcoming bus stop coming soon. Yeah. Does that change our content? I mean, are these happening? I mean, I was excited to see it because it feels like a good. So I just didn't know how that happened.

So ORT will and they will put in bus stops. So, I mean, there's also a program ORT is doing with the campus on where they're putting locations. So some of those are affiliated with some of that, too. So I believe the stop you're talking about is on north or really near central. Yeah. Yeah, that's one of those. One of the biggest pickup points is now in the middle of the David Glass parking lot because people on campus are parking over there to take the buses into campus.

Got it.

OK, so that's seen a lot of pickup. And I think as you see development happening on that part of town, you're going to see more and more pickups. I did look at the new stops separately just to see if any of them were going to make it into the top four soon. There probably will be one on it's actually on the opposite side of the street from the one on J Street. So it's on the stadium side of the street is one that's that's growing quickly. Can't tell you who it is getting on there, but I'm assuming some students headed south as opposed to students headed north.

That's good information. I just, we're standing here and I just saw. Oh yeah, sure. So I was like, no problem at all. Interesting.

And I know there's a lot of excitement around the contract and what the amounts are this year. The board, I sit on the board and the board's just starting those discussions around what their budget looks like for next year with, you know, they have fuel costs and all those things we'll get to hear about over the next few months is that those numbers get published, but the board doesn't, the board hasn't even been presented with proposals yet. So that'll happen soon.

Are we having any more discussions regarding an express route from Bentonville to Fayetteville?

There was a study on that, and it looks like the thing that makes the most sense is an express bus route, not a light rail service or a heavy rail service. I mean, the cost for the rail services were... I mean, billion, one of them had a B number at the end of it. So those are big numbers. And I think you're going to see the express bus routes that primarily run up 71, which would kind of have it up the east side of Rogers and Lowell and Fayetteville and then come across on probably 102 and then tie up into 8th Street is probably what that route. They've had a consultant reviewing that through regional plan commission. So, all right. Thank you.

Okay. Time for the flock camera update.

Yeah. And before y'all start that, I do know we have some members of the public signed up too. So we need to talk through, typically we don't take public comment during committee of the whole. So we need to talk through that. I don't want to.

So we've been having it at the end.

It'll be at the end of. After we do all of our vote voting agenda, it does say on the thing that. At no votes are taken in public comment is not accepted during during the committee of the whole on the agenda that I you have people that process was before we were doing really clear agenda items for. Committee of the whole and so you can have a discussion about that. You might want to do it and make sure the public has the expectation.

We're going to speak now or at the end of the meeting and so.

I think.

Yeah, policies.

Yeah. So at the end of the meeting, they have an opportunity to speak.

I want everybody to have an opportunity to speak.

So I have the update now and then anyone who wants to speak can speak at the end of the agenda. Public comment, is that right? I think it's what we did last week when Octavio asked for someone to speak.

It's at the end where, at the very end of the agenda, it says public comments concerning matters of city-related business. That is for non-agenda items to be discussed.

Yeah, and just to clarify the public, the intention behind nine non-agenda items were the voting agenda items, not public. committee of the whole agenda item. I do realize that is confusing, and I just wanted to make sure I was aware. And we may figure out a better way to word some of this.

All right. Where would you like me to begin on this? Are you wanting to just ask questions? Would you like me to overview? What would you like to see?

I think the overview that I've heard you give would be great. Why this whole process started in the first place.

So, flock cameras, the reason they came to be in our city is a couple of years ago, we were having concerns, our citizens were having concerns, we were having a lot of vehicles being broken into in our parks, Memorial Park, things like that. Through that, a group came and I believe they spoke with counsel or they spoke with at least David Wright and Chief Shasta was aware of it, of their concerns. So it was decided that we needed to find a way to try to reduce these break-ins. People were even saying they were afraid to go to their cars after soccer games because they were afraid someone would be in their car because they were being broken into while people were present. So they began to research what kind of companies were out there. I believe at the time, Chief Shasted decided or he located Flock as a kind of an up and coming new technology based company that was kind of rising to the top. So we began to look into that and decided to move forward with Flock cameras. We do have two companies. loosely speaking two different types of flock cameras uh in our city uh one is the one that we have at our parks i'm not sure if uh josh stacy made it in here i was gonna uh maybe he's online okay i want to make him put him on the spot if i had to um but there he is And if I'm correct, one of these styles of camera we have is more recognized kind of like a surveillance style camera. They're mounted on poles in different areas within our city. And I believe we have 18, is that correct? Onward. And so we've got about 18 of those that are set up stationary in our parks. The other style that we have are going to be license plate readers, or you'll hear me probably call them LPRs. It takes a little less time. Those are the two different types that we have, and I'll discuss a little bit on both of these to give you guys a general understanding of how they both operate. The... The stationary ones, the condors, there's search parameters that can be set on each of these. They're continually running. They're continually recording. Whereas our LPRs are really... taking photos as cars are driving by. It recognizes there's a car passing and a license plate. It'll take a photo of that and store it when another one goes by. And it's constantly taking those photographs. It's not necessarily continually running video. And we can go back and pull those up and actually flip through each of those if we had to, because we had an FOI wanting us to do just that.

If those ones that are in the parks that are constantly recording videos, those are just like you might see in a Walmart or something like that, right? Just a standard surveillance. Look around everywhere we go.

They are. There is one, and I haven't dealt with Walmart cameras.

I don't mean Walmart. I just mean any CCTV camera. That's basically what it is. That's basically what it is.

They are searchable. And I'm not sure with technology growing and other, I'm not sure if Walmart or other companies are searchable to this extent, but Ours are searchable, and I'll cover those searches in just a moment. The way those work, like I said, they're just regular cameras. The license plate readers just kind of go into those a little bit and help you understand more about what they do. As cars pass by these, the cameras recognize, they see the back ends of these cars, and that's really what we get is the back end of a car with a license plate. And there's things called hot lists. that are out there. There are several different categories of hot lists. And as an administrator, we go in and we could designate what is going to be flagged, what alerts we're going to get on these hot lists. City of Bentonville, the police department, we've determined there are only five categories that we're looking at on a hot list. And these hot lists are updated roughly every five hours and it's tied in through the National Crime Information Center or NCIC. And that is fueled from what we or other agencies put into ACIC in Arkansas, which is the Arkansas Crime Information Center. So what that means is if we have a stolen vehicle, we will go to our dispatch center and they will enter the stolen vehicle license plate into the state system ACIC. It will then be flagged in with NCIC together, and NCIC, every five hours, will take those and update those and push those in the flock, just the license plate and the description of the vehicle, and say, this vehicle is reported stolen. And so that way, if it picks up on a license plate reader, we can get an alert. The alerts that we get in the city of Bentonville are stolen vehicles, warrants, missing persons, missing children, and what was the other one? It's stolen vehicles and stolen license plates. I love those two together a lot. Missing persons, missing children, and then warrants. And if a car is driving through town and we get an alert, the alert, I actually printed one off to kind of help you understand a little more about what they look like. It's very basic information. It's got the license plate. It's got the make, model information. and color of the vehicle and where it was spotted at. Our LPRs that we have, license plate readers, they're mobile. We can move them to different locations based on complaints if we have to. But ours right now are kind of set at city limits. And if a car goes by and we get an alert, This will pop up in an email to our dispatch center. They're all signed in to get these alerts. And when this alert comes through, there's actually, this is an older alert that I printed, but there's actually a picture of the back of the car. that goes with this. And so our dispatch center will then take this alert and they will enter a call for service and they will let our officers know, hey, we just had a stolen vehicle, a flock hit on a stolen vehicle, a white GMC Terrain with this license plate number on, say, North Walton, as an example, North Walton at Tiger Boulevard. And that now gives our officers a chance to begin to make their way in that direction. And what they're looking for is a white terrain because from all directions, you can't see the license plates. We're looking for a white terrain first. When we see a white terrain, we can get turned around, confirm the license plate is the one that was actually given during that call. If the license plate's not the same, then it's probably not the vehicle that was in the alert, and therefore no action is taken. If the vehicle does match the description and the vehicle does match the license plate, we're then going to run that through ACIC ourselves. We're going to take either in our cars or we're going to call it our radio to get confirmation that this is the case, that it is stolen. And when that's the case, then obviously we make stops at that point. If, I know one of the concerns is misreads on license plates. But if you consider this information on a misread, our license plate readers are stationary. We can move them, but they're stationary. They're not on our cars reading as we drive around. So if our license plate reader says, This license plate, and this is the description, a white GMC Terrain, and it misread the license plate and says a white GMC Terrain, and I'm looking for a white GMC Terrain. If it was a misread, the GMC Terrain is not going to be there. So we're not going to stop somebody else, if that makes sense. I don't know if I'm making that clear enough. The information about NCIC is NCIC says this plate belongs to this car. Flock says, okay, this plate belongs to this car. So if it's a misread, then this is the car that Flock thinks it is. So if I go out and misread this 7 as a T, then I'm going to go out and I'm not going to find this vehicle because it's not going to exist on our street. It was a misread. So the fear of us making stops on misreads are really – not feasible because on the other side of that, if for chance we are behind a white terrain or we get behind a vehicle that has a license plate that's similar to the one that was ran, we can then run that again to confirm the stolen. This is just a tool of our investigation, not our investigation as a whole. So that's kind of how the alerts work and the different alerts come through. Searches, that's hot lists. Let me cover a custom hot list. Hot lists are nationwide. If California is, I don't know what it's called, like our ACIC, if they put a stolen vehicle in, it's going to appear on a hot list if that vehicle drives through my city. It's the state, it's an NCIC alert. But I can create what's called a custom hot list that our agency itself can generate that's not tied into stolen vehicles and so forth. And we have a directive in place guiding on what can be put into that type of a custom hot list. We put serious violent, in fact, our wording is serious violent crimes. If we think that somebody has misdemeanor marijuana in their car and we're not going to put in a hot list and say, hey, if you see this car, they probably have misdemeanor marijuana, that's not a serious violent crime for us. It's not a serious crime that we're going to enter a hot list for. An example of a hot list we put in, we had an attempted murder that took place in our city. We had a license plate of the subject that fled. We put that into flock, and that license plate was read in Missouri. A Stone County deputy saw that pop up and hit, and when he saw it hit, he said, if they're hitting on this camera, they're going one place, one direction. And within, it was less than two hours, I think it was actually within an hour, but less than two hours for sure, we had an attempted murder suspect in custody, simply because of entering that in the flock. And that's a custom procedure. that we put in for our purposes. And once that is done, we pull that custom hot list back out and it's gone. Nothing's running on that anymore. So that's how custom lists work. If we're not sharing, the networks get shared together, different agencies share their networks. If I'm not sharing with another network, say Fayetteville, for example, if we're not sharing with Fayetteville and Fayetteville puts out a custom hot list and a car drives through my city, if we're not sharing with Fayetteville, they're not gonna get that information that it's here. So that is only worked through shared networks between different agencies. Searches, the way searches work, we can, and this includes both the LPRs and the condors in our parks. If I know, say we have flock cameras all down our promenade, just as an example. And we have a stabbing on one end of our promenade, and we're told the suspect is wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. I can run a search in Flock. I can call my dispatch center. Hey, somebody go over and pull it up because we're not constantly monitoring Flock cameras. We don't have the manpower to do that. But dispatch can then pull up Flock. look at it and say, hey, white T-shirt, blue jeans, and we will get the people that were on that promenade wearing white T-shirts and blue jeans. And we can now look and say, okay, we tracked the guy, stabbed somebody here. Let's watch him as he goes to our promenade. He just went in the store. Now we know where he's at in the store and we can go find him. So that's the way the search parameters work. I can search. We have a breaking or entering, and somebody catches a red car with a sticker on the back. I can type in red car sticker on back windshield, and it's going to pull all the ones, red cars that pass by with a sticker on the back. And if it's located in this vicinity, we can then begin to track and say, okay, let's get the license plate on this car, and we now have a suspect. So that's kind of where those searches go in FLOG. Yes, sir?

Do you search for faces? Yes.

There is no facial recognition in flock. We can't put Councilman Grover's face and say, hey, we want to find this. Or it's not going to see your face and then say, well, I want to track everywhere he goes. And then you end up in California and say, ah, we found him. He's over here. There's no facial recognition.

It's only license plates.

characters, descriptions, things like that. Now, I guess if you're pretty creative and I could describe you like a sketch artist maybe, but no, there's no facial recognition in Flock.

Yes.

So we can do searchable data onsite for 30 days. Outside of that, we have to go through FLOC and they send us the data. The state requires us to keep data for, I believe it's 180 days. Every 180 days, we have to do the last six months, no, We have to do every six months and keep the last 180 days is what state laws require us to do, if I'm quoting that correctly. But it's along that line. We can actually go in and tell FLOC we want to shorten that period, or we can go in and tell them we want to extend it. It's just based on what our city feels our needs are, what our agency feels our needs are to maintain that data.

My concern is the misuse of it by individuals. How are we safeguarding this information from people that may legally have access to it, but are not using it in a manner that

If I would refer to my notes, I could have answered that question earlier. Sorry about that. We are in the process of writing an actual agency policy on this. We have a directive that tells us some things that we can do. We have an actual agency policy that we're going to work on. In that policy, we're outlining audit process. The software itself, when you log into Flock itself, there is actually, because there's so much of a concern, there is actually an audit process. that gives you different audit features within that. In that audit, and we ran one the last couple of days, just kind of testing to see exactly what it looks like. And in that audit, it tells us who's running searches. It tells us they have to put a case number. It is a required field for a case number. It is a required field for a reason for the search, such as burglary, theft, homicide, so forth. So if we're seeing cases that are having incorrect case numbers, we're seeing cases that have no case numbers, which they can't run, or something weird in the case number, then that's things that's going to flag. We're going to be able to pull that audit and see why this person is running those types of plates. So we do have an audit process that's in the software that we're going to start saving, probably run that audit about once a month. Yes?

Has this upheld the right of municipalities to use this technology?

As far as I know, there's been some legal challenges, but I don't see any that specifically say, yes, you may use this, or no, you may not use this. I think the standard behind this is the idea of reasonable expectation of privacy. When you're on a public property, public streets, you don't have that reasonable expectation of privacy. I know there is a concern about for a particular case that happened here a little while back concerning cell phone geofences, running search warrants on geofences, and they classify that as a search. But that is a little more private and personal because I'm actually taking your cell phone and I'm running specific to your cell phone and running a geofence around your cell phone to see where you are constantly. And that's not this case. These are only going to track you if you drive past it. We only have five in our city right now. So changes of you driving, if we had one at every intersection, I might can understand saying, yes, we're tracking everywhere, every movement you're making, but that's, that's not the case here. Five license plate readers. Yes.

Across the city, like across the city.

The only other condor we have are in the parks or do we have more of those?

The condors, the, the parks and rec are the only condors that we have. And they are, We say parks and rec. I know Deputy Director Stacy back here is the only one that has that privilege to get into, flock through parks and recreation. We maintain a lot of that. We do a lot of that security watches on that. We're the ones that utilize those cameras more than they do. But the only condors we have are going to be tied in with the parks. The city doesn't have one, like out in front of City Hall, things like that. And the police department only has the five that we technically, LPRs that we run, per se.

Five we have are on major roadways, I'm guessing. They're not like...

They are. They're on major, in fact, they're typically at our city edges, our city. So that way if someone violent, such as someone with a warrant, stolen car, things like that are coming in our city, we can track those coming in.

as they enter. We've had a few comments like there's one at the end of my street or there's one pointing at my house. But just to be clear, we're not putting cameras on residential streets.

We're at this point, unless they move one recently, I don't believe we have any on residential streets. Could they be placed there? Depending on the circumstance, if we've got a situation where we've got a violent issue at a house, someone who's constantly stalking another person that we fear that's going to go further, and we never can catch the person there. Could we place one at the end of a city street? And just so that way, if they end up in that neighborhood, we can pounce on it. Yes, that could be possible. But typically, they're movable. We typically leave them stationary.

It still is only taking pictures of the backs of their cars.

It's taking pictures of the backs of their cars. It's not video surveilling people as they go by.

So why or why not? would this not be used for hit and runs? Because that seems to be very common.

It can be, and maybe I wasn't clear enough on my alerts. If we have a hit and run where we have a description of a vehicle and they say, hey, it's a work truck with a toolbox on the back that has damage to the rear taillight. we can plug that into Flock and it'll run a search. And if it's picked up on any of our cameras, we'll know where it is and it will get the back of that vehicle and get that license plate off that vehicle for us. It won't be an automatic hot list like NCIC puts out, but it is a search feature that we can do to search for that type of vehicle.

I actually had that occur to me.

Yes.

Thankfully, the person who hit and ran, who was also drunk, had a warrant out for his arrest.

It can be used for that purpose, yes ma'am.

And just to clarify, we do have security cameras at City Hall, and you are also being currently recorded because we have to record our meeting. I mean, we do not have a flock. If you're at a public meeting, you are being recorded because it's mandated. Yeah, we have lots of surveillance. We have lots of, yeah.

We have surveillance in our police department lobby to a different company. So yes, just not flock.

So private businesses can also have flock cameras. Is that correct?

So they can, but the way those work, for instance, one of the major ones in our city is Lowe's. Lowe's has flock cameras, but we have to enter into an agreement with Lowe's to have access to those cameras. And as of this point, we do not have an agreement with any private companies at this point to view their flock cameras. But Lowe's is the only one I'm really aware of because they kind of do that nationally.

So Lowe's or any company wouldn't be able to take your license plate picture and search it through flock's database? So they're mostly just surveillance.

Other people can't search our database unless we allow them permission. And Lowe's, again, we would have to enter into an agreement with Lowe's for them to search our database. And Flock, do you have an agreement with them? Flock, they are in agreement with Flock, but they still can't search our database without, because the information we have in our database is ours. It's not Flock's.

You're talking about the NCIC and the ACIC, right?

The NCIC, even custom hot lists or things like that, if another agency puts in a custom hot list or even searches a truck with a toolbox on the back, if we're not associated with that agency, then they will not get a hit off of cameras in our city.

What are they getting 30 days later that we would have to go back to flock to get?

So that could be anything from if, Say you have a break in the middle of the night in a city, and somebody don't realize it initially. They go out to their car, and they're like, my dome light was on. That's kind of weird. And they just go to work. Four, five, six, seven days later, they're like, whoa, wait a minute. I'm missing... a firearm out of my console uh and so they start looking back at their ring camera and say hey i saw a white truck like this pass in front of my house and somebody got out took something out of my car now we can take that search for the last seven ten however many days to see if we see a vehicle matching that description that has came through our city so that is where that or audit the audit side is where we would look back for auto purposes

But you would not have license plates in that case. So how could you do that? I thought you had to have the description of the vehicle and the license plate.

If I can run a generic search on white trucks with a red toolbox, and it's going to pull all those trucks up. Where we get the license plate is, is when it passed by a flock camera, it says, here's a white truck with a red toolbox, and the license plate will appear on the back. So if I have a general description of the vehicle, I can run that. And again, This is used as an investigative tool. If we see a white truck with a red toolbox, there's probably plenty of them around Bentonville. We're not going to go get an arrest warrant, arrest this person. We're going to take maybe the next step, maybe run a license plate, maybe reach out and talk to them just to see where they've been in the area or whatnot, and just use it as a lead like we would anything else, not necessarily as the grounds to arrest someone.

Another concern I've heard is concern around the security of the information, meaning it's transferred wirelessly, it's easy to hack into, things like that. Can you speak to the security?

The security of the system, I can't speak in detail truly on the security of that system. In the sense that I can't get into their back door and say, hey, this is what security is running and so forth. That's outside of my side of the expertise. They do, when they come to us and they're selling their product, they talk to us about their security measures, the different things that they have put into place to control that security and to lock down that security. But that is through their security measures. And that's outside. Maybe an IT person could speak better to that, not me.

Did our director... Technology, Dennis, did he have a look at it?

Again, I can deal off a secondhand information that I believe that it was said he had looked at it and thought that the security that was used seemed like top-notch security. But again, that's secondhand information. I can't confirm that information. Dennis, are you online?

I am. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Great. Yeah. So one of the things that I wanted to address in terms of security is there are certain specifications and accreditations that we look at when we're looking at software. One of them, which Octavia may be familiar with, is SOC 2 compliance. So SOC 2 compliance is a security standard where An organization has to go through a very detailed list of requirements in terms of operating their security measures, how they protect the data, how the data is shared, how the data is actually secured, access control levels. So there is a industry standard that that SOC 2 kind of covers. And that's one of the things that we look for when we are actually, you know, in this day and age where we're sharing the information with the cloud, that is one of the baselines that we look for. So I can tell you that looking through their information, they are a SOC 2 compliant organization. It does require security audits annually, and they do have certificates out there for accreditation for that standard. So that's one of the base standards that we do look for. Like the chief mentioned, they are not us, so I can't say absolutely for their practices, but to get SOC 2 compliance, you do need to have regularly audited practices and operations within organizations. So I can actually speak for that aspect. So I just wanted to kind of clarify that on the security concerns. as storing the data itself.

What are you saying?

Lot to SOC. SOC. Yeah. And you're welcome to look it up. You'll find a whole bunch of information about it. But yeah, it is a security standard. And it's kind of one of the standards we look for when we're sharing information with agencies or if they're holding that information itself on our behalf.

I do have a couple other things I did want to bring up that are in my notes to kind of help. When we talk about entering custom hot lists, and I talked about what, you know, we look at serious violent crimes as what we enter the hot lists on. Those are restricted to who has access to enter those. Not everybody in our agency can just jump out and enter a custom hot list. There's actually permissions within the software that restrict that to certain groups, which are going to be supervisors. Our dispatch center can, but only at the urging of the on shift lieutenant or member of command staff is where those custom. list can be entered. There are permissions that get set within the software as well. Patrol officers can only search certain locations. They're pretty much restricted to Arkansas itself, whereas your investigators, analysts, and so forth can reach out a little further when doing investigations in searches of other agencies. And the last of those things that I failed to mention earlier, there's a concern about Bluetooth connection to these devices. The Bluetooth connection that are on some of these devices are designed to communicate with their external battery service to communicate, hey, the battery's good, it's in bad shape, or it needs to be replaced with things like that. It's not a Bluetooth. It's actually a low frequency one. It's not a system where Bluetooth is going to tap into your phone and try to get into your phone and access your data. That's not the direction that Bluetooth operates. And so they don't get in there and sell data because the data doesn't belong to Flock. It belongs to us. And we as a city don't sell data as well. Did I cover everything or any other questions? Yes.

about the interagency contracts you're going to share. Aren't those brought to city council if we're interagency agreement? It may be more a legal question than it is.

And it's not an interagency agreement as far as we sign MOUs and we work in that process. What happens is we send a request to Fayetteville, hey, we're expanding our flock network. Can we have access to where we can run searches and they'll hit your cameras and you can run searches and hit our cameras? And that's really where it goes there. It's not necessarily a contracted agreement that we have to sign any type of MOUs or anything. It's just part of being part of flock. We can request those from other agencies. As far as what other agencies do with data?

Protocol or standards or utilizing those kinds of technologies between agencies.

The data that we're sharing with other agencies is, it's not necessarily, it's data in the sense that if our camera picks up a car driving by, they can access to see that that license plate was the one that they searched for. They don't have access to live view our parks and rec condors. I've gone through, I've been auditing them, making sure that we have all the permissions in place. In fact, right now, they can't even request to do live views on our live cameras. So the data they're going to get is when they run a search, is if a car passed by one of our LPRs, and all it's going to give them is, yes, this license plate, this hit or whatever, was on Bentonville's camera located at this location. Anything else?

Thank you. Okay.

All right.

Okay. Okay. It concludes our it's an agenda items we can discuss a or are many items we can discuss consent agenda that would be for new business items 7. All the way through 15.

We need a motion to I mean that we had items 7 to 15 and this is to be and then the is there a second second

All in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. Seven through 15. Everybody good? And we have a motion to adjourn the Committee of the Whole.

Can I request something just for next Committee of the Whole? Yeah. You know, planning is bringing some... amendments to the plan. And some of it will have to do with parking. And I would like to have a discussion about parking, the parking requirements. We'll kind of have the discussion with one of the properties, the PUD today. But in the in the plan we're allowing for pretty significant reductions in the needed parking down for if it's close to a transit spot or if it has public art or if it has if it's close to the Greenway, which I think is setting us up for the city to have to step in and provide that parking at a later date and we'll exacerbate our parking issue. And I did not realize that was in there when we voted on it. And it's something that I think we need to maybe look at a little bit closer and really find out what are these exemptions that are being given to parking and what impact that that might actually have. have, and I'm kind of curious everybody else's thoughts on parking reduction.

I have similar concerns on the same subject. For example, when the facility or the building being developed is for a senior retirement facility, it reduces the demands on parking to zero. which is they are not obligated to have any parking at all on those types of facilities. I think we approved those parameters some time ago in a very generous manner. And probably it's time to go and review them.

Yeah, I think there was just so much with land use and zoning. And I think maybe, yeah, that's just one we didn't maybe look at quite close enough, or I didn't have a full understanding of what was approved there. And so I think it needs a closer examination of what we're actually giving this work.

We can do a parking requirement agenda item two can be appalled.

I would like to piggyback on this. I have asked for a study of public parking to see what ratio of handicapped accessible parking we provide on city properties or parking garages. And I would just like to address that a little bit and make sure that we are providing access to our parking facilities.

Okay, got it. Thank you. I motion to adjourn again that are all in favor.

I can I get a motion to adjourn for the new business for the next night. Being sorry. All in favor. All right so we will go with new business and 1st on the list is our July 26 commercial landscape award 100 East central. We have representatives here are not. From the back.

Yay.

All right. So this is the Compton. So I want to say thank you for the landscaping. And would you like to comment on any of it? Thanks for appreciating.

Did it survive first Friday?

It looked really good. Water again.

I'm still going to be photobombing this, no matter where I'm moving. Is that a residential? I thought they put a background behind it. They shouldn't do that. That's right. They're on a beach somewhere.

Now you know what you didn't know.

We'd like to thank our neighbors.

They're the best neighbors and the best yard in the neighborhood. Wonderful. We don't want the camera.

We're going to do a couple of different phones.

One, three, one, two, three, group.

It's in the, there is one in the agenda.

We should put it on the screen.

Should always pull it up. Do that next time.

Come on Tanner.

Tanner's going to show it.

Okay. Item number three is an ordinance amending the property.

There it is. Yeah. That's

Item number three is an ordinance amending the property maintenance regulations.

New business item number three, an ordinance amending Bentonville Municipal Code Chapter 76 property maintenance to establish an exemption for managed landscapes and for other purposes.

Question on the proposed amendments plural. I'm all in favor of trying to find some way that we can allow these type of amendments habitats and protecting our native habitats. But some of the setbacks and some of those restrictions I think are cumbersome and I'm concerned that we're adding additional regulations we don't need.

I'd like to discuss alongside of that, I want to make sure that we are doing something we actually even need to do. From my research, I'm concerned that we might not even need to have an ordinance like this because we already have the ordinances in place to measure how tall the grass is and things like that, watch out for weeds and things like that. I don't know that we need additional ordinance for this. If we decide we do, then I think the ordinance as it's written has some challenges and we need to make sure those are addressed before we approve it.

Okay. Well, I will, I, Shelly, do you want to come speak? So what we, and I want to commend Shelly because she's been trying to listen to everybody. And we did say, please get a hold of her if you have, want to have changes to this or, you know, and so what you see before it, before you, all the information she was given, I think was put into that to try to come up with what you're seeing tonight.

But she did ask us to discuss. That's what the feedback I got was. If you have any concerns about it, discuss it.

Right. When we presented to you Committee of the Whole back in June, we presented, you know, some of the requests that was originally made by the Tree and Landscape Advisory Board. It had started a couple years ago. It's been in the discussions, and they asked if they could revisit that. So we brought that to you, presented the information that we had as far as some of the – kind of conditions that we were seeing as well as what we were seeing in other ordinances and surrounding communities. And when I presented that to you, you asked us to bring back to you a draft ordinance of something that we feel is legally defensible and that we would be able to enforce. And so that's what we've prepared based on the last conversation that we had. The ordinance that we have in front of you is essentially that. We've put that together. The biggest shift maybe from when we were talking about it last time is that we needed to make sure that it's relatively easy to enforce for code enforcement officers. So we tried to remove having to understand and know plant materials, native plants, pollinator plants, those type of things. Makes it a little bit more challenging for the code enforcement officers to be able to go out there. So we've tried to broaden that a little bit.

I'm no expert on native plants, but it's my understanding when we over mow some of these landscaping, you know, plantings that you kill the opportunity for them to regenerate. And I also think that the setbacks are going to be a little bit awkward and that you've got a five foot setback. And if you've got tall plant sunflowers or whatever else that could be reasonably tall, it's going to encroach in the middle of your yard where you may have to keep it trimmed up. I don't know that we really need a five foot setback.

And we put the setback provision in place due to some concerns last time about, for that reason, about plant material encroaching on neighbors. So that's why we put that in the way that we did. And ultimately, and Shelly said this, but We tried to come forward with the ordinance that we feel is enforceable, is legally defensible, and understandable by the people who are actually going to go out and do it on a daily basis, while also considering all the feedback from you all, from Tree and Landscape Committee along the way.

So can we not accomplish the same thing with the clearly delineated edging or turf that we would with a setback?

The reason that we're concerned is because we have had feedback that makes some good points including some specific photos of things that would be in danger should we pass this ordinance that are actually things we would want and so i think that's what we're concerned about is that we're over regulating unnecessarily and the unnecessary consequences or the unintended consequences of that that we don't want to happen that we're just now processing. So I appreciate all the work that you've done on this. We just don't want to make, we don't want to do something that we're then going to have to walk back or we're going to get plant complaints. Why did I have to cut this? But my neighbor didn't, or this is, you know, so That's why we want to have the conversation.

Yeah, and that's really what that was for is to bring something forward to you. If you decided this time that is not a direction you want to go, that's an option. If you want to, you know, like what you see, want to go ahead and prove it, that's an option. Or if you like some of it and don't like other pieces of it, we can always come back with a revised ordinance too. We would just need to know specifically what you would want changed within the proposed ordinance. So there's several options here. It was really just to kind of get the conversation going.

I'd like to see us revise it. I don't want to not allow it, but I do think we need to look at this again.

I want to understand why we need it in the first place. I agree that we asked you to go do it, but now that we've researched, I want to understand why do we need this?

This was a request that was made by the Tree and Landscape Advisory Board to find a way, because we have regulations right now that do not allow grass or weeds above eight inches. The Tree and Landscape Advisory Board has requested that we find a pathway for people who want to do more native grasses, pollinators, some of those type of things that sometimes can be confused with weeds or native grasses that would fall under the grass category and would have to be mowed down to meet that 8-inch. I don't know that I can say that it's needed. We were requested to put something together so there would be a path forward for people who do want to do this.

Isn't it just as simple as defining what grass is?

Like turf grasses. Yeah.

That is an option.

I think one of the concerns, maybe one of the concerns, and I was actually the one that brought this up last time in the meeting, of the right-of-way between the curb and the sidewalk. But the way you've written it, and I appreciate you doing that, But it's been pointed out to me a couple times this week that the city might, in fact, be violating its own ordinance because, in fact, I think our award winner probably from the Compton has stuff in the public right away that is native. So I don't want to do something that's – and, like, Bright Road comes to mind. Like, are we going to violate our own ordinance by having native plantings alongside of Bright Road, for example?

Yeah. And I think that question is kind of... I don't want us to be by the narrow margin. What I think we talked about is those are all part of their planned bioswales. They're planned... Correct. And so I think that's... Engineered facilities. Yeah, so that's how those are... Well, yeah, so... So that, I don't know.

So like Faden School, for instance, I know that's one example people point to. That was part of their stormwater plan for the project itself. So those we have historically classified slightly differently than what you're talking about.

Like a residential street that doesn't go through large scale would be affected by this. Maybe we just need to be more specific in those terms. I don't know.

I don't know. Because we're concerned about lines of sight, because I think that there are going to be places that when we're in our vehicle and we're coming up and we can't see around the corner, that I think everyone would agree this is a problem because of line of sight.

We technically already have that in place. We actually already do that. This was mentioned at the last committee of the whole meeting that was one of the items that you all had requested is to not allow it within the public right-of-way.

We also already provide that we can't obstruct drainage ditches. We have to keep those mowed and taken care of. We can't obstruct those. I'm just trying to figure out which parts of these details are really needed.

I see that it's not needed. If we need to define what grass is, so folks who want to grow specific types of grass can get taller than eight inches, then let's do that. But I don't know that I hear anything more that we need to do besides that.

I'm going to enforce this. We have a code officer that's going to be trained to determine what native plants are, but they're not. They're going to have to go out and start testing grasses everywhere if they let them grow more than they did.

The other piece of this is that, and we discussed this when we brought it before, is that this is complaint-driven. And so that's the city where if we get a complaint, we look at our code and we match the complaint to the code, right? And so that's what we're trying to do. in this instance to come up with something so people can continue, because we don't want to go say you have to cut every natural grass down to that. And so that's what we're trying to develop here. I understand the concerns and the caveats, and every time we have the discussion, there's a new caveat that people think about, right? We're trying to account for them.

Out of our just... Out of the complaints that we get where code enforcement goes out and asks the people to mow and they mow, how many of those have been people saying, oh, this is a native grass yard? I mean, we know the one.

We received one this year.

So that's not, this is not actually a problem. One complaint.

This isn't, I do want to clarify, this isn't in response to that complaint. This has been- I know you were already working- Yeah, I just want to make sure that we were not doing that based on just one complaint. I share that information so that you were aware that, yes, we do have one complaint, but that's all we've had this year in regards to any type of native landscaping.

So the question, again, back to Councilmember Grover's point, is do we need this?

So one thing I would say is... Why do we need a new list of regulations?

One complaint may be specific to natural landscapes. We have about 300 cutting your grass complaints. Right. So I just wanted to make sure... We continue to have that.

This doesn't change anything about that. So that's something that our code enforcement is still having to go out and say, cut your grass and fine you if you don't. But the... If the response is no, we're lazy and we don't want to cut our grass, we find them. If the response is, hey, listen, we're working on something here, that's a different story that we may need to just say to the complainant, sorry, they're working on something that we allow.

There's an exemption.

I think that's just what we've tried to set forward is spell out what that exemption is.

Okay, so. We did bring this to you before and asked, do you want us to pursue? So it is right now you're saying we shouldn't do anything. I just want to clarify I'm understanding what.

We want to be sure. Now we could. I don't know that we have to.

I do like the idea of having it back behind some sort of border or some sort of landscape. so that it's not the whole entire yard and right away where there's some, like if a armadillo is going to run out, you're going to see it, like if you're walking your dog. I think having the whole thing covered in this native, I think that's where it does become a safety factor. I like, I mean, obviously, you know, Shelly heard what we were saying. And I think having these designated areas are great. But I think having designated areas is great.

I spent about an hour yesterday with Shelly discussing the situation. And we found at least a couple of items. Well, to begin with, the purpose of the regulation. It is to establish a clear... form of addressing the problem that we have. Not only the problem that exists today in the sense of one complaint or one request from the parks department, but also the future. What do we want to do with? There is increasing interest on native plants. So there has to be some guidance. And this is the presentation from the planning department, Shelley and Tyler, in the sense of doing this. Now, there are serious considerations that were brought by one of our citizens, and it indicates, for example, a picture where there is a fence made of bushes and that it is right next to the property line. And that will be, apparently, will be illegal. But Shelley clarified to me that those are not grasses. They are actually bushes. And bushes are exempted. If they are grasses, then they will be bad. But at least for the picture.

Grasses. That's what I'm saying. There are beautiful ornamental native grasses that may be perfect along the edge of the property line that would not be allowed because of the term grasses, just the general term grasses.

Well, and if you look at here, it says other amendments are proposed to clarify owner's responsibilities better, define noxious weeds, establish clearance heights, trees, et cetera, et cetera, but I don't see those other details here.

They are. They're in the ordinance. They're under the ordinance section. They are kind of on that first page of Exhibit A under Subsection B. It talks about... ownership responsibility as well as tree clearance. And that is the tree clearance in particular is something that we have. It's in the community code, which is not a good fit for it. We're just moving into property maintenance.

It says the setback is not required where the management landscape area abuts another similar managed landscape area or others. This is section one talks about the front and the sides and the rear of the property lines. One item that I discussed with Shelley yesterday was that we should not be messing with the rear property line. It belongs to the citizens and let them have whatever they want to in their back jars. We need to concentrate obviously on the sides and regulate also the front. So if we remove the rear property line in the sense of the five feet landscape, we are only concentrating on the sides. And as I said, if the sides are bushes, as the one in the picture that came in the email, a very well-documented email, by the way, so we... we are not imposing anything that will be abusive on the system. Now, number four, it says, if the landscape cannot be located within right-of-ways.

To the next one. Carlos, we talked about the two in the rear. Can you explain how you got to that recommendation?

The reason why we added that setback for side and rear property lines specifically dealt with the buffering from adjacent property owners. That's why we put that perimeter bordering in place. To utility easements, like if let's say there's a utility easement or a drainage easement in the rear, That is also covered under A4, which is where we say not located within public rights of way or easements.

Yes. What I talked to Shelley is that if we remove the right of way condition, then we are allowing essentially everything to a certain degree that happens on the space between the sidewalk and the street. which are hundreds and hundreds of examples, some of them beautiful properties on Fifth Street, the northwest side of Fifth Street, beautifully developed and landscaped by our citizens, Citizen Haney over here. And so if we remove the right-of-way condition, then all of those properties are within the code. We will not be concerned about. And as I said, I'm totally in favor of not having so many laws, so many regulations, so many things. One item that I discussed with Shelley is how deep this has to be and how demanding will it be for the code enforcers. For them to have a master's degree on determination of grasses and this and that, the whole thing, we don't need that. We just have to go through the basic elements that will guide the normativity that has to be within the city in order for us to contain abuses of the growth that we are experiencing in the city. If we were to remove the right-of-way on point number 4, then the properties that Mark mentioned are clear, are good. If we were to remove the rear property lines, and if we are considering that bushes are permitted and they are exempt, so as long as it is properly delineated and not invading the neighbor's property, then I think it is good. And as I said, it will establish the normativity that has to be in place for the future development.

So I'm going to speak on behalf of our staff. The right of way, so one concern is that if you remove that, you're encouraging stuff in the right of way. And if we have to go in and do anything with the infrastructure there, then the cost to replace whatever's in the right of way and That is a concern for us. Now, what I think a lot of people may or may not know, because we get a lot of calls about it, is the property owner should maintain to the curb, right? And so people don't understand that. And there are instances where we maintain it because maybe there's a drainage ditch that we think is unsafe and the city is actually maintaining it. But really, the property owner is doing that. And They would also, if we have to get in there and fix something in the ground, they're going to be responsible. The city's not financially responsible for replacing whatever's on top of it. They are. And so I understand what you're saying. I think that's just making sure that's very clear with the public. That is hard. the public to understand. And we run into that all the time on the back end because we have to get in and dig something up. And our goal is to replace it as, but if we're going to be responsible for replacing expensive landscaping or different things in that. So it's a challenge because I agree with you. I think some of the things I've seen are beautiful. I just, if the expectation is the city has to get in there and we have to replace whatever that is and not just with Is that mentioned at all?

Is any of that concerns in here? That's it.

I'm sorry, which concern?

Well, that's why we were saying keep it out of the right-of-way. That's why we were saying that is some of those concerns on the back end.

That was also recommended. There were a few council members that wanted us to not allow it in the right-of-way at the committee of the whole.

Would it be better to just say that homeowners are responsible for the right-of-way?

We do. We've added that in, if you're under section B, it's on the first page of exhibit A, it's that subsection three.

And it's always, I'm sorry, it's in that way. I will just say from dealing with homeowners on the back end, a lot of them don't realize that. So I just want y'all to realize that the more that goes in those when we replace them, that's the conversation we're having with homeowners is that they're responsible. If we have to go dig it up, we dig it up, we don't replace it.

And so just- It's B2, B2. This proposal from Shelly came because we requested it. So we have it. It seems that we don't like it the way it is. So we need to indicate to Shelly and Tyler and everybody else, what do we need to change in here? Or how do we need to move it and not completely reject it? Because it has some ideas that were already thought over the last couple of months that Shelly has spent and her team has spent on this presentation that she's given to us.

to speak on this that may have some ideas for that. So I think we probably should let them speak.

I suggest that we table this item for another occasion. After we listen to the citizens that are going to do a presentation, we may have a better understanding. Instead of rejecting it, just postpone it. Just delay it and change it according to what it is better understanding that we may not have at this moment. And then, so I move that we table this for a future occasion after we have a better understanding of the thing.

Can I make one request? If you do table it, which is perfectly fine, please indicate exactly what changes you're wanting. If we just table it and we don't know what you want changed, we don't know how to bring a new ordinance back. So very specifics as far as what you want changed.

I mean, table it for a future discussion. Gotcha.

we just want to make sure when we bring it back we have a clear understanding does council wants to be more permissive less permissive what what are the things in here that need to be changed based on public feedback and based on tonight's discussion yes let's do this let's hear from public comment on this and i believe mark if you would state your name and your address and keep it to 30 minutes or under we would appreciate

Hi everyone. Mark Haney, 848 Northwest C street. Um, thanks for hearing me out. I might be the only one that read this ordinance in full. I love plants. Y'all know that flowers, grasses, shrubs, trees, all of the above. Um, As far as I can tell, talking with many of you about this, there were some really good intentions that went into this. And it's a niche interest, right? It's an interest of mine. I don't expect all eight of you to share that interest or the public, broadly speaking. But we have some fantastic native plants all around town, in public rights-of-ways, around the square, at the Compton, in private yards, all over the roof of an awesome medical center. They're great native plants all around town. Our current code allows them. I'm all for you need to mow your lawn. No argument from me on that. And I don't think anyone is objecting to that. So existing code covers our basis on if someone is negligent, you know it when you see it. I don't think there's any doubt about negligent actors out there. Sight lines at intersections, we have code about those. No issue with that. On large-scale projects, engineering, all the departments look at what may be proposed in right-of-ways. They make sure it's appropriate heights, appropriate maintenance agreements, et cetera. The occasional bad actor out there, the city is empowered to go cut whatever may be in right-of-ways where there are legitimate safety issues or otherwise. My understanding is those are extremely rare. I'm not saying they don't happen, but it seems like, again, there are a lot of great intentions here to address a problem that may be extremely small. And so I'd encourage you all to put this on the shelf. I mean, I would love to see an awesome code that goes, we want more native plants. We want to see stormwater mitigation and drainage ditches and that kind of thing. I don't know that there's broad consensus on that from y'all or from the engineering department and others. And so for now, I'd just say, you know, There's a couple of private matters out there, some private complaints. Let those remain with private people. Public right-of-ways, you all maintain them well. I'm not aware of a large number of issues in public rights-of-ways, but the city is empowered to deal with those today. And I want to be a resource to you. So what I can help with tonight, outside of this meeting, happy to help. I am not an expert on this, not a trained landscape architect. It's a natural curiosity I've followed learning from Some great engineers I've worked with, great architects, worked on, had an architect that proposed to me a no lawn landscape four or five years ago. You know, it was a lot that made sense as a sloped into the cul-de-sac kind of forested lot. So it was never going to be a big open yard anyway. Made sense. That got me. You know, I did that. Looked awesome. Homeowners love it. and just kind of kept following that. Walking through Compton Gardens, I go, ooh, you know, they've got the signs on the plants. It's like, that inspired me at my own home. I'm like, ooh, I want to, let me, that's a cool plant. Let me try that. So again, I'm not an expert, not a trained engineer, landscape architect, but I think, you know, my own journey was natural inspiration. I hope that others have that, whether it's from the public library, the square, Compton Gardens, private yards. You know, let them plant the cool flowers, the cool grasses. If a few years from now we've got big problems with armadillos or snakes or sight lines or whatever it may be, maybe we need to address it in the future. But right now, y'all got a lot of stuff on your plate. The city has a lot of things on the plate.

Focus on the bigger issues.

I'm here to be a resource, but I'd encourage you to put this on the shelf. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark.

Any other discussion? I think we would like to... Our staff would like to get direction because, like I said, I think we were here before, and the direction was to go put this together. So we would like to know. I think staff would like to know so they know to continue to work on it.

I'm still struggling to see the.

This was a resident request. Right? Like, was it? Okay. But there was, like, the last time we talked about this, there were a whole bunch of people here saying, yay, please do this, please do this, please do this. I think that's what we need to remember. Like, this wasn't, like, our idea.

It was people talking about wanting to make sure that we could continue with natural. Yeah, like.

And so.

Yeah, that's what it's driven to. So I still fail to see the reason we need this at all.

I think if I could, I think chilling out just talking about this a little bit. I think part of the reason we came back and wanting to more explicitly define what's allowed versus what's not is if you read the existing code, which I know it's in cross through does prohibit the growth of weeds and grass in excess of eight inches. So what we were trying to do is come back and say, okay, what's exempt from that eight inch requirement and better defining, okay, native grasses, pollinator flowers, all these other things. that to the average member of the public who's typing into 311 submitting a complaint, they're gonna hit us up and say, well, that's a weed or that's grass in excess of eight inches. You need to go enforce that. You need to go mow that down. So what we were trying to do is clearly define the difference between native grasses and then just grasses and weeds generally. So it's, yes, they were allowed, but it was more of an interpretation that we were making. It wasn't explicitly allowed.

if we left it at this definition, but don't add all the additional requirements.

That could be an option. I heard it discussed a second ago, why don't we just define turf grass versus native grass and these other things. That could be an option.

Another way of seeing this, the regulation as it is presented, if we were to eliminate completely point number one, it talks everything about the setback, five feet setback. If we eliminate it completely, item number one, as well as number four, which is not located within public railways or easements, then everything else will be the same that we have today. I think item number one on the section of maximum height, item number one and item number four are the ones added to the request. So if we eliminate those, then it will be essentially the same code that we have in a more clarified manner. That's what I'm saying. You'll be essentially the same, but in a clarified manner that includes the responsibility of the owner, which I don't know if it is already there.

So, and I know right now it's this one big paragraph here. So it looks like a lot of red and a lot of changes. But to the point that's being made is a lot of it is just in a matter of splitting this out into multiple line items, multiple sections, but then also. making clear like for instance like this first laws here property owners are responsible for maintaining all premises or lawns including that portion of the public right away adjacent to their property To Shelley's point a second ago, that's talked about or referenced up top, but this explicitly makes clear, no, you're responsible for your premises long and right-of-way adjacent to the property. Yes.

Except for?

Except for these native landscapes, pollinator flowers, et cetera.

The concern about the setback, item number one or point number one, if we eliminate it completely, it will be no adding, nothing will be added, as well as number four, excluding, allowing, not fomenting, but allowing the right-of-way usage in a nice manner, in a nice landscape manner. And as I said, examples are many, some of them on Northeast, Northwest Fifth Street, Eighth Street, and many others. So... This could be a way of balancing what the staff has prepared, which is if we eliminate point number one and point number four, it will be essentially the same code without adding anything else.

I don't see A and B, I guess. Where does it talk about our... Where does it talk about our homeowners' responsibility if the city needs to work in the right of way to restore?

Oh, that specific is not in the property maintenance because that's not the property owner's responsibility. So that would, I'm not sure exactly where that is in code, but that's not, right. But that's not specific to this code. What she was talking about is the reason why We were recommending not putting anything in the right of way is because when we do need to go in there, we're going to tear up your landscaping and may or may not be able to replace it. So that's not specific in the property maintenance because this is really talking about a property owner's responsibility.

That's normally covered through if something is dedicated or acquired as right-of-way, that's normally covered within that document itself. Or if it's an easement, it's covered within the separate easement instrument. Or if a plat is filed, there's normally clauses, ownership, dedication on the plat that covers that.

more broadly so is it has it been has this been a problem in bentonville with us not being able to fix as a city to the homeowners we don't have a ton in the right of way like we were talking about and so that's like i said that's really more for i don't know what like water sewer streets one of those things that are out there when they're having to be quick to do it you you will have more and more in the right of way and so Again, I think the intentions were good with what we were trying to do here, but these are the, you know, what you're talking about are the caveats to that, right? And I think our, I don't necessarily want to discourage people from doing something nice in the right way. I just want it to be very understood that the city cannot, if we have to go dig to get to the infrastructure and the ground, our responsibility to replace that. I mean, it could be thousands of dollars of land. I believe we're not.

probably somewhere in like utilities or policy or something.

It's like back to talking about the reason we're doing this. So if the reason is we need to clarify some points in the current ordinance, then let's say that's what we're doing and clarify the points you want to clarify. But adding the extra things, the extra things, let's not do that. Let's just clarify what's already there if we feel like it needs to be clarified.

If we are replacing... the items in red. No, I'm sorry, the strikeouts with the reds. And everything is the same except points number one and four. The ones that talk about the setback and the public easements and right-of-ways. So if you were to eliminate those two.

The delineated landscaped area is number two in there. That would be an addition.

Clearly delineated. Well, That is added also.

Yes.

And I think that is needed because it has to be contained to a certain degree sometimes.

So what's your stance, Shelly, that particular property that got the complaint, like that would be permissible? Like the whole yard just being over eight inches?

When you, what do you,

Can you clarify what you're saying as far as the whole yard would be permissible? We're probably not wanting the whole yard to go native, even though we did have environmentalists go out and say, not all that is native.

There's a lot of weeds. We're also not specifying. Yeah, weeds would be the one thing that you can't have no matter what, whether it's a landscaped area or whatever. If it's on the noxious weeds list.

to actually have a whole yard and no weeds, like a native, because I mean, she, I mean, I mean, is that, is that like realistic plantings?

There are a lot of them in Bentonville, actually a lot.

Item number two that was also added. It has four conditions and the four conditions are or. any one of them. The one that I presented a picture to Shelley yesterday is the one that is on the right of way that it is using a large portion, actually the whole thing between the curb and the sidewalk, which is probably six feet by 10, which is large. And everything looks beautiful. And when I asked her, this is not contained, she says, yes, because there is a durable material.

I said, you could consider, now, of course, the draft that we have is not within the right-of-way. That was in the right-of-way. If you remove that, that would be contained because it is contained by the edge of the sidewalk and the road. So yes, that's how you would interpret that.

So that's what I said. It is already contained by the sidewalk and the curb. It is on the right-of-way. Yes.

So the sidewalk's always going to be the edge. So this is not...

Unless there's no sidewalk.

The sidewalk or the road.

Right.

Again.

The other thing, and I'm just reminding us from complaints. I know we get complaints about mowing along sidewalks so that grass doesn't go. I know we've had those in our complaints. That's about five foot. We always mow Like we have trails and sidewalks and different things. The city is mowing that. So it's that top, that grass, even if it was native grass, we're not, it's not right up on the edge of the sidewalk. So that it's not falling over onto this. And we do get, I mean, we have people calling us saying, why isn't the city mowing this part, right? So I just, again.

And we have gotten support for this ordinance also. Like I've received emails of people who say, we need this. I've looked over it. I've read it. I like it.

The Tree and Landscape Board has been supportive with what you have in front of you now, too. We've also talked with the Illinois River Watershed Partnership about this, too.

I agree on that one. The only question I have on the right-of-way is if it doesn't go through large-scale development, I understand if it goes through that. If it's a neighborhood, downtown, home, when are we When are we going out and saying they planted in the right-of-way, in the side triangle, I can't see the turn left onto Main Street or whatever street? Who's looking at that?

Number one, we're complaint-driven. So I would say, like, you can get along with your neighbor and they're okay with it. Like, that's the ideal situation. But there have been, we have one that took a lot of time. I mean, we probably spent 10 hours of... staff with one case that was a line of sight case recently. But we were able to go out and do the measurement and go through the process. So those, we have a way to deal if it's a line of sight or a safety issue. We do get them. We currently have that.

I don't know the number because a lot of those will come into the street department. So we do get them, but we have a process for working with the property on that too.

So, and we have a regulated. Go out and do the final inspection or whatever with a. home that's been built is that something that the inspector would be like this is planted right up to the edge of the road it's going to be a problem i would say that is more than likely not on their final inspection checklist single family home i mean i it just it seems like to me if we can solve that site triangle problem in the beginning we do we are we are managing that right now and i would say if

When they do those inspections, like if it's very obvious it's a line of sight issue, I would say they probably could address that. Most of the, that's not always in place when we're doing, I mean, half the time sods, you know. Landscaping's not. Landscaping's not. There's challenges with that.

Trees, you know, you'll catch it once it gets tall enough to become an issue and so on and so.

Well, and I got a complaint with Mark's. His black-eyed Susies were like really high and people were having to come into the intersection to be able to turn. And so I just emailed Mark and said, hey, like, And he was on vacation and he's like, hey, when I get home, I'm going to trim this down. And he did. You know, I probably should have sent him to 311, but I didn't want to do that to Mark because I know him personally. And he did. But I did. I mean, there have been just two that where they were having to ease out onto Fifth Street because of the high, you know, in the right of way. So, and Mark graciously, as soon as he, I mean, I noticed the next Wednesday night that he had trimmed him down. So, I mean... You know, I mean, people do see it as a safety hazard.

The beauty about this document is essentially on Section 1A, where it has exempted pollinated flowers, ornamental native grasses, et cetera, et cetera. That is the key point that it is in addition to, a good addition to the document or to the regulations that we have. There has been concerns, as I mentioned, on item number one, which is about the setbacks, which item number four about the right-of-way, and item number two about the delineation or the limitation of their parcels. But the main problem that it is on this one is on the front of the property where the grass or whatever it is planted may be invading the right-of-way. Not only the right-of-way, but actually the roadway. I think it will be a little bit risky. to eliminate number two, but because there is only one of those conditions, and it clearly indicates if it is a durable material like concrete, as I said, from the sidewalk to the curb, then it is going to be always concrete or asphalt or something material. The landscape is not going to extend beyond that. So if we can easily keep number two, because everything is going to be a durable source over there, a surface that is not permitting the extension of that particular landscape area. So I insist.

You're getting rid of one so it doesn't affect side of your property line. Right. The front is...

If we eliminate number one and number four, the rest of the document, it satisfies, number one, the clarification of this type of regulation, and number two, what is it, the explicit, favor of the city for pollinator flowers, ornamental or native grasses, et cetera. All of that is in it that does not exist at this point. And this was precisely what we wanted to do when we requested Shelley's intervention two months ago. that are indicating that pollinator flowers and others are favorable by the city. And it is clearly indicated on point one A. So I insist, if we were to eliminate number one completely about the setbacks and number four about the right-of-way, then we keep the rest of the document as is.

I still don't think we need to, and it just sucks it out for people, because then people are going to be calling going, well, is it fine if it's this or that, or it's just a good point.

It says this or this or this or this.

It doesn't, yes, but it doesn't say if you're in the right-of-way and you have your sidewalk and the road, I mean, people are going to ask, or people are just going to do what they want, I guess. It's just fine.

Yes, I'm very much in favor of that.

Yeah, people do whatever they want with certain limitations.

We can put together a couple of options like Octavio is suggesting, and we can remove a couple of those pieces. We may look at another option as far as just clearly defining turfgrass. That's another option. So we could bring that to a committee of the whole if you'd like.

Yeah, so in my proposal now, I might we.

Table it to allow, are we going to do we just have 1 speaker?

Was it just Mark in my proposal will be eliminated point? Number 1, but I setbacks and number 4 about the right away. Right here it completely. And she wants number two walls to eliminate.

I mean, I returned to a constituent. I mean, like I get the backyard, but like if somebody has something up against your fence that is going to encroach into your property, like, I mean, we have turf in our backyard because we have a batting cage. So my husband doesn't want those coming under the fence because then that obviously defeats the purpose of having the turf for the batting cage. So I am a little concerned about that because I feel like when it starts coming over into your property, then it becomes my responsibility to take care of.

I'm sorry, this is in reference to one of the two items that I... Yeah, but you were saying, like...

to not include the backyard, correct?

Yeah.

Some of the reason for that is because we typically, if it's fenced, we're only looking at what we can see from the public right of way. And so if we add a regulation that we technically can't enforce.

Yeah, no, I mean, I have it in there. And that's what I said. That would probably be based on complaint based. If somebody complained, then that might would, have to look into the backyard.

That's what I said. Completely eliminate item number one and two for Becky.

So I'll be back. We'll go back to the drawing board. We may even talk to Mark about it so that Mark comes back and is like, thanks, city. This is awesome. He had some good ideas.

Yes.

Okay, so can I get a motion to clarify?

We want a motion to postpone, not a motion to table.

A motion to postpone. Give us a second to revise it.

I second that.

A motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

thank you thank you are not perfect and sometimes we need to revisit but the worst thing we could do is pass it and it have unintended consequences that completely agree completely agree this is democracy thank you

when we debate these.

And also, Mark, thank you very much for your input. Keep on helping them to make a better document.

I'll see you at the planning tomorrow. Item number four, the public hearing on ordinance vacating a right-of-way and establishing a drainage easement.

New business item number four, ordinance vacating right-of-way and establishing drainage easements located at lot 13, block 11 of Gilmore's addition to the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, Benton County, Arkansas, BAC 26-0034.

At this time, I will open the public hearing on this item. Is there anyone here in person or online to speak on this item? Seeing and hearing none, I will close the public hearing.

Thank you. Are you here to speak on this item?

With each with each agenda item?

Oh, that'll be at the

So yep so committee the whole we don't have public comment on specific agenda items during committee the whole those can be commented on at the end of city council work for non agenda items at the very end of voting matters.

We have a list of online.

People who are online to comment.

If they're online, they can comment. We'll let them in the meeting.

Oh, like they're commenting on the YouTube channel?

I don't think they can. We won't see those comments.

It had to be verbally, whether via stream or in person, to be captured as a public comment. And then people can always reach out to their council members.

Item number, okay, so we, item four, we did a motion and a second.

No, yes, we haven't voted yet. Is that correct?

We have a motion and a second for the, Right away.

No, let's get a motion and a second.

Second. We held the public hearing. We closed the public hearing. And now we need a motion on the ordinance vacating.

Becky.

Got it. Holly. I second. Motion and a second. OK. Roll call, please.

Yes. Grover. Yes. Huck.

Yes. Sanchez. Yes. Patterson. Yes. Seba. Yes. Agree. Sorry.

Yes. I remember 5 the public hearing in order speaking access easement.

Your business number 5 in ordinance vacating and access easement located between lots 50 and lot 5 phase one of handover subdivision of the city of Bentonville Arkansas Benton County, Arkansas, the AC to 6 dash 0, 0, 3, 6.

And I will open the public hearing is there anyone online or in person to speak on this item. The hearing of the public hearing. Move the motion.

Second. Sorry, I move the item to be voted on.

Motion in a second.

I move the movement. Or the ordinance vacating. I thought you were moving because no one else is moving. Number five.

You have a motion in a second. You've got it recorded. Okay. All right. Roll call, please. Grover?

Yes. Cook? Yes. Sanchez? Yes. Patterson? Yes. Acre? Yes. Yes. Souter?

Yes.

Number six, the public hearing in ordinance vacating utility easements.

New business item number six. An ordinance vacating utility easement located at lot one of Baker's Park addition of the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, Benton County, Arkansas, VAC 26-0039.

This time I will open the public hearing. Is there anyone online or in person to speak on this item? Not seeing or hearing any. I will close the public hearing.

Move the item for a vote.

Second. A motion and a second. Any other discussion? Roll call, please. Hook? Yes.

Sanchez? Yes. Patterson? Yes. Acre? Yes. Smith? Yes. Souter? Yes. Grover?

Yes.

OK. We will go into consent agenda items. So if you would please read all titles of all consent agenda items.

New business item number seven in the city council for the city of Bentonville, Arkansas. New business item number eight in the city council for the city of Bentonville, Arkansas. New business item number nine in the city council for the city of Bentonville, Arkansas. New business item number 10, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to accept a design excellence grant from the Walton Family Foundation in the amount of $20,000 for the parks master plan amending the 2026 budget and for other purposes. New business item number 11, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into an amended agreement with Kraft and Toll in the amount of $48,976, adding construction administration services for Phillips Park phase three and further purposes. New business item number 12, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into an agreement with SWX Construction in an amount not to exceed $593,655, which includes a 10% contingency for the Phillips Park North Pavilion Restrooms Project and for other purposes. New business item number 13, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into an agreement for the purchase of a 2026 international HV507 cab and chassis with upfit dump body and winter weather equipment from RTC Lowell using source well contract in the amount of $339,653.34 and for the purposes. New business item number 14, a resolution amending the 2026 budget to accept a Walton Family Foundation grant in the amount of $700,000 to evaluate adaptive AI-based traffic signal technologies and further purposes. New business item number 15, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into an amended agreement with Latrell Enterprises for additional airport finish mowing services and the additional amount of $362.65 per mowing cycle and for other purposes. So moved. Second.

Question and a second. Any other discussion?

Apologies that I missed item number one under utility board.

I'm sorry. That's all right.

Could have been on there.

Roll call, please. Yes.

Sanchez? Yes. Patterson? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Okay. Item number one on the utility board is what we'll go to. All other items seven through 14 were on consent agenda. Resolution to enter into an agreement with Garver LOC for water system pressure management analysis.

Utility Board item number one, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into an agreement with Garver LLC for water system pressure management analysis in the amount of $91,881 and for other purposes.

Motion and a second. Any other discussion?

Roll call, please.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes, is this a resolution?

Yeah, you can invent it by, I just, okay, okay, sorry. I just want to make, yeah, okay, yes, that was, that was mean because you didn't include it in consent agenda. I apologize. You're on record, full record. All right. Item number one under planning is a planned unit development lower canyon PUD. Okay.

Planning item number one, an ordinance amending ORD 2026-36 and for the purposes, project number PUD 25-0002.

This is the item that we discussed about the parking reductions they want to have.

I have some pretty serious concerns.

Yep, go ahead.

No, you do better research. You start.

I'll... Go, please. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Well, as I said, it is a concern that it is not only for this parcel or this development, but also we have the previous experiences that we have essentially allowed less parking based on our regulations that it is actually necessary. So in this particular instance, as I mentioned earlier, our regulations indicate that they can have a reduction. I think it is 20% reduction on their demands for parking. So instead of being 180 spaces, it's going to be 150 or something like that. And so is that something that we want to do? Do we want to approve that? It is right next to J street. It is not far from the trail system. And so the argument is based on the regulations that we have on the code. Because we did it that way. We approve it that way. So they are basing the reasoning and their request on what it is written authorized by us. So my question is, do we have... the interest on rejecting that change, or do we insist on having a larger number of parking spaces for the development? Otherwise we may risk, even though the code allows it, do we want to allow it?

Are we experiencing a shortage of parking now in these similar developments in this?

Well, I think we need to look at what exactly. So there's 156 units plus a restaurant plus, other commercial units. And originally they were gonna have, you know, and so 130 spaces isn't really even enough for the residential, but then also the commercial in a restaurant and commercial has the same evening peak needs for parking. So the first time this came to planning commission, they were looking at doing a shared parking and planning commission said, okay, at large scale, we're gonna do shared parking. I think we can make this work and planning approved it. Well, the developer came back and said, no, sorry, we are not going to be able to make it work to do any shared parking. The 130 spots is what it is for all of the residential and commercial. And the Planning Commission just approved it without any discussion. They didn't even talk about any concerns. And that concerns me.

So it does say in here that they'll be shared. parking. That's no longer the case. That is no longer the case.

It's not an official agreement. It would have to be.

So I'm kind of disappointed that planning commission didn't bring some of that up, but I feel like it's on us. And that's one of the reasons why I want to address this is because, you know, this is in an area where, you know, All the streets, you know, if all the street parking is taken by all the residents, then where are all the people at the restaurant going to park? They're going to try to park in the street and then nobody can get through. And this area is already doesn't have enough parking. We've seen what happens when these developments like the one right there doesn't have enough parking. Then they have to try to find city lots. And then that puts them. burden on the taxpayer to have enough city parking so that all this overflow that was not put in by developers you know i don't think that should be the burden of the taxpayers to find more parking downtown for the people who live there and don't have enough parking at their residential development one of the biggest complaints and that we get in traffic and signage is people parking on the streets blocking driveways line of sight coming around the corner

There's so many issues now in this city because of the lack of commitments to a good parking quota. And I think this is just going to increase. I think we have to stick with our parking requirements.

I had a conversation with Tyler prior to this because obviously red flags went up for me. What is interesting is they were going to add they added a few more residential instead of the parking underneath, because there was, I guess, somewhere going to be some parking underneath. And then they added like two bedroom, which means more cars.

And I mean, I looked at that. I mean, I.

I've got, there's 130 parking, 156. I'm not really seeing how being near the Greenway, which I think that's the exclusion they're using, is going to work here with why there's not enough parking.

We're finding trips being reduced because we are in a community where people are commuting by bike, which is amazing. But they still own cars. So while trips are being reduced, that doesn't actually reduce the need for that home parking because people still own a car, at least one car, even if they're commuting on that greenway to work, which we are encouraging in a successful way. But I think we are remiss to assume that just because people are commuting to work that they're not going to own a car. Because even though maybe there might be people who don't, some of them are also going to have two cars. And that's why the one per unit kind of works. But then when you dramatically go under that and then completely don't take into account the restaurant and the commercial needs for parking and all the complaints we get for the streets where you can't even get through single, our emergency certainly can't get through a lot of those streets in that area because people are lined which is what we're asking for by not requiring ample, you know, adequate parking.

There is something else that I want to mention here. The PUD is an obsolete structure. Yes, thank goodness.

We shouldn't be doing these anymore.

This development came based on the regulations that we had at the time when it was established. However, the change, it's applying a portion of the new code for parking. So in my understanding, it is mixing an old structure with a new code. Trying to kind of have the best of the old and the new. And as I said, this is for the detriment, bad, unfortunately, for the parking spaces in that area. It is already a congested space, but if we are allowing practically no parking on 156 units, it's going to be not good.

I asked the question earlier, but no one's answered it. Do we have a parking problem in this particular block? We have a developer who's built I think two buildings there. Maybe he could speak to the fact that I don't, I've not gotten any complaints. Is there a parking problem in this area?

Well, once 156 units go out.

But is there today a parking problem with the two existing buildings that have been built? That's the question. I'm just asking.

The problem I had when I drove over to look at this was people parking on the street.

You're allowed to park on the street.

I know, but that's what I'm saying. If we're going to have everybody parking on the street. Maybe the restaurant patrons need the street.

You know, where are they going to park? You know, I got to get to the green.

So can we ask Tyler or somebody to explain why? There might be a reason why we. One second. Did council members want developer to?

Yeah. Tyler, can you?

Do we not usually have public comment before we have our discussions?

Well, usually they're signed up and we can kind of- So for the planning portion, you are welcome to ask the developer to come out. That is outside of public comment, but that is at your liberty.

I think declining the shared parking is an issue, that that was originally part of the deal for amending this. And now that's been taken off the table and that's not in our packet. So I think that's something that needs to be addressed as well, right? Like-

Like there's no- Can we just hear this?

Yeah, so real quick on that point. So yes, it was originally brought through on July 7th, 2026 as a PUD amendment. Within that, staff recommended a condition of approval to execute a shared parking agreement on a form acceptable to the planning director and staff attorney. That item was approved by Planning Commission.

Afterwards, though, our team, we heard from the developer, hey, that's untenable.

Here's the reasons why. Here's why we can't do that. And then we brought it back through as an amended request because they want to meet the parking requirements of the adopted Bentonville Community Code. And that's what was represented to Planning Commission last what, last week on August 4th. So now that's where we are here today. I will say in full transparency, we have kind of flagged parking as a topic of conversation. So we've already advertised the public hearing for next week, so it shouldn't be a surprise, but we are talking about parking with the planning commission at our meeting next week. probably for some of these similar concerns and discussion topics we're having tonight. I would, as was mentioned, the developer is here to answer some of your questions, Chris, about parking availability and the studies they've done. So I'll step back.

We do have two signed up consumers and developers to speak on this item. So if you would like to hear from the public now, we can do that.

Okay.

All right. Chris, if you'll just state your name and your address and keep your comments for three minutes or under, we would appreciate it.

Chris Barabaugh with Motive Studio out of Fayetteville. We prepared the presentation to show you what we're requesting. I didn't know it was going to be part of the public comment, so I'll try to keep it brief and have the three-minute time limit. But this is the diagram that we submitted back to Planning Commission. The right-hand side of this image is just the code as it stands today, which allows us to be within one-eighth of the greenway and take it up to a 20% reduction. We're not taking the full – we're not requesting the full 20% reduction from If we were, we would only be requesting 125 spaces, but we're actually providing 130 spaces. So we're not taking the full 20%. But I wanted to start by saying, I was going to say kudos to you all for adopting the new community code because it is progressive in the way it deals with parking and very similar to a lot of other municipalities that I work in that allow some amount of reduction that's not just a one-to-one. In fact, it's very much in line, which is why we thought it made sense to come back and say, since you adopted this, why would we not utilize it? Now we didn't, we're not just reducing parking because we just want to reduce parking. If you'll go to the next slide, this is an updated plan of the entire area. So G at Market on the left is existing. That was approved back in 2017, I believe, actually as a 0.85, only an 85% parking requirement is how that was approved. And I got some more data for you on that on the next slide, but stay here for a second. Haven is built out now, Lanterns is under construction, Laurels and what we're talking about. And if you could scroll down just a little bit, you're kind of clipping the top of that slide. I need the top of the slide, please. Nope. Top of the other slide, right there. So the reason we're back here requesting is because instead of having parking spaces facing the street, under the podium, under the concrete structure parking area, We've added these six units, which are stoop walk-up units right off of the sidewalk, so a very much more urban feel. These are larger units, actually. They have a little built-in office, so they're kind of a live-work model, and ample room for bike parking inside of the unit itself. So we thought that presented a better front, a better facade to the streetscape than just having parking exposed or partially screened. That row that you see of units, that's where the parking came out of the project and why we're here requesting the lower amount. So that's why we're here, not just to come arbitrarily reduce parking, but because we actually think this makes for a better project in this area. So then the next slide, back to G at Market, again, approved in 2017. It's been up and running for many years now. This is actual data that Scott and Bill Butler's online as well, they could speak more to, but all the parking at Gmarket is by permit only, and only 67% of tenants actually are permitted to park there. So the other spaces are empty. So they're not even using the .85 that they're approved. They actually have empty spaces in the garage. There are parking spaces in front of that building that are street parking. We have street parking. Years ago, I did Brick Avenue Lofts. We did the angle parking there.

Our public comments reached three minutes.

Can I continue?

This is really the developer presenting to us.

If you guys are asking him to be up here for these, then this is outside public.

I'd like to hear it. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. I agree with that. So actually, to control the street parking, I would say, because I hear that concern that everybody's bringing up, actually developing the street into the right-of-way and actually having spaces marked in parallel parking or angled parking like we're planning to do solves that problem of the mishap parking that exists that then jams up a road so actually development finishes the street section the way it's intended to be which then organizes the parking into dedicated spaces so then you can't jam up the car so i think that's that's a good thing it just until it does that everywhere it's not you know it's not perfect right there's still little nooks and crannies that people might come into So that's it, those are the three slides I have. Again, Mr. Kilkenny is here, Bill Butler's in line if there are any other specific questions from the development side, from the design side. But we just, yeah, we're here to make this request because the new code allows it, we think it makes a ton of sense, and we think we're getting a better building and streetscape out of it. So happy to answer any questions.

So does the same developer own all of these?

Yes.

And they weren't willing to, or weren't able to get a shared parking agreement?

Scott, Kill County 904, Southeast 3rd Street. I actually live right where Laurel's going to be built. And I've been living there for most of this year. It's different ownership groups. It's the same developer, but each building is owned by a different set of owners and investors. So it makes it very complicated from a financial perspective, as well as the bank perspective. to burden it with a cost sharing agreement or parking sharing agreement between the different areas. I think to speak to a couple of points and to your point, I walk by this neighborhood, I live in the neighborhood. My spouse has a car that goes back and forth to Colorado. So when they're here, we have a car. When they're not, we have no car. I walk everywhere. I walk to the square almost every day. I walk six times up and down the alley and look in the garages because of this concern. I have never seen the garage full, no matter what time of day. I've never seen the parking around G full, the street parking, except for one time when the momentary had a Wiz Khalifa concert. That was the only time that the street parking has been full in this neighborhood. So your question, this neighbor has never had a parking overflow or parking issue that I've been aware of. And I have my windows open, watch on Saturday mornings. Amazing foot and bike traffic going up and down 3rd Street, going to Farmer's Market from Brook Avenue Lofts, from the other residential areas.

How many commercial properties are in these other developments?

Two at GF Market, none in Haven. There'll be one at Lanterns and one at Laurel.

So can you tell us a little bit about the commercial in Laurel?

At G at Market, there's a co-working space and there is a Pilates gym. At Haven, there are none. At Lanterns, there'll be a speakeasy, second floor, kind of a small space.

Many of those are not built out, right? They're not.

Market are. Both of them are, and they're occupied.

The others don't have anybody who has not built that, right?

Correct. Avon does not have any commercial space.

What do the rural commercial spaces look like?

It'll be at the opposite end. It's in the very upper right corner, that trapezoid-looking space, the next one over all the way across the alley. That'll be the restaurant.

So there's one restaurant and one commercial space. So and wasn't part of your change was that you expanded the restaurant and made it larger? Am I remembering that correctly?

No, not necessarily. No, it was for more amenities for the residents use on site. There's a pool in Laurel, which we've not done in any other developments on the second floor. Another couple of just facts. I develop in three other municipalities and I'm on the other side of the table making a case. Those municipality codes have eliminated parking. In fact, you have to fight to be able to have any parking. Market demands a certain amount of parking for people to live in. The idea of who the residents are and what the demographic is that we're trying to bring and attract. in this location tends to be a younger audience they tend to be employees for walmart or working downtown if you look gen z's 24 of them do not have nor intending to get driver's licenses meaning they will not own a car they rely on ride share services they rely on ubereats they rely on delivery services for groceries they will not have a car so having giving them parking is underutilized space for what's happening. We have a large percentage of Gen Zs. That's 67% of our market. I'm trying to give parking away as an incentive for people to say, let's have you park a car here. What do you need? Will that be something? And they're like, that doesn't matter. I don't have a car. They don't want that at G at Market. They walk to Walmart. I had a young lady that I toured last week at G, and I asked her for her driver's license, and she giggled at me. She was 26. She's like, I have a passport if you need an ID. I don't have a driver's license. I don't have a car. I live in Bentonville where I'm at because I can walk to the square. I can have everything delivered. I take an Uber to the airport, and I work at Walmart. So that's the demographic that we're working with here.

So what is your plan for parking at the restaurant? Will it be valet with off-site parking?

It'll be very similar to like Conifer at the Howard. It'll be a very similar setup. There will be some parking dedicated. All the street parking in front will be for the restaurant and it'll be additionally to like what Conifer's doing.

The restaurant or, but what if it's full?

Like all of these are going online and your residents- That's the only commercial space in this entire three block radius for what we're doing here.

I feel like we're setting up, we're setting ourselves up for a lot of, this lot right out, our city lot is a third full of the residents that live in those apartments at any given time because we gave them a waiver where they didn't build enough parking. So now they all have to use city lots. And so we get ourselves into these problems and we don't have enough public parking for all the people who want to utilize, you know, the services downtown. And so I'm very leery of getting ourselves into this situation in other areas downtown.

That being said, we granted a waiver to probably most of the development centers. I don't know how many, but we wrote the code. We wrote the code that we're now arguing with.

Yeah, we just passed it.

And I agree with your points, but everything that the consultants through the plan told us was we need to eliminate parking. We need to make more density. We need to put housing where parking lots are. So now we're trying to build more parking lots. So there's two sides. Valid arguments on both sides.

I mean, I was at DMV and the guy next to me was getting his and he said, well, he said, I have two cars. He said, because I have a company car, but I won't get rid of my Jeep. And I was like, oh my goodness, I hadn't even thought of that because there are so many company cars.

I'm going to speak to his side. This one's challenging for me because I know of all the concerns that come to us on the back end. Parking on the street, in downtown, all of your residents get complaints all the time about that. And so I am concerned if you don't have the number of spaces for the number of residents. I understand, and when I first started looking, I was like, okay, how in your agreements can you say, You have one, you can only have one parking space, but at this, you're like less than one per, I don't even know how you do that in an agreement. I understand you've got permits. I guess they have to pay for the permit. Is that how that works? And that's the other thing that, I mean, I went and drove the street. They are narrow streets. So people park on, we will, we'll create another problem where we're going to have to go put no parking signs on the side of the streets down there. And that's another concern. So, um, I, I'm struggling with this one myself just because, and I understand the code and I know what the intention is, is try to encourage more people to, to live off the greenway and bike and different things. So I'm, I am struggling just because I know the challenge of my back end and everybody, pass the code with good intentions. I think these are some of the after conversations that are going to need to, and I get every, when they were, they kept telling us, well, if you don't require parking, they'll do more than, than that's needed. So I will tell you, that's what the consultant said to us is don't require it and they'll do more than what's needed. That's not been my experience. And I'm just saying, and I'm just, the things right now we're, where we hear complaints, it definitely is parking on the street and not enough parking in downtown.

Does this space count as public parking in downtown? Would people coming to downtown want to park in this space?

No, but if they don't have enough spaces for their people that are coming to the commercial and living there, then they're parking on the street and different things. So that's what we're trying to figure out.

But their consultants recommend that they have enough.

Hello, can I speak? Can you guys hear me?

Hey, Bill.

Oh, hey. So I'll be darned. I didn't know how this lower hand raise hand thing worked. A couple quick things. One, I'm amazed and impressed by how active the City Council is. I mean, there's a lot of thinking going on, and I appreciate it. Two, Scott Kilkenny and I are owners of a piece of every one of these developments, although we don't... We don't have control of every one of them. We are owners in every one of them. This neighborhood, we think we are creating an amazing downtown sub-segment neighborhood for people that I think most of this conversation doesn't even apply to. It's the people that don't have a lot of money. The issue with people downtown is it's getting so crazy expensive to live downtown. Everybody knows how much money, if they live downtown, they made off the value of their homes, which is great in one hand. But the people that can afford to live downtown in a single-family home, they do have a Ford Raptor. They probably have a Mercedes. They have two or three or sometimes four cars. The people that live in these units, we've got four years of data of the tenants that live at Gia Market. The city planning in this council approved 0.85 parking at Gia Market because it was one of the very first apartments downtown. No one really knew what was going to happen. And I'll be darned, to Scott Kilkenny's point, our tenants are young. don't know if they can't afford a car i don't know exactly what the reason is but i do know this people who want to live in these types of places they're making a specific decision to live here and having a car is not part of it not for these people yes for the person who bought a 1.8 million dollar home downtown they're going to have four or five six cars These people don't really, on average, have cars. That's the facts. I know there's a lot of anecdotes about I ran into a guy or this could happen, and I agree. And where I live in my neighborhood, people have too many cars. But people who live downtown are not about cars. I know that because we've been developing... in Bentonville for nine years now. When we build something for somebody who can pay more money, whether it's rent or to buy, we're building a townhome or a condo with big garages. We have 22 townhomes at Parkside Row, which is directly across the street from Phillips Park. The garages are huge. People use those garages. What we're building here is a nice part of the upcoming downtown lifestyle of Bentonville that fits what really all the experts say, A, it should be, and B, it's naturally going to be. We have a lot of people who live in these units that work at Walmart, and they're not even here more than half the time. We have people who work in these because we're so close to the new campus. That's part of why we created this right here. We have people who literally work for vendors, say a General Mills or a Procter Gamble who live down here. They're only here two weeks out of the month. The other thing, we spend a lot of time with our tenants all over here, all over the places we have in Bentonville. And what they tell us about Bentonville is we love downtown. I wish there was more stuff to walk to. We want to put a restaurant here, for example, for the people who live in the neighborhood. We want to create a neighborhood vibe, a neighborhood restaurant. You should not live in downtown Bentonville and feel like you've got to get into a $60,000 car to drive across town to find a place to park to go to dinner. You should be able to live in Bentonville and within a quarter mile walk to something really cool. And it's all emanating from the square. But the comments that were made earlier are right. What was built, those apartments that were built right downtown, you're spot on. Those that was under parked and the people that do have cars there because it's under parked, they do use the garage, right? These people that live here and live in the other apartments that are around here, they want to be able to get out and walk to something. And there's a reason why all the consultants said, hey, if you're close to the bike path, Right? Don't encourage cars. We don't want tenants who drive Ford Raptors. I have nothing against Ford Raptors. That's not our tenant base. And the people that are taking the risk are not the city council, and they're not the citizens of Bentonville. It's the developer, because if we can't find enough people, right, to fill this, because they all wanted to drive one car or own two cars and live here, they're not going to choose to live here. This is a self-selection process. The people who want to live right downtown and want big cars, they're going to build those big houses that are happening now, which are lovely. like i live in in the southwest quadrant when i'm in town right in a town home i have a big two-car garage now i don't use it right but if if if i did live there full-time yes i i would have a car i'm 61 years old i'm old and out of touch with what people are are doing now in downtown environments and i personally think This is going to be all four of these working together are going to be an incredible part of the fabric of downtown Bentonville in the market district. These people are going to walk to the new music arena when it's opened. These people are going to walk or ride their bike onto campus at Walmart because we all know that the Walmart campus is so highly activated. They did such a great job with the retail. Go there on the weekend. A great majority of the people that are there rode their bikes there. This culture is coming, and we're part of that culture in building this. But if we can't rent these out because somebody said, oh, there's not enough parking here, they're not going to rent here. They're going to go across town or somewhere else. People aren't going to live all the way downtown in Bentonville in an apartment and need a car to commute to Rogers. We don't have tenants who think of Rogers or Fayetteville as a good place to go work if they live here. We're building this to represent that part of society that should have a right to live downtown, who's not old like me, who doesn't think old-fashioned like me, who doesn't want a big car to demonstrate their lifestyle. That's not what these people want. And those people that do want those things, there's plenty of other options in Bentonville. Mark Haney will build them an incredible home. But that's not who lives here. These are not homeowners. These are not high wage earners for the most part. Some are. We do have some very wealthy people who live here too. They just happen to like the same lifestyle. But most of the people here are young, mobile. They love the thought of being right downtown and they want to walk to stuff. I just think this is a great opportunity. I mean, we're going to make this street, this talk about this street, and it's, I know I'm going on, but I'll give you one other thing. We built 12 townhomes at J and 10th Street. It's a dilapidated area by most of Bentonville's standards. It's going to keep getting improved. We were told you can't build on street parking there. I took pictures and showed them, hey, if you don't organize on-street parking, you know what happens? People park anywhere off the street. They park at dangerous angles, right? They don't follow any rules because you, Benville, didn't create any rules for them. You just let them park wherever. And the feedback was, yeah, well, someone, a neighbor can call the cops and ask somebody to move their car. It doesn't happen. So we're actually going to turn 3rd Street into an amazing walking street from J all the way over to Southwest A. If you think about that gap of 10 blocks, right, it's largely apartment dwellers. Think about, let's talk really about this part of town. This is not for the high wage earner, big hitter guy. This is for people who are young, who add value to Bentonville, and they have a right to live there too. And they don't need or want a Ford Raptor, right? And we're going to turn this street into a beautiful, organized street, just like on the opposite side. Brick Avenue Lofts has wonderful parking that's made that side of the street organized and nice. You're going to have people increasingly walking out of Laurel. or Lanterns or Haven at GM Market, and they're gonna walk right to the bike path, which is only 1 8th away. And they're either, this is what Scott and I do when we go to dinner downtown, we walk on the bike path. It's lovely. It goes right behind the Walton property. There's lots of trees. And then we walk up into the square, and thankfully, if we eat too much, we get to walk home. I don't want a car there. And not everybody is this big car person.

Thank you, Bill. I think we're starting to kind of repeat and go way, way, way over three minutes.

You only gave me two ways. I think I went three ways.

You make some very good points, and I do appreciate your perspective very much.

I'm obviously divided on this particular item because on one hand, I'm thinking like somebody older than you, Bill. And on the other hand, at the same time, I understand the new style of living by some people who do not have, not even children, even less cars or things like that. So they may prefer this type of development And at the same time, as you mentioned, the risk, the financial risk is on you because you are going to put a lot of money into this development in order to have it offered to the public. And the public has to be satisfied enough with it in order to use it. Otherwise, you'll be losing a lot of money in it. On the other hand, the development on this particular area, it is on the north side of it, it is something that was created some years ago. I don't remember the name of the place, but there are dozens and dozens of apartments over there, perhaps a Thank you. So it's there. It is already there. This development, I think, is an addition to what it is already built. And the proximity to Walmart campus makes it very attractive for people to live there if they are working at the company. One of the items that I have mentioned that could have been very productive is for Walmart to have had in their campus some buildings for their own employees. That didn't happen, but in a way, you as investors and developers are creating that housing units that are not available inside the campus. At the same time, this development is obviously replacing the single family homes that existed over there for decades and decades. But it is already happening. It already happened to the north of this development all the way to Central Street on J and all of the other streets nearby. And there are other developments in the vicinity. So I don't think this is a space for single family units. So likely there is going to be very little impact on them because they are not going to be there. It is going to be mostly the future development is going to be this type. So I'm beginning more inclined at this moment to accept the reasoning that less parking is sufficient.

And to clarify, in G at Market, you said you already have less spots there than residential. 0.85. Right. And you're 67% utilized.

Utilized.

Right next door.

It's always empty. I look at their parking lot from my front window. Big old parking lot.

If we do make a mistake and end up having a parking issue, we'll put no parking signs on both sides of the street if you have a complaint. So things change sometimes and we have to make adjustments, but if that's the demographic that we need to accommodate, we do have an affordable housing problem. Is he calling this affordable?

yeah he did kind of i mean i've looked up all the rents of all around right just sitting here and yeah yeah but so you lost me at that okay well let's talk about rent then okay do you know we all do think about if you want to move to bentonville here's a typical tenant I'm 24. I've been living in Fayetteville since I graduated from the U of A. I've got an opportunity to move up to Bentonville, and I know it's more expensive than it is Fayetteville, but I want to live there. They can pay $1,200 or $1,300 or $1,400 for a studio. They do not have $200,000 saved. to live and experience downtown Bentonville for a down payment. They cannot afford a two-bedroom townhome by themselves. There are virtually no one-bedroom townhomes. Thank God Tyler and his team put together the cottage plan and got that through because there is not, let's use the term the appropriate way, affordable by Bentonville standards. It's not fair to say, oh, well, that's so expensive when you're not taking into account how expensive everything else is in Bentonville. We're selling townhomes for $700,000, $800,000, $900,000. No one in their 20s can afford that. So are we just going to say if you want to enjoy Bentonville and you're in your 20s? or you're 32, you don't get to live downtown. These are people that don't care about cars like we do, but they care about lifestyle. The younger generation doesn't accumulate material things like we do. They accumulate experiences. This is an awesome experience. These are gonna be four amazing buildings that bond together and create part of Bentonville where you don't have to buy to live there. Yes, you can afford it. You can't afford it because you're one of those smart young people that's got a job at Walmart in one of their technology groups, for example, and you make 80 grand. You make 100 grand. You make 62 grand. But none of these people, I shouldn't say none, in Gia Market, Laurel, and Lanterns, virtually no people in their 20s, if you don't allow them to have this lifestyle, virtually none of those tenants can live downtown. It's not like these apartments are priced differently than other apartments. In fact, some other apartments are more expensive. I'm sorry I'm getting so worked up, but I feel like this ends up being a proxy for discriminating against people that don't think or act like we do. We have a lot of people here who don't think or act like anybody in the room. But they want to live in downtown Benville and they want to walk to First Friday just like Scott Kilkenny does. So we're going to say, well, you don't get to walk to First Friday. You have to live outside of downtown to afford an apartment. And then you have to drive your car to First Friday. And then you have to use all the city parking. I mean, I just really think we've got to be fair to people that can't afford to buy a house. can't afford to pay $2,800 to live in a two-bedroom townhome, right?

And certainly can't live... You're making the investment because you believe that this clientele exists. It's your risk. And I also believe this clientele exists. I'm riding my bike myself. So I do agree that this clientele exists.

But you still own cars.

Well, I live outside of downtown and that's also my prerogative and I'm a realtor. I have to go all through Northwest Arkansas. These people are not me and I'm acknowledging that.

Another concern with the code with the eighth and quarter, like we saw the big circle, like should this really be an as the crow flies kind of a measurement? Or is it like, does it need to be more like how long does it take us to get to the greenway? Like, I think that's an additional concern that I want to discuss. That's not specified in the code how that should be measured.

I think we're done with developer comment for the time being.

I just asked one question because I think we could have gotten through this had the shared parking agreement been able to be worked out. Can you just give us some understanding? Because for me, I'm trying to... I did really like that idea because it gives me a little more assurance to the public that we're not eventually going to have a parking issue. I know you're telling me we're not. My experience is... not been that that's the case in a lot of instances, and that's where myself, I'm struggling a little bit, and I would really have liked to have seen the shared parking agreement to help me give something to the public to say, you know, there's some

Our, as Bill and I described, we own a piece of each one, albeit a small piece. I think I'm the smallest owner of each one, but it gets me to live here and actively participate. Our financial partner, who is a nine, 10 figure investor in the lanterns project is out of Houston and they accept no consideration for any burdens that they can't sell this property. Once it's stabilized to another party, they look at the shared parking agreement, albeit, uh, community oriented and friendly as a restriction on a future buyer to say, I don't want to enter it as something that could prevent the ultimate use of this property or the saleability of this property. And so that's why we said we can't accept the parking share agreement to lanterns or G because they're dissimilar owners.

So I'm going to pose this question to you. Is there any other, anything else that can be put into, so we, if we get people parking on the roads and I get like, we call you and we say, this is a problem. Like, is there anything out there? I don't know.

I'm just, I don't know. I mean, I'd love the question where I'm at. Yeah, I love the question. So my thing that I'm trying to work out is I want this to feel like an incredibly cool community. I've got four buildings, and if you look where it says Geomarket and follow that down, we're creating a walking path that will have water features. You'll walk down kind of a green garden area, and it will go out the exit where it says 3rd Street. That'll be a portico that you can walk through. There'll be waterfalls or water features inside that. So we're really trying to create a connection. Laura will have a pool. Haven doesn't have any amenities. We're looking at, they can pay a fee to go into Laurel and be able to utilize the pool at Laurel Canyon. So we may have payment agreements between them. I just can't have a free or a burdensome agreement. So if there's a problem with parking and you came to me and said, your residents are parking on the streets and we have complaints, we would go back and say, let's talk about, can Laurel afford to pay G a fee? Potentially. I can't commit to that because that's all the financial partners, but I would look to your point of saying, is there something creative that we could do that helped offset that? I can't accept it as a term, but that's how I would try to solve the problem in the district for me.

I see that at the end, your organization is gonna be dealing with the tenants and all the problems associated with it. The thing that we are trying to prevent is or reduce the possibility of problems will occur and the city will have to deal with and the police will have to intervene and need this and that, the whole thing. But it seems that you are absolutely confident that this is a good design and it will improve the area. And on the other hand, we are not investing. The city is not investing any money in it. All the investment goes to you. Thank you very much for putting the money in it. So I'm ready to say yes on this.