Board of Mayor and Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Okay. Is this me? Mhm. I'm going to um It's 4:00 and I'll call the streets and sanitation meeting to order. The first item on the agenda is Oh, this is safety. Oh, yeah. I'm safety next. Do you want to tell us about what's on this agenda? I didn't bring nothing. I didn't bring my tablet, so I apologize. Are we doing safety first? No. No, I just have mine ready. Yeah. Street streets and sanitation. So, yeah, you're you're good. Yeah. But I don't have my tablet with me. So, Lyndon's going to tell us about

Yeah, we'll run through all this. So, the first thing is emergency purchase of a new traffic cabinet located in front of Pace Setters intersection up there. We had a citizen hit that and wreck and as you can see it is completely leaning over. It's functioning right now, but we have conduit underground that's exposed and a good rain or something like that could actually harm the intersection and the components in the box. So, what we need to do, excuse me, what we need to do is get in there and get it fixed. Currently, Davis H. affiliate that's doing our traffic signals around town is putting is putting together an estimate for this project and they can knock it out while they're in town already. So, I just want to make you guys aware of this. It's it's coming. The estimates coming and I found out something new about this is that traffic signals and the cabinets are actually covered in under our insurance. So,

that's wonderful. Luckily for us that this will be covered. It won't be a major expense or anything like that for us. We are expecting it. Talking to the estimators, it's going to be over $10,000 to replace it. But like I said, insurance will cover that. But just wanted to make you everybody aware of that that it's it's coming and we need to get it done. So I wanted to show you guys a picture and see that it is in fact in bad shape out there. It is. Is that Are those lights there? Are they just on timers? Uh it has radar, but every time I go through there, I feel like it's on timers. I don't feel like the radar is working because I keep get I keep seeing the one turning right if you turn right onto Y and nobody Omni whatever that one is the new one Magnus

nobody comes through there and it it sh it cycles through it every single times so I feel like it is on a timer cuz I just came through it last night the same thing maybe it's shifted to a timer since it's got hit it's supposed to be on a it's supposed to be a radar detected and be able to detect cars but it doesn't feel like it is okay. I agree with you. So, it got hit by a vehicle, correct? Yes. Would their insurance not have to cover any of it if they have insurance? I don't know. Okay. About that. Pregate. Excuse me. P. That's our insurance. Yeah.

They will pay I'll pay to have it fixed and then it'll be up to them to subregate. Okay. All right. That's That's what I was thinking cuz that wasn't ours. Okay. Yep. Um, I'll make a motion to approve that and send it to the full board. I should have an estimate for the full board next week. Okay. So, you'll be able to see it. I have a first I have a motion. Second. I have a motion and a second. All in favor say I. Any further discussion? Motion carries. Um,

all right. Next two things are justformational. You guys ask questions, stuff like that. No voting. So, first thing I wanted to bring up is the PCI report that we did in the study of the city's rows and what condition they're in and things like that. So, on this I've actually created a map here that shows all the PCI scores. As you can probably guess, blue is good, red not so much. So, we can zoom in here and depot this paving.

This is paving. Yes, sir. So, you can zoom in here on depot and see that it had a score of 30. You can look at Bridge Street. This section has score 15. So it really shows us kind of an outline of our street condition and you know gives you just gives you a really good idea of where our streets are at. Now scroll down. Our average is a 69. The industry standard for a PCI score for a city is a 70. So we're right there at the indust industry standard. really really close on that. If you look at our chart here in our road miles and our value range, most of our roads are above a 56, which is good. But we do have some that are below the 55 mark. Roughly 21 22 miles of road or actually below a 55 or in a Yeah. 50 55. Yeah. So our goal is to target these low ones and bring them up to high. So our first ones are any are 40 and below that we want to target and get them to a 100. Once you repave them, they go from whatever score they are to a 100 score and they typically last 20 years once you do once you do that.

How many miles are there altogether?

100 100 miles an extra 11 miles if you count state roads. So, it's about 100 miles in the sequence. So, if we looked at paved roads and what we budgeted like this past year for like $450,000, you're looking at one mile paved and 10 miles stropped every year is what you'd be looking at. So, what we currently budget this past year, you're going to get about a mile and then 10 miles dropped. And that's how how far that money can go for that. And if you wanted to see an outline of what roads we would be paving every year, this is our outline. This is our timeline. This is what we saw from our PCI study in our our report showing which streets need need what. And to stay in that kind of range, you might see like Locust Street here with PCI score of 40. You might see them there because it's a small section of road that gets paved rather than a full road. So we we put that in there to help bring that score up. instead of a whole road like Tanner Street's an entire road. Potter Lane, Creek Lane is a huge road that's got a PCI score of 25. It's the entire street. So, if you're looking at the same budget we've had, this is kind of our our pathway, our our road, pun intended, to uh getting them paved.

What are what are the uh emphasize or the dark? So the dark ones is an entire street. The italicized ones are just a partial of the street.

So like we got Bridge Street here at a 16. We'll do that partial point of the street and then we will finish doing Bridge Street a couple years later and do another section because it's PCI score is much higher. So if you see a road that's in Balden, it is the entire road uh west. What's wrong with fifth Avenue? Uh, it's got a lot of cuts on it. A lot of sewer and water cuts on Fifth Avenue. It's got a pretty low score. So, we have a plan if we current budget goes the same way. We have a plan. I know it's a lot. And after 5 years, we need to redo the PCI study, which can be done in house. We won't have to contract that back out with AI and the software that we have. We just affix a camera or a tablet to the car and just go and we can update the PCI study. So after 5 years, you probably want to go and look and see what's going on after that. U I've also made a map as well of that which shows you the different sections of the city that would be getting paved with the purple being what we would do this upcoming fiscal year. So the plan is you pave in the fall, you strap in the spring. So all our paving will be done in the fall and all the stropping will come in. We don't want to try to do paving and stropping around the same time because you got to let what you just paved settle before you come in and st.

Is this a visual that would be on available for the public? Absolutely. Okay. This whole everything can be can be it would be really helpful for folks that are always maybe um misinformed or confused about our roads to be able to look at that and say, "Okay, and just something we could throw up the minute, you know, on to social media the minute somebody

starts that." So like for us on our side and our software that we were provided, we got actual pictures of the road. So like if you want to know why Westwood Fifth it gets a PCI score of 33, it has pictures and you can go in there and see the pictures of the road and what why that piece got that score. So you might see like a bad water cut or something like that and that section gets a 21. you go up another 100 feet, you might see another section, but between those two, it could be, you know, 80 70, but the two 20s right there bring it down. I see.

So, the you said the the 70 score, which is is that the state average or is that the standard that that you should be? That's the standard that they that uh they set, okay, kind of nationwide and for this area in the southeast is a 70.

So, that's our goal. Your goal should be 70. If you're achieving a 70, you're meeting the standards that they set for pretty much. So that's what $400 to $450,000 a year. You're looking at 5% of your total road network paved, but you're getting 50% of your road dropped, which is nice. If you want to look at doubling that just for funsies, you'd be looking at three miles paved every year instead, but you can still get 10 miles strapped. You could even you could probably pave the whole city or not pay, but strike the whole city in like three, four years if you wanted to. Strapping is not very expensive. And so you would pretty much combine together fiscal years in the future into you know 26 27 27 28. So that was something you wanted to do. It's out there. 9% of roads would be paved in three years and you could do 30% plus on your strapping. So obviously you can pay more with more money but anyway that's the PCI study. I can send that to everybody but you guys look at put it posted online whatever needs to happen so people can get an idea of where it's at. So your hard job is to you're going to be tempted to pay what helps our score the most and not necessarily what might be needed the most. Would that be is that a fair like is that difficult?

It it is because we want to be an industry standard, but the goal is the ones that score the least is to get them up to where they need to be. That's where you're going to get the most points. Okay. So we're going to get the most efficiency out of it. I got you. So if we're already at 69, yes, correct, won't be difficult to achieve.

I don't think it will. I think even after this upcoming year by targeting the lower roads. So being surgical about it, right? So instead of just saying Durham Street, 50% of Durham Street's bad, but the other 50%'s good. So let's spend $200,000 paving the whole street. Let's not do that. Let's spend $100,000, pave that one section that's really bad and then spend that under $100,000 somewhere else and pay that street that actually that needs it more too. And then you can just you can raise the score that way and be a little more surgical rather than just saying half the street's bad. Let's just paint both. That's pretty much what the PCI study is telling us. Okay. Be more surgical with everything. Don't necessarily break it down into whole streets.

No. Yeah. Don't Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. If Bridge Street is this side's 20, 20, this side's 50. Let's get the 20. Let's wait a couple years. That'll get down and then let's hit that one. And you're you got what you need to get eventually? This side's 100. This side's probably 80 to 90, something like that. Yeah. Any other questions? All right. That would be good to put on the the city's website. Absolutely. This is what's good about this. This is our GIS system. It can be accessed by anybody completely. Perfect. All right. Time for the fun one now. The transfer station. Anybody here visited our transfer station before?

I have.

You have? Oh, you Oh, this is easy for you guys. This ain't nothing. Our transfer station. All right. What is a transfer station? And for those that haven't visited and may not know, it's a place for us to take our garbage, city garbage, compact it into a trailer such as that, and haul it off to a landfill. It's just it's kind of a stopping point for our garbage before it gets to its final destination of a landfield is all that it is. All right, I got two numbers right here. Who produces more trash? The city or the county? All right, I got two numbers. Who I mean, I'm not going to go in there, but you know, one's the city, once the county. If you think the 10,000 is the city, you're wrong. It's the county. We produce more. We produce 12,000 tons a year and the county produces 10,000. Now, I bet you're asking yourself, why? How do we produce more trash than the county does? Well, that's because they recycle. They recycle about 2,000 tons a year. So, that's how they're able to divert that from the landfill and make some money off of it. Otherwise, they'd be right there with us at 12,000. we'd be the same. So, as you guys already know, we went out to bid on pricing for our garbage. CWS price currently is $55.89 a ton, and we pay almost $700,000 to dispose of our trash. By going to waste management at $45 a ton, you'll see we're saving almost $130,000 a year by switching. The only caveat is we have to haul it to White County. And after gas maintenance and everything related to that, we come down to about $100,000 a year that we'll save starting year one. So we presently will be bringing in $200,000 and an additional $100,000 after we make the switch for a $300,000 increase in our budget year end and year out.

Now, two ejector trailers will need to be purchased to continue that, but also to look to the future and have a vision of the transfer station by investing in two ejector trailers at $109,000 each, which are currently in our budget this year in capital. We'll be able to expand as years go down, accept more garbage, create more revenue at the transfer station, becomes more business-like out there, and in invest in a lot of recycling and environmentally friendly activities out there. One such is an air burner. Anybody heard of an air burner before? No.

Well, just so you know, we spend $100,000 a year on a company to come up here and chip our wood and haul it off. We invest in an air burner, which I have a nice YouTube video just so we all know what it is and I'm trying not to make it so loud. So, you can see the green thing is the air burner and up there is the just a pile of brush burning. You'll notice one isn't producing any smoke. It's the air pollution is minimal. The waste that you get from chipping, it still exists. Whereas with this and the burning of the brush, we're able to recycle that material and we can give it out to the public for landscaping and gardening and things like that. So, we'll be able to take in more brush. That means more citizens can come in and bring their brush. Private people, private companies can bring their brush to us and government entities can do the same thing if they so chose to. So, that would be an opportunity for us. Nashville hit with the ice storm and having all that brush that they can't dispose of. We have an ability to do that. We get hit with an ice storm, we can take the brush and we can burn it. There are some parameters. It can't be super windy and it can't be rain, but if it's cold outside, you can still burn that brush and produce minimal amount of pollution.

What is it? How does it work? And how much does it cost? Uh the burner is a little over $100,000, which if you think about it, if we're paying someone $100,000 every single year to come dispose of it, what's a $100,000 investment to do it ourselves and to potentially get revenue from it and create tipping fees that people have to pay to dispose of the brush? For me, I think we can grow it and create revenue off of it and not lose $100,000 every year for Big Woody's Tree Service to come in here. There's also a grant available for it. We're going to try to apply for that this October. So,

so I think that's a great opportunity for us to dispose of our brush cleanly and effectively. How bad is burning brush? It's not great. Really? No. I didn't realize it was It's not great. But using this air burner, it's so hot that the smoke, it just vaporizes the brush. And that's why you don't see a lot of smoke. And that's why it's environ more environmentally friendly than chipping it or just burning it. So what fuels it? It's electric.

Yes, there'll be electric run to it. Three-phase motor, which uh runs a turbine inside of it. It blows through tubes on the side that shoot down at a 45 degree angle. And I believe uh they said it burns at 1,800 degrees. So it's basically it's it's so hot it's smokeless, right?

And then about every other week, you'll pull the char out. They call it biochar, which landscapers and people who are in the tree industry really love that. It's so nutrientdense. You'll actually can revive a tree if you excavate around it, then add those nutrients into it. So it's a very good product, end product. We visited Franklin who's had theirs for numerous years and it's something that they love. And if you go to Franklin, their transfer station and their air current burner is right in the middle of like downtown. And they don't get complaints about their burner. They don't get complaints about smoke. So for us, it seems like a a very much win-win. We save money with the potential to make money really. So that's one thing we want to purchase not this fiscal year, next fiscal year or this coming fisc year, the one after that. So whatever our goals, number one goal of this transfer station of opening it up going to waste management is to prolong a rate increase. That's the goal is to wait as long as possible to have any kind of rate increase on our garbage services. So under our current system with CWS, if we were to continue with them, we projecting 3 to four years, we'd probably have a rate increase. With this and with waste management, we're thinking double that at least before anything should even be considered out there, any kind of rate increase whatsoever. And you know, you start bringing in more trash, you start, you know, bringing in more brush, you start the recycling program to help generate more revenue in there, that's going to prolong it even more. If you create a tipping fee out there rather than pass it on to the citizens of the garbage rate, you do at the tipping fee. So these private businesses coming in here that want to tip and bring us their garbage, you raise that rate a little bit and that helps you prolong it as well. Things like that help it from passing along to our citizens.

So how does back on the 10 12,000 tons versus 10,000 tons? Yes. I mean, rough numbers, there's 40,000 people in the county, 15 in the city. So, that means 25,000 people are making still making less garbage than 15,000 people. I wonder why that is. Businesses, all commercial stuff, a lot of businesses are Walmart, places like that. A lot of waste.

That's where we make it up all right is the businesses here. Yeah, we went over recycling disposal brush more efficiently and effectively. Creating a recycling link program. I think we can start doing rolloffs out there in the near future in the next year or two where people can bring their glass or cans out the transfer station. Will we ever be recycling plastic? Plastic. I think a lot of people ask me why we don't have the ability to recycle plastic. Waste Management is one of the biggest recyclers and garbage companies in the whole United States. They have expressed interest in helping us create a recycling program. Okay.

And long-term curb curbside recycling is something we want to see long term. That's all we want to have for the city out here. And this is one of our first steps is opening a transfer station, creating the revenue, creating the ability to create that for our citizens. My kids have that in Murphreey'sboro. A separate can. Yeah. For all their recyclable. Normally it's a single stream if they throw all their recyclables in. All of it. Yeah. So they'll throw them all in there and then when they get to the transfer station, they'll sort through it all and throw it in different bins and stuff like that. So it's it's a single stream. It's normal normally what cities have start with typically. I hope we can do that.

I I do too. I think we're on our first step. We've we've uh talked about it in years past and it just always seemed like there was no they said they said it was expensive. Yeah. And I just wondered how the county has been able to pull it off and uh we they're actually getting ready to they're building their whole new recycling center. County is they're going to have a new recycling center. They I think they've gotten a grant from Tekk on it to expand their recycling operations out there. But what I think it's something coming down the line that we're going to be probably required to do eventually. So, we need to go ahead and get on the ball and start being proactive and thinking about it.

I don't recall the company that she represented, but the lady that came and spoke with us not all that long ago talking about recycling, promoting a recycling program. When I spoke with someone at our at the county recycling center, they said it's just because we don't know how to do it. people are throwing in so many things in the wrong spots as far as like the the plastic that really should can be recycled. Um it's too much of a hassle to it. We threw it all for all the stuff people put in that really doesn't belong.

We we talked to some uh recycling companies in Tennessee. They suggested just putting up kind of a dumpster and just saying, you know, plastic whatever only type of thing. just have a location like maybe a public works, some kind of place that people know and where to go and they can just throw stuff in there. But then they said that people take advantage of it over by the fairgrounds. You know, that's where we always took our stuff and they had about four dumpsters. Well, for plastic and I still Yeah. They're not there anymore. So, but I I I know it's a challenge. It is, but it's a challenge that John and I are are willing and wanting to take on and do. Very good.

Absolutely. Anyway, I've got a couple videos we can watch. They're like 30 seconds long. Something like that. If you want to see my staff in action at a transfer station. We're good. Oh, good. That's what I wanted to hear right there. Definitely. All right. So, I love videos.

So, here we go. Let me meet me fix. I'm excited now, man. Sorry. I had to clip this video and it was uh irritating. So, we got this is our front load driver, James, backing into our transfer station. This is what it looks like. regularly out there backing up going. There's our hopper where we compact everything. We have a We have two hoppers, but currently we're only using one. Yeah, I love it. It's great. So then, hey, we love talking trash. I'm telling you, it's great. Oh, no. Come on. video opens the back gate and it just piles into that hopper and we have a the press will come out. It all falls in and it will go right into our compactor trailer which is right there, the one on the right, our comp our compaction trailer. So it all compacts in there and when we get to the landfill to dispose of it, there's a ejector in it and it'll just push it all out to the landfill. It's quite fun actually.

Where's it going? White County. White County landfill. So that but it's the same place where the not CWS but the other CWS they have a landfill in Ray County but they're located out in Morrison. They have a transfer station. So we're really instead of taking it to their transfer station, they go to a landfill. We take it to our transfer station and we take it to the landfill pretty much. Yeah. They they go to Ray County is where CWS goes. Waste management goes to White County in this area. I don't know of another landfill. Currently we're going to CWS. Currently we are. Yes. Currently. No, no, no. We've already transitioned to waste management. Oh, we've already changed.

We've already started to change. We do take some to CWS. We've started the transition to waste management, the drive, testing it out, making sure it's what we want to do, but some still goes to CWS, but we've kind of mixed it up. Okay. Right now, making sure it does work for us instead of just jumping in. Yeah. Thoughts? Anything at all? Looks good to me. Um, I think it's like you say, it's coming. It's going to be required. Thank goodness. So, goodness. Yeah. All right, Carrie. Much better system.

I I think it will. I think we'll see a lot of savings on our end and be able to invest it in our transfer station, our recycling, and grow and prolong any kind of rate increase in the near future for as long as possible. All right, great. 30 minutes. Not bad. Pretty excited to get that done. Thank you. Hey, no problem. The water fountains are the They're asking me at the ball fields about the water fountains. Are they going to be turned back on? Uh I I don't know that we don't manage that anymore. Oh, who who manages that? Uh that Yeah, I would talk to Justin. Okay.

All right. Good luck, guys. Follow that up. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. I've heard of this my whole life. What? And I've never had it seen it in person. Here's what we had today at a house we're working on. Are we came in? We're journed. This committee meeting is journ. I'm sorry. I thought we were I did too. I can't start.

It is 4:30. We will um start the safety committee. Um, our first item is a request from the fire department for purch purchase of some new turnout gear. Marty, Marty,

we have u several sets of gear that's expiring this year, 2026. We were going to try to budget for the next budget, but we have a little left over this year. So, we're going to try to put a dent in that going into the next budget year. So, we've got I think it was it's eight sets that that I'm asking for this year. Now, we've got and it's for the second set of gear. Um, and some of them have expired within the last year as well. So, but like I said, it's their second set. It's not their primary set. And and I'm targeting the firefighters first because they're they're more likely to get these exposures. And when you wash your gear, when you do it on duty, it takes it's an all day process and takes a day or two to dry. So that if they don't have this second set of gear, they're exposed of those contaminants, they don't get to clean their gears.

When I was reading over this, I was wondering what that process is for cleaning after you've it's been contaminated. Yeah. When you if it's really bad, we have to send it off, but just your run-of-the-mill structure fire, you get exposed to smoke. uh we we got to take it all apart, you know, and there's three layers to it. Then you got to wash them. And some of them you got to wash separately. You can't wash the liners with the outer shell, right? And then you can't put them in a dryer. They got to air dry, you know, like the gloves and just soap and water. But there there's a whole policy on how we got to wash them. And it takes it's a

about a two to three day process to get your gear from from the washing machine to back in service. And if they're on duty and catch a fire first thing, I mean, they don't have a chance to do that. So they'd have to come in off duty to clean their gear or just wear dirty gear and that's you know we're trying our best to protect that. Nobody wants that. It's Carson agenda. So I make a motion that we send this on to the full board. I'll second it. Um I've had a motion and a second. All in favor?

I motion passes. Thank you. Um, our second item is a request from the police department to purchase 50 Glock 45 handguns, 50 optics, 50 flex lights, and 50 holsters. How about that? Yes. So, we'll just call that a weapon system. There you go.

So, 50 new weapon systems. So, uh yeah, this uh memo is for the purchase of 50 new weapons systems from GT distributors. So about every 10 years, we try to cycle out our old weapons for new weapons just based on normal wear and tear. And we'll be at that 10-year mark here in just a few months. Uh this actually comes at a really good time because the purchase of these new weapon systems can be largely funded by the trade of about 230 to 240 confiscated weapons and the trade of our current weapons. So that would bring um you know the original price of over 55,000 down to a little over 16,000 to purchase uh 50 new weapon systems. Um so that's the timing is really good on this. All kind of comes together.

Very good. That's kind of cool. Any questions?

I think so. If you uh in case this question does come up, if you have the bid sheet in front of you, you'll notice that the quote from GT distributors is the uh smallest amount. But the reason we have to go to have to go with them is that King's Firearm, which is the biggest amount, is not an authorized Glock dealer. And they only offered to cut us a check, but the bid was for the trade of for confiscated weapons for intore credit for purchase of new weapons. So, we couldn't go with them. Acme Sports was out of Indiana. Um they they weren't they can't sell us uh Glocks here in this area because we're out of their region. I did actually try to contact them and didn't hear anything back. GT Distributors is someone we do regular business with.

Very good. So with that being under, we can do that within our committee. Right. I think so. Okay. I make a motion that we um purchase the um weapon systems for the police department. I second it. I have a motion and a second. All in favor? I I motion carries. Thank you. Is there anything else to come before the safety committee? Speak now or forever. Hold your peace. We stand adjourned. Thank you guys.