Council - workshop

Good. All right, you ready? All right. I'd like to call to order the Radcliffe City Council work session for Monday, July 13th at, excuse me, July 13th, 2026 at 5 p.m. being held right here at Radcliffe City Hall. If you'll please rise for an invocation and remain standing for a pledge.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day and we thank you for your abundant blessings. Father, we thank you for the mayor and the city council members and we ask that you give them the guidance and wisdom to lead this city forward into the future. Father, we ask that you Bless those that are being affected across our state by the floods. And we ask that you keep safe and watch over our service members who are serving both here and abroad. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. I pledge allegiance 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.

All right, we're here for our work session. Roll call. I don't really need roll call. Go ahead. Roll call.

Bell. Present. Brown. Here. Drosh. Here. Merle. Here. Owens. Present. Thompson.

All right.

First item. Everyone's doing well. Glad to see the sun out finally. uh a little warm but we're glad the rain finally stopped so not much on our work session agenda tonight uh first we have our police chief up so jeff you want to come up we got some policies and procedures all right we got some policies here there

accreditation requires this time. And so you don't know. Last Thursday, we had our KACP accreditation inspection. So we are reaccredited now for I think the fourth term maybe. I guess the fourth time. So that was successful. They collected our check. Kind enough to get us to do this. We're reaccredited. And I think we'll be recognized next month at the KACP Chiefs Conference for that accreditation. But these policies here are ones that they now require for the accreditation. So we've got them going internally. So if you could all approve the whole thing.

Congratulations. Policies are pretty straightforward, so I don't have any questions about those. All right.

Well, you know, coming down next week, if you've got any questions, feel free to call me.

Come by. How'd it go? We've hired a new police officer. We've hired a new police officer in the last two or three weeks.

We have. We hired a female. She has six years of experience with... And she spent the last six months in Panama City. So it comes to us with six and a half years of experience.

Yeah, I know.

It already shows. Helps, doesn't it? Her name is Brooke Russell.

And Chief, I know that he's asked that question, but just so they, I know we know, but just so everybody can hear it. That officer trans, when they lateral in, how long do they usually spend with a? another officer FTO just to get familiarized with our area.

We give them up to eight weeks if they need that. It just depends on how familiar they might be with our area or how often. Sometimes if we hire somebody that's gotten out for a little while and came back, she's pretty up to speed. I think everybody on the ship right now where she's training is. about ready to go other than just learning some in-house duties, paperwork duties, and things like that. Learning the streets. Both the chief at Panama City and Henderson spoke highly of her. So they'd be glad to have her back if we didn't want her.

Sounds like we're blessed to get her then.

Oh, absolutely.

And also, not bragging on the guys, but our recent budget we passed, the council supported the increase in pay, which also helped us retain and keep good officers. So you all play a part in that role. So this is one of those examples of that. So we also could potentially be hiring a ladder or retirees that are looking at more. And I thought it was very interesting. They did look at other agencies and they're, good quality people the chief and i've had a little discussion already about those individuals and they're good they're good officers and they've had long careers at other agencies but because of our pay and talking with the chief i think they're going to be coming on board so five may speak out of turn i think we're going to be bringing them so again that that ground person yeah that helps us recruit and retain and it's taking us a long time to get there but we're finally almost there

Had they already accepted?

Yeah, it's just a matter of paperwork now. I just appreciate y'all giving us the slots to not just get full up from where we're at. Any other questions for Chief?

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. We've come to the last item of the agenda. What a very long agenda. July is usually not because we get all the business done of our budgets or everything. Usually in the past month, August usually picks back up again. But this is our SALT. We participate in the KLC SALT program. That's the auction. We joined that. That's really helped us over the past few years. on being able to get salt for the roads. When I say salt, we're talking about road salt. And so you all should have a copy of that where you see the difference in salt prices. And so 138 and the 143. And that shows you. So it says the low bidder and the bid pricing for Zone 7 is as follows. And that's price per ton. Deliveries 20 tons and over is at 138. 20 tons and under will be at 143. And I think you all know how important salt has been for us over the past few years, especially last year with the amount of ice that we have. And, of course, we used about as much as we could until we could actually break the ice up. But it is important for us to keep that.

seems like we've become a lot more proactive in pre-treating.

So the pre-treating of salt, if those that don't know, you can Google it or whatnot, but we actually have a bat up there that we put, a bat of a tub, that we actually put the salt brine in and we mix it. And as that liquid... I guess separates we put that into big drums and then that drum is what fills up the salt truck or the brine truck and that's what we put out now it's a lot of people where they haven't brought that right well if it's gonna rain we predict there's gonna be rain prior to the snow or an ice or anything of that the brine really doesn't help a whole lot so it usually is very good if we're having a snow event where there's no rain prior to that and so that's where the brine system works

What really helps out there on Preston Hill? I'll tell you, it makes a difference.

And so it takes a long time, but we've been pretty good over the past few years on getting a handle on this stuff. And so it's this year, I think we did very well. We got a lot of compliments on how well we treated and did our roads. And so we did a good job.

How much of this?

Right now we've got about, we ordered some at the end of last year. We're about three quarters through, so we'll order, I think we've got about 400 tons in. We probably need another 200 tons to fill it back up to about 600, 700 tons is what we'd like to keep. Anybody else?

All right.

That's pretty quick and easy for this one. I'd like to welcome our two magistrates that are here. We've got Chris Yates, Magistrate District 1, And I don't just forgot it. Oh, Kenny Saltzman. That's it. Magistrate District two. Sorry, Kenny. I just had to couldn't help myself. Well, I didn't know what you were doing back here when you did that. I had a little concern now, but we appreciate you all being here and thank you all for everything for all you do for our districts. You all represent us. So we're glad to have you all. And anything you all want to say before we it's been a short meeting, so I don't know if you have anything you want to add.

This evening, Judge Beckman is going to lay out this proposal for fire services throughout the county. So I just want to remind everybody how he intends to pay for it. If you want to come out to the third floor of the government building, today would be a good day to listen to the plan.

Gotcha. Kenny, anything on District 2's side?

Nope. That's good information. You just can't get to it.

Gotcha. All right. Well, with that, nothing else. Council members, I'll stop with you. Ms. Bell, you got anything else?

Well, I have to say that I usually have a loud voice, and I don't want to be louder. I have to say, although it's already the 13th of July, the 4th of July, it was the 3rd of July, the day before the 4th, the thunder over Radcliffe, it was unbelievable. I think either the city excelled or the mayor excelled or Ashley excelled or the whole Radcliffe excelled.

It was everybody.

And everybody.

Everybody.

It was massive. It was massive. And also the Shrek is playing at the park at John Harding High School. I saw it two nights ago. and call or go online pac.net, buy your tickets. I can tell you one thing. It takes five hours to dress Fiona. Now you can understand how it is. It is informative. It is lots of music, lots of effort for the Youth Theater of Harding County and I'm proud So go and see it. It plays Friday night, Saturday night, and 3 o'clock matinee. I mean, Friday night, 7, and Saturday night, 7, and Sunday, 3 o'clock matinee. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful week.

Thank you. Jerry? Yes, sir. I try to keep up with what's going on in Radcliffe, and I read stuff on Facebook, Radcliffe Shout and other entities where people kind of vent and let their feelings be known. I want to tell the fantastic citizens of Radcliffe that there are six council people, a mayor, administrative staff, police and fire, department heads, two wonderful magistrates, Kenny Sossman and Chris Yates. All of us are... We welcome and we're available anytime you have a problem, anytime you have a situation. If you don't feel like you're being served, if you don't feel like you're getting the answers to the questions that you're asking, all you have to do is call us. We want to help. If you've got a situation in your neighborhood and you're not sure what to do, give one of us a call. Every single person here is a hands-on person. We want to talk to you. We want to help you. We want to help you find a way to satisfy what's going on. We don't want you to suffer. We don't want you to have to vent and rant on Facebook because that doesn't do anybody any good.

Yeah, to your point, Jerry, I don't think sometimes the public, bless you, I don't think the public understands how much we all actually talk to each other. All of us have communications. All of us work together. All of us talk. And so now sometimes the answer is not always what the person wants to hear. I will say that. It's not always the answer they want to hear. But yes, you are correct. And amount of that we all conversate and talk with other cities i mean we we all do have a very good relationship when it comes to uh working through and reaching out so you are right thank you mr i just want to add to what uh jerry just said i i got a phone call today from somebody

who, you know, it wasn't even anything to do with Radcliffe, but I got an appreciative thank you for answering your phone and taking my call. It had something to do with another entity altogether. The event actually happened in E-Town. But, you know, I listened, and I think that's what we all do. We listen to what someone has to say. we do what we can we can't always do you know do everything that is asked of us but i do to your point think that we all try to make ourselves available so uh i agree with you on that and then just kudos to the city for the fireworks i know i was watching at a distance with my rather large family of 10 sitting in the back of a truck watching and enjoying the works great job thank you

Yes, I'd like to echo also what Councilman Brown just said as far as social media. I know every one of us in here get tagged a lot. Some people use some of the pages that are out there. Personally, I don't respond. I just want the public to know that I see the Radcliffe Shout, and I see my name a lot, and I see other names, and I see some members respond. I've learned a long time ago that nothing good is going to come out of a response from a Radcliffe shout or another social media page. I am very public. I am very open. And my phone number is everywhere. And to Mr. Brown's point, very available. Get called a lot. We all do, but I just want folks to know that I am not one that responds on Facebook because it ends up usually becoming an anonymous nickname response that usually leads to something else that leads to something else that leads to something else that doesn't solve anything. So for me personally, my phone number is out there. I can be reached very easily. And with that being said, we have a lot, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but we have ordinances for animals that it is required that they have fresh water, especially in this heat. It is required that they have food. And we do have a tether ordinance that states they will not be out 24 hours at a time. That one is hard to prove, obviously. So I will say to that, if you see something, say something. If it's in your neighborhood, if it's a neighbor, if it's an animal, if it's a child, if it's an elderly person that needs assistance, we have code enforcement. We have an amazing police department. And as Jerry said, we are available. So please say something before there's a tragedy. And please follow our ordinances on the pets in our community. This is in Vine Grove, but I do want to say that this Friday, the 17th, from 6 to 10, Mayor Ogden and some volunteers are doing a teen night. So it's open to the public. It's 12 to 18 years old. It will be at Optimist Park, and everything is free. There's going to be games, food. food and entertainment there's going to be a dj the splash pad is open to the teens they're going to open that up so it's all free come to the optimist park in vine grove this friday There's a backpack. We've had several backpacks this weekend. Lots of backpacks, a lot of activity, a lot of back-to-school things. There's another one. If you missed the ones this weekend, there's another one on July 25th from 10 to 1.30 at the Radcliffe Elementary School. And I'm sure all these are found on Facebook, but that's at the Radcliffe Elementary School. So take advantage if you need the assistance for backpacks and backpacks. the giveaways that so many people in the community are doing.

Thank you. I'd like to thank Caesar's Pizza this weekend. They were my go-to to get the pizzas for one of the packed backpack giveaways, which we had like three or four going on at the same time. And so we take none of that lightly. It may be a little shimmy in between a widget if someone is missing something on one end or the other, whether it's school supply shoes or just some informational resources from the community services that are around us that help buoy families who not only rely on these kind of activities, they literally look forward to those things. And it takes a lot of people to put them on, as we said up here on this day, it's not one of us, it's all of us. And as far as the, I want to say the fireworks, Went extremely well, and I always stay to help clean up, but I am amazed at how less trash we actually have at the end of the night. I think I got home about 1130, 1145, and so it's kind of the beginning, the middle, and the end when it's time to do those things, even the setup the evening before. And so had no safety violations, no... You know, misbehavior, kids, family members are far and close, and the ones who saw it on the net enjoyed it. And I think every year it actually improves. And then Ina Chief had a great conversation. As I told him, you know, look into my brown eyes and believe me, I am not here to do anything that you haven't heard me say I was going to do. And so I think we beat down a rumor here and there, but it was great for this weekend, and it was safe. And our city and sister cities deserve those kind of things when we can do it, when we can sustain it and afford it. So thank everyone who had something to do with everything that we do here every day.

Yeah, thank you. We had a great turnout with our staff. All departments worked and helped, did a great job. All stayed late. Do you remember how many snow cones you gave out?

I don't remember.

Did y'all, you didn't keep count? Yeah. Yeah. So all the guys, Tim, everybody, I mean, all the officers, everybody, I mean, everybody did a great job. Public works. Ashley and I are running around. This is, it was a good, I mean, it was a great show. I think the parking lot was a little less packed because we kind of put out there that, Once you get in, you can't get out. And I think people found other areas to park, but they were all completely full. North Park was full. Library, front of North Hardin was full. Graveyard. Cemetery, the graveyard. Everybody was in. But everybody exited well. Everybody behaved. We had a good turnout. Food trucks did very well. All of them are very complimentary of the event. So we appreciate everybody's support and help in making all that possible. There's one other thing I was going to mention, Jeffrey, and I can't remember what it was now.

The other thing is a rain.

Oh, well, I get that. Yep. The other thing was the rain. I think I'm going to have to stay in town on Saturdays, Mike, because it seems like every time I leave on a Saturday, we've had a tremendous amount of rain. And so I know we've gotten a lot of phone calls over some rain that's been going on. And Elizabethtown, unfortunately, they had quite a bit of rain over the last few days. And so each community has just seen rain. And I want to thank all of our partners, the other mayors as well, because all of us talk to each other and support each other on trying to figure out how to manage our way through some of this heavy rain. I know the county saw a lot down in 920 and looked like it was flooded out. And so I don't know what's going on. I can't really tell you. We don't have storms anymore. We have monsoons and tornadoes and hurricanes. I'm waiting. I guess earthquakes and volcanoes are going to be next. I don't know what's going on. I know the public calls us quite a bit. That's all I did today was go out and look at drainage issues. We found some that could be an issue on us. We found some that wasn't. Hopefully they understand when you get six, seven inches of rain in a matter of less than 24 hours, that is a A lot of them out. Some are bursts where we're seeing two to three inches in a matter of two or three hours. And so it's a lot of water, a lot of volume. And some of these ditches aren't made for that. And so not an excuse. It's just what it is. And so we'll continue to work through those problems. And our stormwater crews are doing a great job trying to manage all this as well as public work. So. We appreciate all their help. Also, and I know you just asked me, we'll add that tethering ordinance. We can put that out.

The whole ordinance without water and the...

And so we can put that out there. And we ask the public, too, on the other thing, just not to change subject, but just, you know, if you see something out in your ditch that is plugged up or you see a drain that's plugged up and we don't know about it, please, if you want to move it yourself, that's fine. If you want to call our public works department and say, hey, there's a big limb jammed in my drainage ditch out front. I can't get it out. Can you come get it? Give us a heads up and let us know because we can't do it when it's actually raining heavy.

I'm glad you said that. I was out. As you know, I was out. I'm always out. But what I noticed in some places, a lot of it was just some of the culverts, some of the water that's flowing back and forth got impeded because grass grows over. Sometimes it's debris that's in the way, particularly down at sunset when I was following the water. it was actual debris that diverted water back up on the street and we're talking tent liners and old furniture and the water had nowhere to go coming left and coming right and all it did was spill up on the street and flood yeah some of those over there we went over and looked they were on the private property side yes the limbs had piled up they had grown over and that was on the private side exactly and then the back ditch got plugged up so it was exactly they got it from both And most don't understand it because folks are stressed out and they want something done right then and there. And they don't understand and they will assume that they can't do anything about it by moving the debris or something in their front yard, in the street, straw, cups, whatever.

And over a period of time, it just becomes debris that slows down the flow.

So partly our fault for what we can do city-wise and partly their own responsibility to kind of keep their

front and back ends clean.

So altogether, I think it's just awareness. They understand what they can and can't do. We'll do a better issue of it somewhat.

Yep. Well, everybody's point, school's getting ready to start back. So I think they go back August, actually, you know, 6th. August 6th. Can't believe it. Already August. August 6th. So let's start back. I know my wife goes back earlier, so I always get my dates confused. But our next meeting is going to be July 21st. And that's going to be our regular Tuesday night meeting here at 530. And then our next work session is scheduled for Monday the 10th. And so if you can help some young folks that may need some school supplies, please do so. If not, you can donate to organizations that do that. But school is right around the corner. Are you ready for school? Okay, that's all I'd like to hear. All right. What grade are you in now? Oh, my gosh. You're making me feel old now. I remember when you were starting pre-preschool. I'll tell you what. All right. With that, we don't need an adjournment, but we are adjourned.