City Council - Regular Meeting

[Music] Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Thursday October nomber 16th, 2025 full council meeting. Call this meeting to order. At this time, I will ask Mr. Philip Lee to approach the podium and he will be praying this tonight. Please remain standing for a 30 second moment of silence after prayer and then join me in the pledge of allegiance after that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Tig. James 1-5 says, "If any lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given them." Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we ask you for your wisdom as we begin this council meeting. We acknowledge that we need your wisdom and insights and we welcome your presence among us. guide this council in their discussions and decisions that actions be transparent and motives pure. Help this council seek what is best for Russville. We trust in your perfect guidance and ask that you direct their meeting according to your will. We pray in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. All right, join me for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of America to the stands nation indivisible with liberty and justice for Yeah. Sorry. Sorry.

All right. Uh, Miss Cton, will you give us a roll call? Thank you, ma'am. I know. Mr. George here. Miss Wetzel. Miss Young here. Mr. Olsen here. Mr. Bradley here. Mr. Pearson here. Mr. Gray. Mr. Keller here, Mayor Teague here, Mr. Smith. Hi, and myself. Do you have quum? Thank you, ma'am. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, have you had an opportunity to overlook the uh or not not overlook but look over the uh September 18th minutes. Motion to accept. Second.

I have a motion to second to uh accept the u minutes from September 18th as presented. All in favor? Any opposed? All right, we will accept those minutes. Uh, at this time, Miss Britney Baker has approached the podium and she will give us our financial report. All right, for your viewing pleasure, general fund revenues for the month of September totaled 1,370,739. Of that, 1,121760 was sales tax and state turnback. 60,81 was franchise fees and permits.88 88,898 was all of the revenue. A tax revenue comparison, this is year-to- date city for year-toate total is 4,218,977. The city's portion of the county is 5,120439. Um, a comparison to what's budgeted versus what's been received, both are just a touch below that. General fund expenditures for the month of September were 1,315,561. Of that 1,84201 were personnel expenditures. 231,360 were utilities and others. Street fund revenue for the month of September totaled 1,146083. Of that 669,834 was 2021 street sales tax. 236,920 was state turnback and adalorum tax. 93,891 was interest, 300 was street cutting permits, 145,138 was all other revenue. Street fund expenditures, operational expenditures for the month of September totaled 185,892. Of that 136,808 were personnel related expenditures. 49,84 were utilities and

other. There were no capital expenses in street fund. The 2021 street sales tax spending totaled 581,133. That was towards drainage maintenance, pavement preservation, drainage projects, downtown improvements, raise grant project, and the US 7 and reasoner signal improvements. The state turnback street project spending total $312 towards general sidewalk. Economic development September revenue totaled 121,437. Of that 100,191 was new sales tax and rent. 21,246 was interest. September expenditures in the economic development funds total 232,360. Of that 8,581 was for parking lot improvements. That was at fire station 2 in the downtown parking lot. 223,779 was towards Pickle Ball Court construction. Below are the balances of the various economic development funds as of the end of September. That 2014 fund 26 will be zeroed out as the alliance third quarter fee is in now. So we can um deplete that account as expected. In total 5,966,15757. Capital assets revenue for September was 182. All of it was interest. September expenditures total 116,839. That was towards building expenses. That included replacing a sewage line at the train depot among other fixtures there. Below is a breakdown of the 2021 1 cent sales tax, what's been received, what's been spent, the balance remaining in each. At the end of September, the total cash balance was 23,97211640. If there are no questions, that concludes the finance report.

Thank you, Miss Beggar. All right. Um, in the mayor's report tonight, we uh I have submitted um to all of you the uh veto regarding the rest of Playhouse that was voted on in a special meeting last week. You had mentioned that you were going to be going over your veto if I mean I just submitted it to you. So you would you like me to read it? That's that's fine. Oh, no. I mean

I mean I I just I following what Mr. I'm following what Mr. uh Trey said or Mr. Smith said is basically I just have to inform the council that I have vetoed and um at that that time we entertain a motion however you want to move forward. So I just have to publicly notify you.

All right Mr. Moving forward Mr. uh Thomas will you come forward with the departmental report for parks and wreck. All righty then. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, council. Um, I'm just going to tell you right now, this been a great year for the parks department. Um, our department has grown quite a bit. Um, as far as sports and just our department in normal, um, we took on several more sports programs, which I'll be going over here in just a minute. We built a new we've built new facilities. We've repaired old facilities, and we've also moved into a maintenance a new maintenance shop this year, which has been great. Um, let's see. There we go. These are our playgrounds that we redid. The top right there is Washurn. The bottom right is James Park. We completely redid those playgrounds. All brand new play units. James Park does have a swing set that's not there in that picture. Can hardly see it there. But both of those units were both about 26 years old a piece when we replaced them. So that was great for those two parks. The other park up there near the left corner top left is Crawford Park over on Detroit. We resurfaced it from the rubber tile. So now nearly every one of our playgrounds are either turf or the thick mulch and probably I'd say over half of them are ADA accessible. So we're just going on and on with those playgrounds. You stop

me anytime if you got any questions or any comments. Um we're going the wrong way. pickle ball. If you have not been to pickle ball, you're missing out. Uh I encourage you to if you leave city council, just go drive through pickle ball tonight and see. Tonight is our second night of league. We have over 50 people signed up for our first year, which I thought was twice as many as I thought we would get. So, um it is going they're using all six courts tonight, probably until about 9:00. And then after that, the tech students will start rolling in and they are there until the lights go off, I think. So, it's being used every night. I was out there a couple nights ago while soccer was going and that place was just packed after dark. Um, all the soccer field lights were on, all the pickle ball lights were on, and it's great. Up there in the top corner there to your left, that is a picture of the beginners group. We had a beginners clinic. U, that's something we will probably continue to do. We're going to try to set up a series of that to where you can come out and learn pickle ball, learn about the game, learn how to play pickle ball. But pickle ball is just it's it's been the pl the happening place here the since we since we opened it. Ever since we opened it wrong. Boat docks. We have replaced two boat docks this year. One of them was at Oita Park right there off of Lakefront and one of them was over at the ski area, disc golf area. You can see on your right side there that that's our kayak launch. That thing has been very well received too, used every day. Um I'm meeting with Game of Fish hopefully next week to look at ways we can put in a new sidewalk there to make it handicap accessible. Uh we're going to lower it a little bit and hopefully be able to get wheelchairs out there or make it easier

too for people to get their kayaks out on the dock because that one's got a pretty good slope to it. U the other one's Oita, it's a bigger boat launch. Both of those both of those boat ramps I would say were probably 40 plus years old when we replaced them. So they were in very bad need of it. Our next boat dock that we will do will be Illinois's Bio. And that's one of our biggest boat docks. Uh we will do it during the winter. Um I'll be probably bringing back in December or January the ask for appropriation for it. And it's also going to have a kayak dock on the end of it. I remember this a minute. Sports. This is where our department has grown this year. We've taken on another activities director, sports programmer. We started kickball this year. Um we started a basketball league this year. Um we're getting ready to start volleyball um here in the next couple months and then we've also done a pickleball league. Um so we've just started every kind of league we could think of. We're looking at flag football too, adult flag football. Um Mariah was there this afternoon, had her war board out trying to figure out how she was going to fit all this stuff in and where she was going to fit it. So, um, just be on the lookout on our web page for new and upcoming sports. Um, I want to go back to the boat docks, too. I want to thank Ron Notes for helping us out there. He was a big help in that um, with the boat docks trying to with a game of fish grant and stuff like that. He was out there every day kind of pointing it and directed and was a big help to me at that time. Also, tournaments. Um, we've rocked again this year with tournaments. We've picked up another one this weekend that was supposed to be in another city, but now they're they were playing on natural field, so they want to move here to play on turf. So, we've got, I think, 20 25 teams here this weekend. I think we had 50 teams here last weekend, so

we're moving right along. I know we had nearly probably 600 teams here over the year so far. Um, bringing them in. That's not counting the few soccer tournaments that they've had out there. That was probably another 40 50 teams between them two tournaments they had out there. Um, and that show you next. I'll get this right in. Soccer complex. Soccer complex is still a work in progress. We're still working on the fields, sanding the fields, trying to get the grass good. We just installed a brand new parking lot out there. If you have not seen that, that added about 81 spaces, I think. It's all ADA accessible, new sidewalks that bring you from the from the parking lot over to the concession stand. Um, I figure in the near future we'll probably be coming back and adding some more. Um, I I was out there the other night. There was there were still people parked on the grass at night. Um, because there's so many people out there between soccer and pickle ball and also the trail out there. The trail is highly used out at soccer. And that's one of the things next year we plan to overlay it, kind of upgrade it a little bit too, but it has really grown. MJ Hickey Pool, if you haven't went out there and seen the slide, we installed a slide earlier this year that was done with the River River um Russville leadership. Um they raised the funds for that. Didn't cost the city anything. They paid the whole bill on that one. I want to also brag on our aquatic center staff. They have really utilized hickey this year, probably more than it's ever been utilized as far as lap swimming in the morning. They actually did swim they moved swimming lessons back out there. They al they had an aerobics class out at Hickey. We've never had an aerobics class at Hickey. And they started a dive program to start teaching younger kids how to dive off the diving board to when they get to high school where they can hopefully be on the dive team and

improve that. We've got a lady out there that's helping us out with that. They've moved to the aquatic center now and started doing that same dive project. But I just want to brag on my staff because they have really done a great job this year of bringing new things in, new ideas. They're very involved in the community. They'll be at KidsFest here this week or next weekend. They do a lot of stuff with tech in the schools, the Boys and Girls Club. Um, so I just want to brag on them a little bit. Crawford Park and City Park or Circle Drive Park. I just want to kind of hit on those. These are two of our smaller parks. They're kind of what you call a pocket park. They're in a neighborhood. Very little parking. They're mainly walk up parks. Um Circle Drive first. We did add a pickle ball court to that. The schoolhouse trail runs right through that. It's off of Fourth Street or Fourth Place there, kind of across from the middle school. It's just a narrow little piece of property that runs up through there. There's also a resting spot down on another pad down there where there's a picnic table and a bench where you can stop and rest if you're going down that trail. And then Crawford Park, you've seen that picture already. Um that park has basketball courts, open field, and um the playground unit there you see. And usually these parks don't get a lot of attention as far as public eye. So I just want to kind of bring them out and say, "Hey, here's here's parks that are usually not talked about a lot. And then to end, I want to end on my maintenance guys maintenance shop. That's our new shop in the background that we are very proud of. That shop is going to make us a whole lot more efficient. Uh we cleaned out probably three areas, three different shops and brought them over to one shop. Now we're going to be able to I don't have to call somebody and ask where something is. I know it's in that building somewhere. Might take me a minute to find it because the building's so big, but it's in that

shop. is not across town. Um, my staff, this is the staff that takes care of all the parks every day. Um, it's a small staff, but they're hardworking. They take care of all the parks that pretty much everybody probably takes for granted that the parks are going to be nice when you get there. These guys are the ones that are taking care of, and I'm missing one person in that picture. So, um, but other than that, they are hardworking group of guys. If you see them out, just tell them thank you if you would. They really appreciate that. Um, other projects that we have are um in the works right now are the uh pavilion at Washurn. We'll hopefully start in the next couple of months on it. And we also have the skate park going by. If you haven't been to the skate park, you need to run by there.

I am so impressed with these guys that are working. They've been over there three days. Three days. And it looks like you can already tell what the park's going to look like. It's just crazy how fast four guys and one girl are over there working and two dogs. And two dogs. You like dogs? Go by there and watch visit the job dogs. Yeah, there's two dogs over there. And you better be ready to throw a chunk of wood cuz they're going to bring it to you every time you're over there.

But that project's going. The bathrooms will start over there pretty soon. Um the turf at um Soccer and the turf at Pleasant View will start in two weeks. They'll be here on November the 2nd to start those jobs. Um, I also want to put a plug in for KidsFest next weekend at Fall Fest and also the Christmas parade. That'll be the next thing coming up, which are two big pretty big projects for us, too. Awesome. Any questions? Yes, sir. Uh, you just said turf. Did you mean turf at Shiloh? Turf at Shiloh. Okay. All right. Turf and back stops.

Yeah. Uh, that that was one of my questions. Uh second, uh with a lot of these sports programs that we're starting, how are we are we not necessarily competing with Boys and Girls Club, but like we do give a lot of money to the Boys and Girls Club. So, I want to make sure that we're like Right. These sports programs, these sports programs I'm talking about now are all adult. Yep. Every one of them have been adult so far. We we don't offer anything kid-wise right now. maybe in the future. All right. Anyone else have anything? All right. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Very good.

I'm assuming Mr. Gray doesn't have anything because he's not here. Uh, anyone from finance or from the personnel have anything? No. Uh, Mr. Keller, do you have anything from finance tonight? Yes, mayor. uh from our 5:30 meeting this evening. Uh item one is consideration of a resolution for thirdarter expenses from Main Street Russellville in the amount of $15,000. We present item one as a motion to adopt. Item one has a motion to adopt. All in favor? I.

Any opposed or moving on, sir? Item two, uh, we set two dates for evening work sessions for the 2026 general operating fund budget for next year. Uh, the they'll be the 29th of October and the 5th of November at 5:30 downstairs. Item three was an appropriation from the general fund carryover balance in the sum of $154,74929 [Music] to cover the fourth quarter Poke County 911 expenses. We present item three is a motion to adopt. I have a motion to adopt. All in favor? I. Any opposed?

All right, sir. Item four was a line item transfer in accordance with ordinance number 1783 moving $200,000 from fund 27 to the general fund fund 01. We present item four is a motion to adopt. All right. Have a motion to adopt item four. All in favor? I. Any opposed?

All right. from our 5:30 meeting last Tuesday. Item one is consideration of a resolution to authorize the mayor and the city clerk treasurer to apply for a 9010 ADA grant for the purpose of hanger roof repairs on seven hangers and spray foam insulation on two hangers. We present item one is a motion to adopt. Have a motion to adopt on item one. All in favor? I. Any opposed?

All right. Item two is consideration of a reimbursement request for the third quarter expenses for the Alliance for Economic Development in the amount of $51,450 and.73. We present item two is a motion to adopt. I have a motion to adopt on item two. All in favor? I. Any opposed? All right. That was the last item on our agenda. Mayor, that's the shortest night you've had. That's the shortest

shortest night in a while. Yeah, it is. Uh, moving on to unfinished old business consideration ordinance a ordinance amending the land subdivision and development code for the city of Rville, Arkansas adopted by ordinance 2444 and for other purposes. This is the second of three readings. I move we suspend the rules, dispense with the reading requirement, read by title with short explanation for the second of three readings. Oh, I got a motion and a second to read by short um suspend the rules. Uh read by title only and uh I got all in favor.

Any opposed? An ordinance to the land subdivision and development code for the city of Russellville, Arkansas. Adopt by ordinance number 444 2444 and for other purposes. This dors if passed would amend the final plat uh code which to include upon submission the base flood elevation for special flood hazard areas that is identified from FEMA maps and the firm map. All right, moving on to new business. Item one is a consideration and ordinance. Mr. Killer, did you have something? Oh, I saw you going. I was just making sure. I'm ready.

Okay. I was making sure I didn't miss something. So I was looking item moving on new business. Item one, consideration ordinance to establish coalition with Pope County, Arkansas, the city of Atkins, Arkansas, the city of Dover, Arkansas to apply with the US EPA for Brownsfield grants to approve the selection of the city of Russellville, Arkansas as the lead agency for the coalition and the point of contact with US EPA with an emergency clause. And uh we this is also um it's to authorize the mayor, city clerk, treasure and any all necessary city personnel to apply for and accept the grant for the coalition to authorize the mayor, city clerk, treasure and any and all memorandum of understanding with any and all coalition members and any and all cities receiving services from the executive brownfield grants. There is a read one time only with emergency clause request uh before you also

I move we suspend the rules dispense with the reading requirement read the first and only time by title of short explanation second have a motion to second on the reading all in favor I any opposed sir

an ordinance establish a coalition of political subdivisions of the state of Arkansas to apply and accept the brownfield Fields grant with the United States Environmental Protection Agency establishing the city of Russell, Arkansas as the lead agency to the coalition applying for and accepting said grant to authorize the mayor, city clerk treasure, and any all necessary city personnel to apply for and accept a grant for the coalition to authorize the mayor, city clerk treasur any all memorandum understanding with any and all coalition members and any all cities receiving services from the accepted brownfields grant and for other purposes. This ordinance, if passed, would form a form an established coalition between the city of Russellville, Pope County, the city of Dover, and the city of Atkins. It has identified at least 61 sites, 30 within the city, and 31 within the county and other cities within the county would apply for up to, but maybe including or more than $1.4 4 million in Brandfeld grants to address these sites.

Motion to adopt with the in action of the emergency club. You guys do separately. Yeah. And individual vote. Yeah. Motion to adopt. Second. Have a motion to second to adopt. Miss uh any discussion? I just have just a just a quick question on this one. Since we will be the lead agency on this, uh if there are grants for sites in either the county or outside of city limits of Russellville, um will we be applying for them with the either the city or the county as sub awards for those specific grants? Miss John, would you please approach the

Hello. Uh so we would be applying for like the coalition is jointly applying for this grant for $1.5 million. Um any sites that are identified would be contracted by the coalition through we would contract a um a consultant or a contractor to do the planning or the cleanup or the assessment that has to happen as a result of this. And then the city would be paying the consultant or the contractor for work on those properties identified as part of this grant. They may be inside city limits or they could be in Atkins or do anywhere in Pope County.

So is it is it one grant for all the sites? Yes, it's one grant for all of the sites. Okay. Is uh does the grant allow for indirect costs? The grant does allow for indirect costs, but it's not a matching grant. We don't have to match any money. It's a $1.5 million grant. Does that include indirect costs? Yes. Fantastic. I thought I heard you say something about the city paying the contractor. So, will the city have to pay the contractor or could the city pay using this grant? The city will pay using the grant. Okay. Yes. Okay.

We will be the recipient of the funds and then we would pay just like any other grants. Sure. Yes. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Miss John. So, any more discussion? All right. Miss Skeleton, will you give us a roll call? We have a motion in a second, Craig. So, we can get a roll call. Yes. Mr. Keller. Yes. Mr. George. Yes. Miss Young. Yes. Mr. Olsen? Yes. Mr. Bradley? Yes.

Mr. Pearson? Yes. Thank you. All right. Now, I'd like to make a motion that we add the emergency clause. Second. I have a motion in the second on the emergency clause. Miss G, will you give us a roll call on the emergency clause? Mr. George, yes. Mr. Keller, yes. Miss Young, yes. Mr. Olsen, yes. Mr. Bradley, yes. Mr. Pearson, yes. All right, I'll entertain a motion to

All right, we are ajourned. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. Yeah.