Board of Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Good evening. This February the 3rd, 2026 board of alderman meeting is hereby called to order. I'd like to ask Alderman Giller Hart to lead our invocation and followed by the pledge of allegiance which I'll lead. Please stand.

Thank you, mayor. Let us pray. Most gracious God and our heavenly father, we give you thanks for this day. Lord, you have promised that where two or more gather in your name, you would be among us. And we thank you, Lord, for your presence here tonight. Lord, we give you great thanks that um you've sustained us and seen us through this storm. I know there are others who fared a lot worse. And we continue to pray for them that they would be restored, their homes and businesses, and they would get back to uh whatever a normal life is for them. Thank you, Lord, for those who've served our city and protected us for keeping our city workers safe and uh again for them who've kept us moving in our city and kept us warm. Lord, we give you thanks for all the blessings we have. We ask you to continue to have your hand upon us that everything we do in this city would be honor and glorifying to you. May the decisions we make tonight bless you and please you in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Salute. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Please be seated. Miss Stewart, would you conduct a roll call? Aldridge here. Collins here. Dickerson here. Hart here. Gamage here. Hamilton here. Wallace here.

Thank you all. President quorum established. Just a reminder for those who speak and for everyone who participates tonight, this is streamed live on the city's YouTube channel and archive for playback as well. And those of us with microphones, please have your mic uh on green when you're speaking so everyone can can hear you as you speak. Just a couple FYI. You see the kindness challenge uh in your packet board. I think that's been rescheduled because of the weather. Uh Dr. Crutchfield's uh proclamation license report Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day a really awesome program at St. Luke and I would like to point out that Alderman Don Gamage and Police Chief Carlos Garcia received trailblazer awards at that program. So congratulations uh for those awards. Welld deserved and congratulations to you gentlemen. board. You have the minutes before you January the 20th, 2026. Any questions on the minutes, comments, or or motions?

Motion to approve. Second, Miss Hamilton. Motion to approve. Second, Mr. Gamage. Any discussion? All in favor? All opposed. Motion carries. We are fortunate to have our DInnesota Technic Robotics team back with us. I know you performed statewide and done some great things and now you're headed to the national stage I believe. Uh certainly like to see what you have to present tonight and I think you have a request for the board as well. And this is Mr. Joe Ricker and team.

Yes. Thank you so much for letting us uh speak tonight to the board mayor and u citizens. So yes, we are I'm the coach for Dotto Technics robotics team. We're a community-based high school students. Come on, Bella. So, we have seven members total. Three could only make it tonight, but we have four additional members as well. So, seven students, and I'm the coach. And um this is our team captain, Nathan, Bella, and Raymond. And so, they all participate on the team. So, what I want to do is last year we came and talked about our robot to everybody, and it was really cool. And we were about this time, we were on our way to the state championship at the time. We did win the state of Mississippi last year and we won a birth to the national champ or the the world championship, sorry, and that was in Houston where 250 teams from around the world compete. So there are more than 8,000 youth robotics teams globally and at the World Championship 50 there were 56 countries represented at the World Championship. And so we were one of two teams from Mississippi that made it to that championship. And at the championship we did the team did fantastic. In fact, they got fourth place in their division.

And coming out of the World Championship last season, you guys saw the robot. It extended and did all kinds of really cool stuff. And coming out of that tournament, they ended their after world championship ranked seventh in the world out of 8,000 teams. Wow. And we're a little old team here based in Olive Branch, Mississippi. And we get to compete on a world stage. And so seventh out of 8,000.

Seventh place out of 8,000. Thank you. Thank Thank you. So, yeah, really excited about that. So, they did a fantastic season last year. So, they they again are starting this is their third season and this is the robot. I'm going to let them talk about the robot here in a minute, but just a little more information about this year. We've had two competitions so far. They're both qualifier tournaments, one in Tupelo, one in Water Valley. We won both of them. So, we have advanced to the state championship that's in Oxford in March, early March. And if we win there, then we get to go to the world championship again. And we are hopeful to do that to continue on. But before we get to state, we're really honored and excited to participate in a in an inaugural event this year. First time they've ever done it. And it's known as the Governor's Cup. And I'm going to read a little bit. It's just easier to read from their from the website on what Governor's Cup is. Then I'll talk about it, and then I'm going to let Nathan talk about the robot. So, I'm going to read this from their website, and it says this. As our nation prepares for a future where engineering and automation are essential skills, we must adopt new models that will better prepare our students for the modern workforce. To showcase what's possible for America, we are hosting the first annual United States Governor's Cup. The Governor's Cup will be the first event of its kind, a STEM focused state versus state competition designed to showcase our students ingenuity and readiness for the future. Partnering with experience experiential robotics, the cup represents an exciting alternative to paper test and standardized exams with live applied robotics challenges with the first tech challenge. The inaugural event will convene in Washington DC in February 2026 during the National Governor's Association Winter Meeting and America 250 festivities. United all 50 states in a high visibility March Madness style tournament over the course of two days. This event showcases design thinking, technology, and teamwork as measures of student achievement and workforce readiness and underscores a

bipartisan state-driven model for scaling hands-on STEM nationwide. So, I want to let you all know about one thing about Governor's Cup. You have to apply to it and only one team from each state gets to go. We were invited by Governor Reeves to represent Mississippi at the Governor's Cup in it's in two weeks in two weeks from Saturday. And so, that's part of our request. We we we love being supported by our community and I know Olive Branch supported us last season financially and this is a new event to get to go to Washington DC and we will get to take Governor Reeves to our pit and show him around what we do and give him a hands-on tour of our robot and what we do and he'll get to see us compete as part of the governor's convention that's going on in DC in a few weeks. So, um so that's part of our request. I'm going to leave with you guys our our packet we had last time. has all the information about our the team, what they do, fundraising goals, and all that kind of stuff is all in here. And I'm going to leave it at that. Um, but again, we are hopeful to continue on. We've got a great robot. I'm going to let Nathan talk about it a little bit. He's going to tell you what the robot does and what the challenge is. So, this season is called Decode. And the challenge this season is we had to take these 5inch balls called artifacts. We had to score them in a structure called the uh the goals and we have to take these from the field and be able to shoot them. So the robot does this by first having an active intake. This allows us to intake those artifacts inside the robot. It's a direct transfer from the front of the intake into the shooter and turret. The shooter is mounted on top of a turret which allows us to rotate where we want to shoot from without having to have the robot face that direction. Then we use this shooter up here to launch the artifacts by using this spinning wheel here. and this adjustable hood, which we can change the trajectories that the artifacts launch at into different distances and heights of the goals. And then at the end of the match, you

can park in a zone and you can only fit one robot, but if you park fit two, you can get extra points. So, we built an ascent mechanism that allows the robot to transfer power from its drive motors to the we use linear slides that allows the robot to ascend. So, we can have a robot park underneath us. What's this robot's name? It's a Sidewinder on the back. Okay.

Yeah. So, so um I I I have Mayor Adams email. I will email Tina and and Mayor Adams um some links that when we go to competitions and you know you you can follow us online. All of our competitions are live streamed so you can see you can watch them and see what we do and uh get a little bit more because it's really neat when you see these balls. They shoot like 10 feet into the goal. And at the end this robot actually lifts up and and and rises up. It rises up off the the ground a couple feet so another robot can drive up underneath it. We're the I think the only team in the state that's able to do that. So it's a really cool mechanism. Very complex. I can't I don't understand it. The kids do, but um I encourage you to get online, watch some of the competitions. you can see what it does. So, we really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Shoot that ball. Yeah. No demonstration tonight. Uh yeah, we don't have the battery in it now. He didn't want to do it in here. I you know, but I know it looked great last year picking up items and putting it down in its quadrant and all is pretty neat. Can we get the students names? Oh, yes. Yeah. Go ahead. Introduce yourselves, guys. My name is Nathan. I'm the team captain and design lead. My name is I am My name is I am the I'm learning to design parts and stuff like right now like stand for all of our control components and stuff. So like our controllers robot and

awesome. And we have four other students. Uh Sebastian is one of our design leads. He does a lot of the design. He designed the entire intake, active intake and all that. Um and then uh uh Amelia I'm trying to blank. Amelia does our uh portfolio. So with any engineering if you can have great ideas, if you can't communicate those ideas in a meaningful way, your ideas aren't all that great unless you can communicate it. So she's a does a fantastic job at assembling our engineering portfolio. So that's what she leads. And then um uh Jaden does a lot of our outreach and she does scouting and things for us. Who am I forgetting? Hudson.

Hudson. Hudson all is our Hudson. We don't compete without Hudson. He's our coder. He does all the coding. So there's a 30 second autonomous period where the robot has to do a certain set of skill, you know, instructions without touching the robot. It has to do it with this preset instructions and then the driving. So this is a mechanum drive. It's a very complex drive system that all has to have code for so it knows how to drive and how it moves around the field. So when it moves, it's omniirectional. It goes any direction. So it can go sideways, back without moving. So all of that takes special code that he does a lot of that coding as well. So lot of cool stuff. Um I I apologize we don't have it powered because if we do these things shoot pretty far and we didn't want to,

you know, I know in the spring we wanted it to patch some potholes. Can it scrape ice? Can it scrape ice on the roadway? It might be. Yeah. I want to put a scraper on it for my driveway on it. Yeah, we needed it this week, didn't we? But but yeah, so we're excited. We really appreciate the support. Oh, one last request. We are going to DC to represent the state of Mississippi. We love that we're from Olive Branch. If there's anything that our city wants to take give us to take with us, a banner, a flag, or something we can put in our pit that says, "Hey, we're from Olive Branch, and we're representing our community." Awesome. Really for all the entire United States.

Awesome. We've got your contact number and I see Jay, our communications director, shaking his head. We have some items we'd love to be displayed and we thank you for record the city. Yes, absolutely. We thank you so much. So, and that packet that you're leaving has some different request items uh monetary that you would ask. It has it has what our fundraising goals are and our needs. We don't ask for an amount. We ask what you know what you guys can decide to give. We have giving levels for corporate sponsors and things like that. you can see that and feel free to, you know, it's like these are some of our corporate sponsors, I think, on the back, you know. So, yeah. And and at a certain level, we put 3D printed logos on the robot and stuff. So, it's all in here.

And Mr. Ricker, real quick, what what high schools are represented in your group? These are all homeschool students. All homeschool. Okay, great. So, um we're like I said, there was we it's a community- based team. Uh we did have one student from Dotto Central for a period of time and then she's she's not going there anymore but um yeah but the rest of the students are all homeschooled. Yeah. Awesome. Good stuff. Thank you so much. We will get back with you for sure. M I leave these with Would you leave it with the clerk and the board will look over that and we'll get back with you. Mr. Recorder. Thank you. Approve the minister

Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Swallz. Good evening. This is the time on the agenda for the mayor's award. And it's my privilege to award two people this time. the mayor's award and the they were submitted by director Greg Booker and his nomination is as follows. I would like to nominate park team members Eddie Bowwin and Taylor Swallis for the mayor's award in recognition of their exceptional dedication and service. In late December, while carrying out their regular duties, Eddie and Taylor observed a significant amount of trash on Highway 305 in front of the Shell station. The debris was obstructing traffic and created safety concerns for motorists. Without being prompted, they took immediate action and thoroughly cleaned the area, allowing traffic to resume flowing safely and smoothly. This is just one example of the initiative, selfishness, and strong work ethic that Eddie and Taylor demonstrate on a daily basis. Their willingness to go above and beyond their assigned responsibilities positively reflects on the parks department and the city of Olive Branch as a whole. I wholeheartedly concur and agree. And while it whether it's trash or whether it's ice, people, we public works did a phenomenal job uh with ice and snow and snow on the ground, but parks always adds in as well. Y'all worked hours of overtime and helped with that. Uh but thank you for this nomination. Uh Mr. Booker, and I hate you have to split the award, but here's 125 and 125 for the $250 monthly mayor's award. And thank you very much for what y'all do.

And as always, for the record, uh that's not from tax dollars. Those are from donations from businesses uh in order for us to reward employees for going above and beyond. Board, you I want to just cover a couple things on the mayor's update. I'll I'll be brief. We all know what we've been dealing with. Uh we declared an emergency on January the 23rd. Uh, North Mississippi was inundated with six inches of ice. I don't think we've had I know we haven't had an event like this since 1994. Uh, right now I think we're at 26 lives lost in the state of Mississippi and about 80 75 to 80 I keep seeing different numbers nationwide due to this winter storm Fern. Uh, we've got a tremendous amount to be thankful for as a city. We've had no loss of life to date. We've had no interruption of water, natural gas, sewer. Those utilities have held strong. I'll cover some numbers in a moment. Uh we've had no electrical interruptions to speak of. Thank you, North Central Power Association or electrical association for that. Uh we've had a plethora of things going on. We've had our police, fire, and EMS collectively have worked 11,16 hours in the last 10 days. They've answered calls from our residents for services, 776 police calls, 150 fire calls, and 187 EMS calls. So, thanks to those first responders. Our airport, as you know, was closed. And when you think closed, you think it's closed. Well, guess what? It was closed to fix wing aircraft, but helicopters were going in and out for FEMA and TVA. FEMA was coming in and out for emergency management, leadership, coordination, and assistance. TVA was bringing linemen and line women in to go work on power lines in other counties where power lines had been disrupted. They were landing their helicopters at our airport. From a social media standpoint, you've

probably seen some of Jay and Jen's uh pulse out information. 3.8 million views uh during the 10 days on social media. Uh I challenge anybody to find a city that pulses out as much information as we do to try to keep residents informed. Phenomenal job there. Public works. They broke into 12-h hour shifts, 800 hours of overtime. Put plows on trucks, tractors, anything that would take a plow and got busy plowing. They covered 200 miles of roadways. 25 yards of agricultural rock put down and 25 tons of ice melt was put down. Our wells, multiple water wells, ran 939 hours and pumped 88.5 million gallons of water without interruption during this 10-day period. natural gas pump 230.6 million cubic feet of natural gas. So, a lot going on and we're just thankful for the men and women who worked to get us through this situation. Uh, from a cost standpoint, CFO May and I looked at this this afternoon and it was an unbudgeted about $490,000 worth of expenses we incurred in the last 10 days because of this ice storm. Definitely different than snow. snow's easy to clean up and so on and so forth. Uh we're fortunate no injuries. We did have a car that crossed two lanes and hit uh our public works director, Mr. Germany, hit his vehicle and thankfully he was okay. Uh the other person was as well and I think we had nine or 10 cracked windshields because of the ice and the cold weather on squad cars having to respond in the patchy ice and and rough terrain. So, uh, just as a reminder because I have to remind myself how large we are. We have 268 mi of collector roads, 55 arterial roads, 19 miles of private roads, and 56 milesi of state roads totaling 398 miles of roadways in our city. Arterial roads

and collector roads were cleaned. Uh, cities will never have enough resources to clean every subdivision roadway. We wish we did, but it's simply not feasible and we don't have that equipment on hand, especially with 17,666 homes. Uh we certainly can't get in front of every driveway, although we'd like to. Uh but just like to thank the men and women that work during this uh severe weather event, and hopefully we'll put it behind us and not have another one hopefully for the rest of this year. You also have the consent agenda just following it, uh items 1 through 17. Any questions or motions on the consent agenda?

Motion to approve it. Motion to approve by Mr. Collins. Is there a second? Second. Second. Mr. Dickerson. Any discussion? All in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. under old business consideration of bids during a reverse auction uh for an emergency vehicle. This was an ambulance. Um you see that that came in at $289,000 asking the board to consider this bid uh through the process to purchase this budgeted ambulance at $289,500.

Mr. Wallace, motion to approve. Second. Second, Mr. Collins. Any discussion? All in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. Under new business, consideration of recommendation for a change order number one on a contract with TJ Construction Incorporated in the deductive amount of $960, decreasing the contract amount from $379,796.75 to $378,836.75 for the project referred to as the gas regulator station on Center Hill. Mr. Swims, that's basically uh

Yes, sir. reduction in the bid price by $960. Two small line item adjustments for deduction of $960. We do recommend it. Silk fence silk fencing and and steel pipe. That's correct. More be more was bid than was actually needed. So, they're asking for a reduction in the amount paid if the board's in agreement. So move second. Ear heart damage. All in favor?

All opposed. Motion carries. Mr. D is going to speak a little bit on the legal ramifications or the basically the local emergency declared January the 23rd uh and why we need to continue this process until we get invoices paid.

That's right. um mayor declared an emergency under the civil emergency statute on January 23rd. Uh basically the main thing that that does is it loosens uh some of the purchasing restrictions that we otherwise would be normally subject to uh two quotes or uh contract entered into before it comes to the board, things of that nature. Um, state law says that a mayor has the authority to declare that emergency and that the board should review or shall review at its next regular meeting or a special meeting called therefore review the continuing need for that emergency. Uh, I recommend that the emergency be continued until February 17th and that will give us time as staff uh to document uh the purchases that were made uh in a method that would not comply with the ordinary purchasing method. uh but they're legal uh purchases because of the emergency declaration and we can finalize that list, present it to the board on the 17th. The board can review that. Our recommendation would be that the board ratify those purchases, say that they were appropriate under the emergency circumstances, and then on the 17th, the emergency could be officially closed in the minutes. Uh but really the the reason for extending the emergency from tonight to the 17th is more clerical than it is an on the ground continuation of the conditions. But mayor, my recommendation is that the board would vote motion second vote for an extension of the emergency to February 17th.

Thank you, Mr. D. Any questions board or any motions? Mr. Wallace motion. Is there a second? Second, Miss Aldridge. Any discussion? All in favor? I. All oppose? Motion carries. Item three, consideration of recommendation to initiate funding opportunities with the core of engineers through section 219 for the 1992 water resources development act. Mr. SWS, would you cover that? I'm not sure about this. Okay. Is this our trip? This is

Yes, sir. This is the u the prior request by the board to our federal representatives for $10 million under the word which is the acronym for the federal core of engineers statute for water and wastewater programs. This is the one mayor where the board had previously requested in 23 for the 24 funding cycle $10 million and we've been advised that there's a possibility of obtaining an additional $10 million under the same core of engineers program and I believe you're going to Washington DC next week and then this would enable you to present a board resolution officially requesting that funding.

Thank you Mr. D. And that's a 7525. Is that correct Mr. May? So out of that 75% from WRA from federal grant and 25% would be city money and reality is we've got to do all of it anyway. So uh if we could get 10 or 20 million would be a windfall and this would just be your declaration that you support us asking for that $20 million. Mr. Dickerson motion second Mr. Collins. All in favor? All opposed? Motion carries. Is there a motion to leave regular session with the intentions of going into executive session to discuss items one through three?

Collins motion. Is there a second? Mr. Aldidge second. All in favor? I. All oppose. We are out of regular session. Is there a motion to go in executive session to discuss personnel matter in the park department pending litigation with city attorney and executive summary? Mr. Mr. Hart, Mr. Wallace. All in favor? All opposed. We are in executive session.