Board of Directors - Regular Meeting

Arkansas board of directors to order. Two housekeeping things. If you wish to address the board tonight, there are citizens communication cards on the ledge. If you would wouldn't mind filling one of those out and getting it to our city clerk. We would have a record of you speaking tonight. And the other is if you would please silence your cell phones during the course of our meeting. We'll have a roll call. Director Harris, yes. Director Halabush here. Assistant Mayor Brewer here. Director Chu here. Director Smith is absent. Director Roberts here. Mayor Brown. Yes. Here. At this time, we'll stand for our invocation and pledge of allegiance given by Director Steven Hollybush. Bow your heads.

Lord, thank you for this wonderful day that you bless us with. God, thank you for the opportunity to gather together in a free country. God, we pray that you would be with us as we make decisions that concern the citizens of Ter, Arkansas. Give us wisdom and guidance. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

May be seated. At this time, we'll get right on into our citizens communication time. I have one that's turned in right now, Mr. Brewster. Uh, good evening, mayor, board. I am Reverend Clinton T. Brewster, and the nature of my presence this evening is is no longer a concern. It has grown into an issue. And this is what I mean when I say that I have property within the Iron Mount edition, 1307 Booker Street. And I get this phone call one day that was very alarming to the fact that I had to leave my office to go see what was going on. And after doing research on this matter, I have discovered that there's a rich history of it. And the question and the results that I'm anticipating here is where we are and what actually are we going to do? And when I say we, meaning the whole, the taxpayers and you all to make the decisions. Here's the issue. Illegal trash dumping. So when I say that, when I got there, the people who dumped their trash didn't even realize that they had left personal mail within the trash. Yeah. So, we researched that and we went to their property where they were located. For them to leave the other side of Union Village to travel all the way to the mountain edition on the other side of Ninth Street to dump trash is not acceptable. And I'm certain that you can understand and agree with me what happened. I knocked on the wrong door because I was going to address the matter in a respectful way. The neighbor answers the door and says, "Sir, you're going to have to file a police report on those people because

we've had that issue with them multiple times." Now, here's the juggernaut. I called Texas County Police Department. I have pictures at this time. I'm having it cleaned off because due to the fact who wants to allow trash to just sit in their setting. So, Text County, please shares with me that yes, they do have a history and continue to paper trail. Now, when I looked at the name, it was a name that I really couldn't even pronounce. And the first thing that came into my way, my way of thinking that we in Texas, we Texas Canians, we have a value system. We do not disrespect our neighbors. We do not try to do anything that would bring something out of character due to the fact on we're texture Canada. That's how I was raised. I'm 58 years old. But needless to say, I do understand that times have changed. I'm looking for results of accountability on repeat behaviors. This is a repeat behavior. And yeah, they get a ticket or what may be, but there needs to be a tad bit more accountability with this. Um, and I wanted to share that because when it first happened, I was agitated like I'm certain that many of you would be. And after speaking with one of the neighbors who witnessed it in and again the pictures for them to leave town to commute to a different part of town, not only do they not care about the value system in Texas canon, I'm not even going to question about the value system within their home. And when their neighbor has addressed the same issue and has stated you will have to get the police involved, I just want some results. But most of all, I understand you may not be able to answer this question at this time, but there needs to be a higher level of accountability. And I'm certain that

each of you can understand my concern. Again, I'm Re Brewster and I yield my time.

Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone [clears throat] else wish to address the board? If not, we have a couple of presentations tonight. Our first will be the employee service awards. I'm told that we have three recipients here that our city manager will uh recognize with a certificate of appreciation tonight. The three there are six the three that are not present, I'm told, is Brandon Williams with TWW for 15 years, Melissa Shaw with TWW for 20 years, and Tony Barnes with TWW for 20 years. Let's give them a round of applause. [applause] THE three that are here is Lynn Kilgore, public works department, 20 years. [applause] Next is Joshua Moore, the fire department. 10 years. [applause] And last is Casey F TWW 15 years. [applause]

[clears throat] And at this time, we'll recognize uh our Lifenet uh people for our Lifenet presentation.

I want to know who did that to you. Yeah. One of the ambulance must run over. [laughter] Tell everybody that I get well soon.

Thank you very much. I've been this way since November, hence the tardiness of the report. But thank you very much. My name is Alicia Moore. I'm with Lifenet. I'm the CEO. Good evening, directors, mayor, and city manager. Darren Higgs, our area director for Texas is with me tonight. And then Adam Oliver, our COO. Just wanted to briefly go over the report that we dispersed back in November. Just a little bit of the highlights that we have uh for the city of Tex County, Arkansas. uh we responded to almost 4,000 requests for ambulance services and our response time compliance at that time was 87%. Uh since then we have made some operational changes to posting and um we put on a dedicated transfer truck to service our hospitals and so now our response time is well over 93%. What I found was really interesting is that the most busy time for transports in the city of Chester County, Arkansas was 11:00 a.m. and the least busy time was 2 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. Our patients are extremely happy with our service. Uh we have a patient satisfaction of 91%. And our busiest month in Arkansas was in April. We've done about 30 community events here and we've had around 78 numbers of calls for sudden cardiac arrest

and the survival rate for those victims is 21%. Now I know that might sound really low but the average the national average is around 9% and so we consistently beat that over the years or or this past year. Um, we also have the outcomes of the calls that we ran and the top three outcomes for texture county Arkansas are 18% is six sick person. I mean they they don't have anything major identified at the time until after an evaluation. The next was at 11% was breathing problems. And then the third highest uh at at 11% as well was falls that we responded to. The enhancement that we've had um and we've made changes to our communications center and they are required to have the appco training. We've also received some new fleet in the this past fiscal year and then we've increased our educational standards. Uh in addition to we've added PALS which is pediatric advanced life support and then international trauma life support. So for our current employees and then when they're coming on. All right, let me turn this on because this is kind of neat [clears throat] here. So the equipment the equipment enhancements that we had are um we had new power cotss which is striker stretchers which load our patients up this way but we also just recently have power loads and that helps load the the patient into the ambulance. Oh, let me get back over here. Oh, this is not going to pay. Anyway, that's me on the right. That's not me doing this injury here, but I did take a ride, the first ride on the the power load just to

see what the the patient would experience moving into the ambulance. And it is much better.

They actually the employees actually u really uh had positive things to say during this ice storm because it was much easier on the patients when we had to go out and do that. We deploy Lucas mechanical CPR devices which helps uh with um CPR, not doing it manually. And then we also have a Ferno Neomate which is a a little bitty contraption that sits with onto the stretcher to help youth that are 5 to 14 pounds are they're they're adhere adhered tighter onto the stretcher. We also adjusted our pay scale for our medics and this was a huge it was a huge win for our company because our our medics can come and make 70,000 just starting out. They don't have any experience. And then we've had numerous leadership trainings where we've brought companies in and for all of our managers and for our employees. And that we continue to offer our EMT and paramedic classes, our EMT classes in-house. And then we partner with our local college for our paramedic classes. and our staffing has improved tremendously to where I think now we have two holes, one or two holes as of we just did NEOP new new employee orientation this week, last week. So, we're super excited about that. We also are deploying a new CAD which is the the dispatching software to allow our runs in our trucks for that and our new HR software for UKG this year. So we have a lot of stuff going on. We're able to put back into our company. We are improving our post downtown. It's on 7th Street. We're going to do a whole new outside do some in inside improvements as well. And

then we're going to remove, we have an old storage tank there. We're going to remove it and kind of level out that parking system there. Some community highlights. We've partnered with some high schools to assist in EMT programs. That's been a one of our focus is educational uh getting getting into our high schools. So they'll have have a job to come into afterwards and working with the health departments in the educa in the educational department in the schools to be able to offer EMT class their whole senior year and then they can come and do writeouts with us and then they'll be ready when they graduate high school to come and interview with us. We also launched our community health paramedic program and we through the state of Arkansas we received a grant and that has continued and so we're able to see residents and really focus on stroke individuals but we also see um those individuals who call us frequently and try to get them into other programs not necessarily the hospital. and uh we've decided [clears throat] to enhance our community involvement in all of our cities and the counties that we've served. And that's what we've been doing for this last physical year. This report is from our fiscal year. It's October 1st through September 30th, and we delivered it back in November, but I injured myself November [clears throat] the 9th. And so that's why it's it's taken us a little bit to get on the agenda. But that's what we've been doing. And I'll take any questions now if y'all have that.

Does anybody have any questions? Just out of curiosity, do y'all track on a percentage of basis? How often one of our units, the fire department, assist y'all? Do y'all Could [clears throat] you give me a on a percentage basis how often that is? I don't have that number off the top of my head. Do you know that one? [clears throat] Tell me again what he was saying. When the fire department assists with us.

Okay. So, they assist us on cardiac arrest MVAs and anytime we get on scene and call, but I don't have the I don't have the number for the gear uh medical ad our medical advisory committee uh that some of one of the guys from fire department comes to that and they report on that to us monthly. But I don't have the annual number. Darren, would you list to me those those incidents where the the city automatically responds with you or the fire department automatically responds? What what are those again? Cardiac arrest, MVAs, and anything that would require uh extrication. Okay.

Automatically respond once we get on scene, [clears throat] we need assistance and then we'll call and they respond. Okay. Any other questions? Director Harris, you stated that somebody can start off making $70,000. What position is that again? Paramedic. Paramedic. Yes, sir. So, what training would they have to have? Uh, could they come from the college out here at uh you Arkansas over here if they have their paramedic license? Yes, sir. They can. Okay. And do they teach I don't know if they teach that or not. They do. They do. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions? Just a comment. We are blessed to have y'all serving our area. Truly, y'all do a fantastic job. Very professional. Thank you.

Likewise, I was want to make the same comment. Uh I really do love the initiative that you all are doing with the youth. Uh one brief question. I know we're reaching out to the youth here in Tex County. Are we reaching out to the youth there in like maybe uh Dodridge, U F Genoa, Garland, other parts of Miller County to do? We we do go recruit in those areas. We get invited by the colleges and and it's a a collaborative effort because other agencies are in there as well. But we do reach out to those. Our actual our first EMT high school program was started in Redwater. Awesome.

And we donated an ambulance there for them uh to practice on. And in that that program, we're working with Pleasant Grove and and [snorts] both Texas High and Arkansas and meeting with us and getting that good. We're super excited about that as well. Well, I'm looking forward to working with you all. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Any other questions? Thank y'all. All right. Thank y'all so much.

We'll move right on into our consent agenda. We have one, two, three, four items on our consent agenda. Item number three is approval of the minutes of the rescheduled meeting for January 20th. Item number four is to adopt a resolution authorizing and directing the city manager to enter into an engineering engineering contract with Spears Engineering LLC for the design of 2025 street bond rehab project Sanderson Lane, Garland Avenue, and Senator Street. Item number five is adopt a resolution authorizing city manager into a contract with RBIS LLC for the Jackson Street water 6-inch water line replacement project. And item number six is to adopt a resolution authorizing city manager enter into a Microsoft enterprise licensing agreement with tier 4 technologies. What would be the desire of the board for the consent?

Motion to adopt. Mayor. Yes sir. I would like to take number three and number four officer consent. Agent item number three and item number four remove. What is the desire on items five and six? Motion [clears throat] to adopt. Second. Have a motion and second. Any other discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Opposed. No. Five and six pass. Director Harris.

The reason why I was asking uh number three taken off the consent agenda cuz I noticed that two sections not not on there. And it was a section that when uh uh Tony Miller made some statement uh about me per se uh I I did make this two or three statement but I noticed that's not during the cell communication time. Then also when that lady came up which you let speak out of turn at the end of the meeting it's not in there that she spoke out of turn at the last part of the meeting. That's not that's not in the minutes either. So, and my thing is these men should be somewhat of a history uh standpoint regardless of they they doesn't give a per say snapshot but actually in my opinion what what actually goes on at a meeting per se but that I do think that my statement even though I am going to address that eventually and uh uh actually show what the Supreme Court reading actually say but but that's but that's not here or there. I'm just really going to show but my thing is about the minute it doesn't say u I think I made three statement when he got up and spoke uh uh I can repeat them but I I think I said take take me to court uh you are about harassment and some other stuff so but those none of those is not in the minutes then that lady spoke at the end of the meeting uh when she was calling out me say that's not in the minutes So,

any other discussion? And uh we got a uh a parliamentary with uh I guess he going to get ready to say something to uh the uh the uh the uh city attorney. Well, the minutes are not a verbatim transcription of everything that was said. It's not like it's a transcript, right? And so the minutes need to reflect action taken by the board.

Oh, I understand that. But if he made a statement and I said something in regarding to that statement, uh those three words what I made is not in there. So even though I'm am going to eventually address what he stated then what they later stated at the end of the meeting. No, even though she went out of out of turn which the mayor let her uh didn't stop her and that was in violation of the city commun city policy by letting somebody speak when sales communication was over with. But that going to come as a different complaint where I'm going to make at the board meeting too. But but the point that's that wasn't in the minute minutes. So you acting like this never did happen.

Because it's not in the minutes does not mean something didn't happen. Well, [snorts] it's it's the minutes need to reflect action taken by the board and those comments were not an action taken by the board. Well, what is about by about by about by about by about by uh uh Tony Miller comments was well not his comment even though his paid why come when I ask the mirror to let me I would like to make comments and regard through that and that doing sales communication t now why is those comment that I made not in the minutes it's it's it's still not an that's not an action well sound like the mean you you is in violation of well I I I have No.

Okay. Any other discussion on the minutes? The desire of the board. Motion to adopt. Second. Have a motion and a second to adopt the minutes. Any other discussion? Could you call the role? Director Harris? No. Director Halabish? Yes. Assistant Mayor Brewer? Yes. Director Juel? Yes. Director Smith? Yes. Director Roberts? Yes. Mayor Brown? Yes. Item number four, Director Harris.

Okay. And I noticed that when you was doing this bond issue, bringing it up, I noticed S Lane lane on there and I think I stated that Sans Lane part of that is concrete uh street and I asked that question. Was was it going to be a concrete street? And you said you going to let it be or let the uh the the engineering person decide that. I don't think that engineers should decide whether the street go back as a concrete street when it's already concrete street and I'm report I'm referring to sson lane so and my thing is what is that going to be deploy this concrete on s lane

we don't know that'll be worked out during the engineering phase okay and what point would the board know that would they know that prior to a vote So the so the people that live over there on Son Lane will be notified that this board decide not to make their street a concrete street if it's already concrete concrete street. The contract will come before the board before for your approval. So you could certainly inquire about it then. I'll let you know when. Well,

I mean in the in the agreement for engineer services, it states for Sanderson Lane, reconstruct existing asphalt base, repair concrete surface, apply asphalt surface, repair replace drainage structures as required, and regrade ditches as necessary for drainage. Preliminarily, we expect for it to stay concrete, but I don't want to say that and and something changes because we haven't done the the groundwork yet. We don't we don't know what what all that entails. There's quite a bit of design work that needs to go into it first. Any other discussion? If not, I would instruct the attorney to read the resolution. [snorts]

Whereas the public works department is requesting the approval of the city of Tex County, Arkansas board of directors to authorize the city manager [laughter] to enter into a contract [clears throat] with Spears Engineering Company LLC for the design of the following 2025 street bond rehab projects. Sanderson Lane, Garland Avenue, and Senator Street. And whereas the city submitted a a request for qualifications in January 2025 for engineers, architects, and surveyors. And whereas Spears Engineering Company LLC was selected as a qualified engineer for city projects based on their qualifications and extensive work history with the city. And whereas the si the whereas Spheres Engineering Company LLC submitted their design fee proposal for this project in the amount of $293,63. And whereas the bond funds for these streets will not be available until June 2026. So these initial engineering fees will be paid from the public works budget in order for construction to begin shortly after bond funds are received. Now therefore, be it resolved by the board of directors of the city of texture county, Arkansas, that the city manager is authorized to enter into a contract with Spears Engineering Company LLC for the purposes set forth above with funding from the sources so indicated. Pass and approve this second day of February, 2026.

City attorneys read the resolution, desire the board to adopt. Have a motion and a second. Any other discussion? You call the role. Director Harris, yes. Director Halibush, yes. Assistant Mayor Brewer, yes. Director Juel, yes. Director Smith, yes. Director Roberts, yes. Mayor Brent, yes. The resolution passes. We have one item on our regular agenda tonight. It's adopt the resolution approving a legal services agreement with the city prosecutor, Eric Marks. Tyler.

Yes, sir. I received a request from the city prosecuting attorney um back towards the um I believe it was the middle of last year or so um for the board to increase that uh his contracted amount from 5,000 a month to 6,667 a month. Um it is in the budget if y'all decide to move forward with that. Um the the justification that he gave me at that time that they have increased the collections in fines and for forfeitures from about 650,000 in 2023 to a little over a million um starting in 2024 since the last two years we've collected about a million in fines and forfeitures.

Any other questions? If not, I'd instruct the city attorney to read the resolution.

Whereas, by resolution number 2020-45, the board of directors of the city of Teture Can, Arkansas, appointed Eric A. Marks to serve as city prosecutor and authorized the city manager to enter into a legal services agreement with him. And whereas the city desires to approve a new legal services agreement with Eric A. marks upon the same terms and conditions previously approved except that compensation will now be $80,000 per year and whereas the city manager and staff recommend approval of said agreement. Now therefore be it resolved by the board of directors of the city of Texan, Arkansas that the city manager is authorized and directed to execute the legal services agreement on behalf of the city and to take any actions reasonably necessary to carry out the intent of this resolution. Pass and approve the second day of February, 2026.

City attorneys read the resolution. Desire of the board. Motion to adopt. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any other discussion? You call the role. Director Harris, yes. Director Halibush, yes. Assistant Mayor Brewer, yes. Director Juel, yes. [clears throat] Director Smith, yes. Director Roberts, yes. Mayor Brown, yes. The resolution passes. Moving down to board commentary. Any board member have anything to discuss? I would like to just make a quick comment. Okay.

Um I don't know many of you may know Mickey Stewart uh uh that passed away here recently. Had been sick for quite a while on Joan Stewart Funeral Home. Um he's gonna public visitation will be um this Friday at Mount Grove Church from 5 to 7 and uh the uh services will be at Trinity Baptist Church Saturday at 11:00. You if you don't know Mickey, you may know his mother um for about four decades. She worked in the Miller County Assessor's Office and was the assessor for quite a while herself. Uh very very good family and very big part of the community.

Anyone else? Yes. Um, I just want to make a comment in regards to the public utilities commission. Um, I want to thank the Swepco maintenance team. They've done a fabulous job and they're continue to prep um for um upcoming storms and um I just want to thank them for, you know, for all they do and Lisa Thompson and her group. That's all I have. Mayor, I yield my time. Anyone else? Tyler, do you have anything? No sir, I do not.

Okay. I would point out that our next meeting will be on Tuesday, February 17th. Monday will be the 16th as a federal holiday. So we'll be meeting on Tuesday, February 17th. Having said that, uh, no other business to conduct to entertain a motion to adjurnn. Motion for adjournment. Second. Have a motion, a second. Could you call a role? Director Harris, yes. Director Halibush, yes. Assistant Mayor Brewer, yes. Director Chuel, yes. Director Smith, yes. Director Roberts. Yes. Mayor Brown. Yes. We're journed.