Board of Directors - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. I would like to call to order the September 29th, 2026 Little Rock City Board of Directors reconvene meeting. We would like to welcome those in attendance as well as those watching at home or streaming online. Madam Clerk, if you would please call the roll.

Here. We have seven modifications for today's agenda. Five additions, two deferrals. The modification.

Mayor, make a motion to add M1, M2, M3, M4, and M5 to December 15, and October 20, respectively. I think it's 10. 10. I'm sorry, 10. 2 and 10. Sorry.

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Ayes have it. Madam Clerk, if you would, please read the items.

There's a motion to second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Ayes have it. Madam Clerk, you will please read the group items for the second time.

There's a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Ayes have it. Third and final reading.

Members of the board, we've had three readings. Are there any questions? Are there any questions? All those in favor, please say aye. All those opposed, say nay. Ayes have it.

All those opposed say nay. Aye's have it.

And now we're going to open up the public hearing item number 11. Madam Clerk, you will please read that for the second time.

There's a motion. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Aye. Ayes have it. Madam Clerk, would you please read for the third time.

I now close the hearing. We've had three readings. Any questions? Any questions? Any questions? All those favorably say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Eyes have it. Before we go into a brief executive session, we'll ask JTS to give their presentation now. Briefly.

Director Phillips. Thank you, Mayor. So I had a question on pages eight and nine. And this just my for clarity on page eight. I mean, the decision we're making essentially is 3 million one direction, 3 million other directions, the way I'm looking at it, if we go self funded, and things work out as expected, we save three ish million. And if it Doesn't work out as expected. It could cost us $3-ish million.

And then on page nine, with the gap compounding over the next three years, the self-funded number that's on page nine, is that the expected or the ceiling? Okay. So theoretically, the ceiling in each of those years could be higher or closer to this fully insured number, correct? All right. That's the clarification I needed. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Mayor.

Thanks, Mayor. Help me understand the Samaritan Fund. I'm not sure I quite understand where where that how that works.

So the city has to pay to be a part of that? Sheridan Fund is a national fund. I mean, it's a company, it's an organization. Yes, sir.

So they're a well-funded organization. I've never heard of them. How much money do they have? What's the net worth?

Thank you. Director Phillips. Yeah, two points of clarification, Mayor. I guess it's probably for you. When will we actually vote on this? Will it be part of at the end of the month, early November?

Yes, as again, we got some new information. Myself, the CFO, first and foremost, as I shared early on in the process, that short of something drastic happening, we will move towards self-funded as our recommendation in the budget. I'm still leaning towards that myself, the CFO, Chief People Officer and Chief Hubbard. But we did get some new information today. We want to make certain that we take that into extent and to context as well from a budgetary standpoint as we move forward. So that's number one, still on that trajectory towards self-funded, but When you get a reduction, you get a reduc

Not anytime soon. Okay. And then one other question.

Again, the reason why is I think we all understand our health care insurance significantly impacts our overall budget.

I'm with you on that. And one other clarification question. I thought I heard you correctly. You said the 23.6 of the expected self-funded does not include The levers or it does include the levers?

And I appreciate that. So on page 10, it says the carriers 2.36 million projection assumes these levers are pulled. So am I miss? What am I missing? Because I read that to mean that the 23.6 does include these things. Am I reading it wrong?

Okay. Okay. So 23.6 is the high end, could be lower assuming these levers are pulled.

Okay. I'm with you. I thought I was missing something. So thank you for that clarification.

And just for clarification, just so you understand, I'm sharing with them, we'll make a decision, but they won't vote on it after this.

Got it. I just didn't want to leave that out yet. And that's all I had, Mayor. Thank you.

Thanks. I'll be brief. I appreciate you guys getting this turn around. John and I talked yesterday and he gave me a heads up this was coming, so that's why I don't have a whole lot of questions. I think this is actually we've known this was coming. I think the fact that we've got it well ahead of our budget because it's such a big number within our budget allows us to make some other decisions ahead of time versus waiting until the last minute. So I appreciate you guys' efforts on this. And I know they like to throw us curveballs in the end. But it does look like they've sweetened the pot. I a

Thank you, Mayor. It's not necessarily a question for you, for you guys, but I'm curious, Mayor, you may be able to answer this to share. What's the status of our wellness clinic? How many people are in it? What percentage do we have? Got any kind of information on that? And if it goes more employees, it goes down, I mean, how does that work?

Okay. I don't know why I thought we had a wellness clinic.

You set aside the money for it. It has to go through the engineering and the bids and all that process.

What's the difference between a wellness clinic and a wellness program?

OK. OK, I understand the wellness program and the wellness clinic We're not talking, we're almost talking about a brick and mortar kind of place. Yes, sir. Okay. Got you.

And the wellness clinic is supposed to go into the 12th Street building where UAMS was. So we had to deal with all that and that transition from UAMS getting out and a lot of stuff goes into it. And we're grateful to fill that space with UAMS being out, so.

All right. Is there a motion to go to executive session? There's a motion. Is there a second? All those in favor, please say aye. All those opposed, say nay. Ayes have it. We'll take, for those in the audience, we're going to executive session. As you just saw, we went through all of the reconvene meeting. We're still in the reconvene meeting. We'll come back from the executive session, report back from the executive session, then adjourn, and then swiftly go into our agenda meeting for those who are here for the agenda meeting. We won't take that long, too long. We've now reconvened from exec

On Item two, I'd like some information on that from our public works folks.

Hey, Manisha, how are you? Let me pull this up. I've got it in front of me. Sorry. So as I went into the resolution, Am I reading this right? So this is a $25 million project. We've got a 20% match. So it's actually 30 million 31.25. So then once we duck these over $4 million in engineering fees, we're roughly got 25.6 million in construction costs, approximately.

And I've had this You know, I brought this up before that if I'm doing my math right, that puts the engineering consulting fees at around 17 percent, which to me in any private sector business is way out of line, probably double what they should be. And so I've got some serious questions on why that is as as we've gone in the past, because that's money that could be used to do another intersection, make another safe. And it just I wasn't familiar with some of the engineering firms, and I'm also hearing from other engineering firms in town that our portal is not emailing them when we put bids o

NEW SPEAKER AND I GUESS THE OTHER QUESTION IS, IS ANY OF THIS WE CAN DO IN HOUSE AND THEN GET CREDIT TOWARDS OUR 20%? FOR DOING THAT WORK IN HOUSE VERSUS HAVING TO PAY IT OUT.

NEW SPEAKER ANY OF IT. BOTH. I KNOW CONSTRUCTION WE NORMALLY DON'T DO BUT WE'VE GOT ENGINEERS ON STAFF.

Okay. All right. If you would get me the information on that, I would I would appreciate it. Like I said, this is something I told you guys I'd be looking at and we can't continue to pay out all these fees that that, you know, that or we don't get our cost estimates right. And we end up with we end up engineering to a lower budget. And then I guess the question for Tom is,

And I can tell you, and you can share with the procurement team, that the engineering firms that are not getting notifications, because they're going back and checking. Yes. That's why I'm getting calls.

Our staff's attitude is, well, you need to contact Bonfire about that. We're the ones pushing everybody to use Bonfire. Are we paying Bonfire for this service? I mean, and these are questions you can get me answers to. But I know that Bonfire is charging our vendors to sign up on the service. So.

Director, what I would ask you to do is to get us those. And I'm sure people called you. But I can give you an instance just last week, a known vendor who's done some previous work with the city but hasn't done it in a few years for whatever reason. They have not signed up with Bonfire, so they didn't receive the email because they're not part of the system.

These are all vendors that are signed up on Bonfire, and I'm telling you the response that three of them got from our staff was you need to contact Bonfire. We don't have anything to do with that. That's what I'm saying. It's not acceptable. We're forcing vendors to use that system. Then we need to get some skin in the game when we're hearing that people aren't getting emails when they should have got notifications because they're on our list of qualified qualified engineers. They've responded to our request for qualifications that I guess we last time we did them was in 2025. They're on that

If you'll just make sure you give us the names that I'm just sharing with you that there's sometimes a user error that we've seen, even with people who are signed up. So just if you'll get us that, then we'll figure that out.

All right. Anything else on items 1 through 18? Any questions on items 1 through 18? All right. Any questions on item 19? All right. Before we adjourn, are there any questions or concerns? Going once. Going twice. Oh, thank you so much, Director Miller. For those in attendance and those watching online, our next scheduled city board meeting will be October 5th, which is a Monday, and not October 6th during our normal time because October 6th is National Night Out, where the city of Little Rock will have four to five National Night Out locations that we'll be participating in as it relates to c

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay. Aye. Say aye. Meeting adjourned.