09/03/2019

[0:00:00] welcome everyone now calling this meeting to order please stand with us um before we pray uh arnold gallagher is going to lead us in prayer before we do that let's have a moment of silence for um mr gate hudson let's honor the life of mr gay hudson it's alderman flores follow along mr hudson is a long-time resident of south haven he was one of the insurance pioneers in our city he had one of the first insurance agencies in the city lived in the city many many years very civic-minded and and he passed away today so if we if we can just honor mr hudson with a moment of silence heavenly father lord we come to you now and we ask you to send your holy spirit to the flores family lord lord we pray that you just touch them and touch your arm oh lord and bless them during this difficult time lord we also ask that you would be with us tonight as we go through city business lord we ask for your wisdom and we thank you for everything that you've done for us in your name we pray amen i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all first on the agenda this evening is the approval of minutes for the august 20th meeting

[0:02:02] mr mayor move we approve the minutes of the regular meeting of august 20th 2019 with the additions deletions for corrections second bill motion ballroom pain second ballroom brooks is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes that motion carries next on the agenda is approval of the house of grace funding mr mayor i hope we approve the funding uh for the house of grace as presented by the sub county supervisors a couple meetings here i'll second that we have a motion monitoring pain ballroom and brooks i'll start the discussion just quickly they amended that the counties or municipalities that refused to participate in the funding they just made it to where they won't receive the services so it will be unanimous funding from those entities that the house of grace is providing service all they did is amended that as far as the amount they adjusted the amount is still the same they just took those out that are not participating any other discussion yes that motion carries next on the agenda is a summary change order for fire services phase two mr dan cornell mayor board as the mayor indicated this is the fire service extension phase two that's been going on around the malone road area

[0:04:05] i'm requesting y'all's approval on a summary uh my line item deductive change order in the amount of sixty one thousand twenty seven dollars and twenty four cents to adjust all the units by what's been installed so we have a motion of alderman gallagher second baller by wheeler is there any discussion and just to update the audience real quickly this is this phase is one of uh six phases to extend uh larger water lines to areas that the city has annexed in the past to give them the same fire protection as everyone else in the city any other discussion hearing none roll call thank you next on the agenda is a resolution for the fiscal year 2020 budget and millage rate mr merriman we adopt the resolution fixing the up form tax levy on real and personal property for taxes and establishing the budget appropriations and expenditure fiscal year 2019 2020 to the city of south haven that's as presented on the state second we have a motion ballroom brooke second baltimore wheeler i'll start the discussion again just to summarize that our budget all the things that we're going to accomplish with this budget again was is with no property tax increase so there has not been a property tax increase uh since this admit our yeah since this administration and this board has been here we've been able to accomplish a lot financially by making good financial decisions and promoting economic growth in our city which has improved our sales tax revenue which has enabled us to maintain a steady

[0:06:07] property millage rate any other discussion hearing none roll call yes that motion carries next on the agenda is the acceptance of a donation to our parks department mr nick manley uh this is a uh and the parks department has been approached by a family seeking to make a donation to the department in memory of one of their in memory of the of the lady's husband and such knives is authorization to accept that donation for a little league baseball and authorize the accounting and department to make all um the necessary require to meet honest requirements for the donation second we have a motion balance wheeler second bottom and gallagher is there any discussion mr i'm not sure what the donation is but are we going to try to memorialize the donation that the parks level well we're go ahead we're waiting for information from the uh the family to find out that's what they wish to which or not we're not they're asking for a lieu of flowers that have donations to the city but i know uh parts farmers reached out to and have not heard back regarding that issue yet basically the uh the gentleman that passed um has children that have benefited from youth baseball in the city and understands the value of that so and like as nick said in lieu of flowers he wanted the money you know to go to a youth baseball to help other kids to enjoy the same privileges that his kids did so i thought it was very very honorable and so at this point we don't know how much but we get that money we'll make sure that we honor his wishes and make sure that the money does

[0:08:09] go to baseball is there any other discussion hearing none roll call please yes that motion carries hey mayor we also had another donation that came in late on friday like present that one sure uh southern thunder is hosting a donation or an event this weekend and they want the proceeds to go to the south haven police department motor unit division and so authorization for them to accept that donation for the accounting department to take all requirements to accept and receive and disperse the donations move we have a motion baltimore brook second of all kelly is there any discussion we appreciate that as well any other discussion hearing another royal call i remember yes that motion carries next on the agenda is the resolution for the south haven police department surplus of property yeah this will allow for the surplus of firearms uh pursuant to misbehave 17-25-25 you know be done uh via the auction process and uh that'll um require the individuals or the companies who bid on to be certified dealers as requirements they code in the state law um it's not just one motion yeah there's two resolutions there's two resolutions but both resolution can be about the same person and second on both okay that we thought for resolution mayor board of alderman susan declared surplus property in the police department as presented we have a motion ballroom brooks second bottom and kelly is there any discussion and your motion would include authorization for seas and surplus correct

[0:10:12] exactly what i said any other discussion hearing none roll call card yes that motion carries next on the agenda the surplus of miscellaneous miscellaneous items for scrap value from our utilities department this is just a couple of items utility department needs to scrap for surplus force craft value which would be less than one thousand dollars pursuant to mississippi code 17-25-25 mr mayor i'll make that much thank john second question we have motion bomber wiggler second ballroom and payne is there any discussion next on the agenda is a task order for a special engineering contract mr dan cordell again this is um i'll let him tell you the details but basically i've asked dan to put this on the agenda to do some research when we extended rascal road from sweeney to tulahoma which now connects rascal all the way from getwell in the east to highway 51 on the west we've had an enormous amount of additional traffic on that road the area at rasco and tulahoma in a matter of weeks has become much more dangerous and we've been watching this for about two years but it's change has changed significantly we've had i think 12 is it 12 wrecks in sauron

[0:12:17] chief gave me that information this morning but we've had 12 wrecks there and you can just you go there you can tell it's just enormously different than it was like i said weeks or months ago so anyway just for safety that's what this is about i've asked dan to go and do some work to see exactly what we need if we don't want to go and put a four-way stop sign if we've already you know kind of transcended that need into a traffic signal so before we do anything i want to make sure we do it right and do it safely so that's what this is about mr danny cordell there's not much to add to that well you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna talk to the details the technical details that that i can't handle basically we did some uh peak hour counts and the numbers were kind of surprising to us so we're asking for y'all's approval to go out and get 24-hour traffic counts and a traffic engineer to review the information before we finalize the data because initially we were thinking they thought what four-way stop and i really do believe there's probably a need for a signal at that intersection so i'm asking for y'all's approval for us to uh spend not to exceed 2200 on some resources to find that out i'll make that motion second we have a motion involving kelly second by alderman payne is there any discussion i came that way to the meeting today and i thought the exact same thing i said something has to be done here it was crazy yeah especially like these at this time of day yeah let's be careful i come through early in the morning about six o'clock you never have a problem well go through okay any other discussion hearing none all in favor say aye all right any opposed say no nice habit motion carries mayor attached to that was our engineering contract i don't know if

[0:14:20] it made it or not but it was it did okay this is an extension request for an amendment to the master contract to extend our services for the staffing services for another budget year and no changes other than just the date i asked for y'all's approval on that as well congratulations bomberman brook second ballerina wheeler is there any discussion you're busy enough yes sir thought something i needed to do any other discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye any of you say no house have it bless you thank you next on the agenda is a resolution for storm storm water awareness week uh mr mayor maybe not the resolution of town heavyweight baltimore declaring september 23rd to 27 2019 is stormwater awareness week congratulations brooks second ballroom in pain is there any discussion you mind reading what do you want to read we do this every year it's very important to acknowledge we all face serious storm water challenges every city everywhere okay any other discussion about that something you've never even thought of until you came here and i definitely understand and it's a yeah i find myself looking at culverts driving down the road okay all better say aye okay next on the agenda is the

[0:16:26] resolution to claim private property mr merritt we have not the resolution granting authority to clean private property is presented on the state second we have a nation baltimore brooks second ballerina gallagher is there any discussion among the board hearing none is there anyone in the audience that has a financial interest between the properties that would like to speak hearing or seeing none roll call yes that motion carries next on the agenda is our planning agenda miss whitney cook uh yes sir our first application is a subdivision app for a one acre parcel on the north side of nail road just east of gatwell basically backs up to the ball fields at the previous meeting we did rezone this from agricultural to r20 it still complies with low density residential in the comprehensive plan the applicant is now wanting to split that lot in half one having 0.511 acres and one lot having 0.5 acres uh mr maxwell explained last time that his family owned property from the 1960s um his brother and sister are wanting to both place a lot on this on these i mean houses on these lots um again it was re-zoned it does meet the minimum requirements for uh subdivision application and we vote unanimously in favor of it at the planning commission mr mayor i'll make the motion to be approved by number one on the plan second on item one we have a motion ballroom wheeler second baller with pain is there any discussion hearing done roll call yes that motion carries uh item two we have a request for subdivision approval for cherry tree south phase three b going to be on the west side of catwalk

[0:18:28] road north of star landing it's 5.73 acres proposing 19 lots uh for the pud you've got the traditional move up lots for lines 82 through 92 which have a 1700 foot minimum not lots 93 through 100 or considered traditional young family lots with a minimum of 1600 square feet this was approved in 2000 under the pud tech so it is compliant with that it does continue an existing road called marion lane it does head north though um or i'm sorry it heads south and they proposed that name to be marion lane south and speaking with e91 and chris sheldon with it emergency communications you're trying to shy away from the north south east west on street names because it does cost some problems there so the one comment that we have made with this is that that name needs to be changed we'll get it approved back through it 9-1-1 uh but we'll need to take that name out and replace it with something that doesn't have directional flow to it uh they agreed to that uh and it was about unanimously in favor of the fighting commission at that point mr meredith would approve items too on the planning agenda [Music] we have a motion by alderman brooks second law of a wheeler is there any discussion number three we have a application request for silo square area one phase one lot five this is one of the out partials on the west side of get getwell road is gonna be south of where future main boulevard is going to be uh the lot totals 1.735 acres it does not show direct access to gateway road there is a private drive coming off of yellow road just south of this which will be shared with lots to the south um where it will be accessed an additional private drives on the back side so you can enter the lots like we've designed it to be on a rear access road it does meet the pub requirements for silo square and in both regulations set forth in the ordinance and staff recommended approval

[0:20:29] it voted unanimously in favor of by the planning commission we have a motion ballroom wheeler second baller in brooks is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes that motion carries item number four is a subdivision application for the gardens of bell point phase three it's gonna be on the north side of church road east of getwell this is the last uh 45 watts in the subdivision it was approved in a pud text in 2018. lots are part of area c and area d one have a minimum square footage of two thousand the other with twenty four hundred and fifty heated square feet uh the roads are continuous continuations from existing phases with the exception of one uh we were checking with that road name to make sure it's not repetitive uh there's also the 20-foot landscape buffer along the back side uh where it is adjacent to bell point subdivision we've asked to have a no disturb line there so the existing trees can help buffer that all of that has been complied with we reviewed the pud documents and is compliant with that along with the bulk regulations uh it was brought up at the planning commission that there was a roundabout where that tees off and goes to code they chose to take that out another lot in there planning commission did not have a problem with removing that roundabout there is a larger one to the south of there that's kind of like part of the entrance um so they were okay with that removable and they voted unanimously in favor with that condition mr mayor make a motion that we approve item number four on the clinical agenda second when i have four we have motion baller wheeler second baller mcgallagher is there any discussion so they took out the roundabout there's a large one that you see just where the stuff out to the south is you'll see where counselors ran out

[0:22:30] that's the big one that you'll see from the main entrance there was a smaller roundabout where it goes up to the north and tees right there into that back road they had a small one there i guess the property was selling so well they chose to get an additional lot at it yes any other discussion on four hearing gun roll calls yes thank you okay next on the agenda is our mayor's report move through this kind of quickly here first of all thursday at 10 a.m thursday september 5th this thursday at 10 a.m there's going to be a large economic development announcement by governor phil bryant with the midline recent medline announcement and then this one these are two serious industrial developments are going to occur in our city so this is the second one that will be comparable to the medline announcement and so um the governor will announce that we'll be on the site uh there will be a uh ceremony uh for that uh announcement um at ten o'clock this site is on state line it is the uh the site that's under construction in the state line area near to oklahoma recently i want to thank alderman kelly for bringing up something that i've never thought about obviously we've done many things in the city you know to make a great first impression for people that want to visit here or want to live here or do business here with our monument signs our all of our beautification efforts many many things that we've done but one thing that alderman kelly pointed out

[0:24:33] is that on the interstate i-55 there's um not any destination signs for south dakota well you know south haven is the third largest city in the state of mississippi and obviously interstate 55 is one of the largest interstates in the united states going from new orleans all the way um to um minnesota right or like us north of chicago but anyway either way it's a you know one of the major interstate systems in our country and we didn't have south haven signs so we brought that to after alderman kelly brought that to my attention i had a discussion with mdot about that and they they agreed and so the good news tonight is that quickly mdot has agreed to go back and change five signs as you're traveling northbound on i-55 when you pass north batesville there's five signs between there and uh south haven that there's gonna be destination signs the first one uh north of batesville will be uh i think it's 41 miles uh so they'll start there and just update the motorist as you approach the uh third largest and the best city in mississippi so thank you for uh bringing that up honor and kelly i appreciate your help with that uh there is one other addition to that i don't know if anyone's noticed this but this has i have noticed this it's driven me crazy the whole time i've been mayor um but the uh we've been busy with other things the i-55 church road widening i've been focused on that so obviously when that happens the signs are going to have to be changed anyway but when you're going northbound on 55 at church road there's a sign that says south haven next two exits but the sun is actually on right at church so you've already passed that exit when you get to that sign not to mention the fact that you've uh you've already missed you know you missed the first the first exit so what mdot has agreed to do is to move that sun back southward

[0:26:36] near star landing road at the entrance of our city and obviously change that to south haven next three exits so uh makes so much sense but anyway i'm i'm appreciative of mdot for quickly agreeing to do uh both of those things and again thanks to rv kelly for that suggestion next thing recently at one of the board meetings we authorized alderman brooks and our parks director wes brown to take a trip to atlanta they went to to look at turf there they toured the arena where the mercedes-benz stadium where the atlanta falcons play an sec championship is held and they looked at turf like there's many many modern versions of turf it's come a long way since the original astro turf back in the 60s but they were looking at a modern version of that and the reason being that many of the youth parks baseball softball have gone to artificial turf that has quickly changed our competitive situation in south haven snow grove park has been the model for many parks throughout the southeastern part of the united states for 20 years but recently many parks have gone to turf well this is the first year that we've really started to feel that financially and when we started doing some research on it what we've learned is that you know many times now when there's a tournament if there's a bad weather forecast if there's rain in the forecast that many teams like on a tuesday or wednesday are waiting to see the forecast and then they're making a decision to not come to snowden uh they were going to another park that has terp obviously if you have turf your chances of not being rained out go up tremendously so we realized that we've been put in somewhat of a competitive disadvantage so that for that purpose that discussion has has heated up and and we've expedited

[0:28:38] that discussion and so i have some information i want to share but before i do that um alderman brooks since you made the trip would you just share some of the highlights of that and and what uh what's your overall uh perception of that product that service is my overall perception is it's phenomenal the uh one of the big scratches we hear out of oxford is the turf is hot well they have a newer version of the turf that is what about about seven to ten degrees cooler so it's also factory they're very hands-on everything is about quality control so everything is made in-house they they go from station station i want to say every fifth roll said they do a piece of turf every fifth roll they keep store and they put away and everything is you can they can go back and scan any piece of terms let's say we had a problem field number five and we you know whatever piece of turf they could go back we can scan it they can tell you exactly what it made who touched it it's it's um it's they run a first-class operation there obviously you can you can look at their the national stage they do the seahawks they do the falcons obviously and it's a as well as the new orleans saints we also toured some local high schools and local junior college local colleges and the quality turf is just it's it's incredible that it's i'm really honestly speechless about just how good a product it is and for us long term i think it will it will definitely save us money um it's an investment obviously it's gonna cost money on the front end uh but as the mayor said we are competitive advantage we've lost three and five hundred thousand releases past year so something though i'm all figure thank you sir basically i'll move into in a minute i'm going to go into [Music] you know just a real rough proposal um but i will tell you that it's um after looking at what i've seen in our

[0:30:40] financials our parks revenue it is something that i would recommend to this board that we do that and not just just do it at snowden but also do it at greenbrew but if i think it's time if we do that the the maintenance costs that you save in addition to the opportunity cost and that you're avoiding with the rain outs i think it makes uh it makes excellent financial uh sense to do both green brick and snow i'm going to move into that in just a minute and we're going to have it on the on the overhead but in the past i want y'all to have an idea okay and then if we um let's back up for me if you would on that up there i'll tell you what i'm going to jump around i'm sorry go to the pavement proposal for me please and the board members y'all have that i'm going to shift gears and talk about something else and i'm going to come back i'm going to come back to the turf and just show you how this fits into this i don't want to call it a recommendation at this point but a suggestion is what i'll say you all know that recently in the budget we had a proposal from our public works director bradley wallace that we felt like that we could do some of our street resurfacing in-house as long as i've been here we've always contracted that out

[0:32:42] we've gotten a great product with that what has not been satisfactory in my opinion is the um the time like we you know when we have our streets resurfaced it's uh between jobs for the contractor well the thing that's bad about that is we may have a milling crew go out and mill some streets and then depending on the schedule for them to come back you could be three four weeks it's very inconvenient for the citizens it's very frustrating not knowing when they're coming back and again i'm not i'm not here to knock the contractors they've done a great job the product has been fantastic our streets we've made a lot of progress but i just think that i think we can do better and when i first started asking questions in 2013 why we pay outside contractors to do this the answer i got back was always but it's less expensive to pay someone to do it than you can do it yourself well as i've wrestled with the the streets in this city for six years i've gained enough experience with it to tell you that we're never going to get the streets and the condition that i think south haven should have unless we do something different and unless we want to make a drastic change to the amount of money we're allocating towards streets i think we're losing ground i mean we've made a lot of progress but there was so much development from in the early part of the uh early 2000s that we're behind you know we had to come back with all the um the streets that we caught bonds on and then everybody started rebuilding again at one time everybody want their streets done immediately and it's just been an enormous undertaking trying to get this done but i believe it's it's one of two things i believe we either need to bring

[0:34:44] street resurfacing in-house again or we need to go back and instead of allocating 2 million in the budget we need to bump that up to about 4 million because i'm just i'm just telling you from what i've seen uh 2 million a year is not going to get it i mean we've got to either put more money into it or we got to do something different well that ties into this proposal and when we talked about the budget i said that i wanted to have a little more time to come through some more details talk to dan cordell since he's helped tremendously with the um you know with layman roberts our our street surface contractor and i want to you know kind of work through some details so i'm just going to kind of walk you through this overhead if you can see that i know it's kind of small but basically what the initial proposal was is that if we had equipment to start we could go ahead and start doing some of the streets ourselves pavement machine obviously got to have that 160 000 for a paving machine two dump trucks uh which is used to haul the asphalt uh to the site and to feed the paving machine 300 000 for that and then a roller 90 000 so you have 550 000 upfront equipment for us to do that the suggestion would be that we paid for that up front and uh to go ahead and get started obviously the next challenge would be labor trying to find qualified people that uh that have done this before this would not be someone that's uh that's working for us now these would be people that have experience in pavement streets and so we would have to go and hire one operator who would be the driver of the paving machine who would be the on-site supervisor then you would have to have two obviously two drivers to drive the trucks and then three crew men which would be actually you know doing the work here paving the street so there's your total labor cost of 275 000 then obviously if you have the equipment it's going to take money to operate the equipment

[0:36:47] i've got that broken down with fuel maintenance and the insurance addition for the additional equipment which totals in the this first column is assuming that you just did two million dollars worth of work uh which is which is in our current budget year so that total for the operation is 83 000. then you got materials you obviously have to buy the asphalt you have to buy the patching materials too to patch the bad spots before you do the paving so your materials on a two million dollar worth of work is estimated at 1.2 million occasionally you would have to rent trucks depending on the outside temperature the asphalt has to be a certain temperature sometimes an issue you have to keep the pavement machine rolling so there may be times when you have to rent some additional trucks to make sure you got the asphalt there in a timely way milling for those in the audience that don't understand this milling is when you have a curb and gutter streak before you put new asphalt on it you have to mill the edges so where the so the asphalt matches up evenly with the curve and so instead of buying our own milling machine we believe it would still be less expensive to pay someone to do that and we believe the billing cost on a 2 million worth of work is 200 000 a year so basically that totals your total recurring cost is 1 million 777 thousand dollars whereas now we'd be paying 2 million for that so you can see in year one that would provide a savings of 222 000 it's important to note that since we've never done this before that there are some unknowns with it one of the main things that there's two ways to look at this you would need more you're going to need some more laborers that would move we have currently four full-time personnel now that are there on our street creeks that are doing potholes and stuff now

[0:38:50] um on many streets we would need to move them with this additional crew to give us enough manpower to move the rate at the right rate of speed so that is true that would be removing them from other jobs that they're doing now what i believe and what our public works director and street superintendent believes is that with the additional time like if we had our own people doing this instead of paving streets in three months which is about what we're doing 300 hours is about the amount of time that our current contractor is paving all of our streets and our budget they knocked that out quickly i mean you're talking about really about two months worth of work this if we had our own people we could spread that instead of two months they could be working for at least nine months so you're going to have some some cold weather months where they're not going to be able to work the asphalt plants do shut down some around christmas thanksgiving but still we believe that it's going to give many more months where they could be working so instead of you know like if we if if someone calls you a citizen says hey when is my streak getting done and you say well we finished the list this year which is true we normally finish the list in may maybe sometimes june so we're not going to start payment again until the next year so if they bring that request to you basically what you're telling them is that we're done this year and so you're gonna have to wait until probably march or the following year well if we have our own people we're not we're not shut down i mean so it gives us a lot more flexibility on what street we do when we do it and and ultimately we believe we can pay more streets but i brought that concern out because dan cordell mentioned that i agree with him we are going to be pulling some people off of work that they're doing now but what i believe is that that can be absorbed over the course of the year because so right now like on if it's september 3rd and we have a streak that we want to pay today

[0:40:53] if they were if those four were going to be doing uh pothole repairs they can go pay the streak and then if there's an the next day we'll just adjust the schedule where they do the pile so we believe that we can coordinate that over a nine month period to where we can do both and then so 222 000 that's not a whole lot to get excited about but if you look over to the far to right columns you know if you have the same labor cost that's working nine months a year instead of paying someone to work two months a year you've got this your labor cost stays the same obviously your operational cost is going to go up more fuel more maintenance insurance costs will stay the same but if you look at those same numbers and just adjust the materials upward adjust all the numbers upward if you go to three million dollars worth of work that equates to a 755 000 savings and if you go to 4 million which is like i said earlier i believe that's realistically that's the number of streets or dollar amount of streets we should be doing that saves over a million dollars a year obviously we've never done this before it's not going to be exact if we do that we're going to run into some things that we didn't expect but still i just i believe that i believe we got to do something different and i believe that you know giving us the flexibility to pave streets throughout the year rather than being at someone else's mercy i think that um i think this is a good move and i'm not asking for board action tonight i just wanted y'all to you know chew on that for a little bit and then we'll need to make a decision you know within the next you know 60 90 days you know but bottom line again just to summarize this discussion i don't think we're getting there we're not getting there doing what we're doing it's time to do something else i believe we can do it i believe we can bring in house and paved streets as good as anyone else the key would be finding the personnel so if we get to go ahead to move forward with this

[0:42:57] i would recommend that we go ahead and post the jobs and hire the personnel we know that the equipment is local we do not have to order that it is on site we can buy the equipment we can be in business before march of 2020. mayor what's the average uh lifespan of the equipment i believe it's um it's it's 15 to 20 years uh dan bradley and i asked that question i forgot what you told me but i know it's not it's not you know three or five year deal this is equipment 15 years and that is at ballpark bradley that's the yes or at least obviously you're going to have some maintenance on it other than what's in there is is the stuff that is going to come with it like when you're operating this equipment you're going to have all and grease costs that are even if the equipment is working perfectly you're still going to have that cost but we do have a shop personnel that can work on equipment as well for you know things that have to be repaired for saving a million a year it makes sense to replace that equipment anyway if it didn't bad so well that's why i put that on there i mean if you you know you your economies of scale are going to be so much better if you're paving more than two so i'm just showing you like if you just took you know apples for apples uh with our budget 2020 you know we believe we can get it done you know basically for a little bit less even if we run into some unknowns you're still it's very realistic to believe that you can do it for the same cost that you're paying someone else again when you bring it back to house you have more quality control if you're holding your own employees accountable for the work i can assure you they don't want to go back out on that same street do it again so they're going to do it right but yeah when you start getting into larger volumes of streets your economies of scale are larger so you're getting into

[0:45:01] you know more savings there which enables you to pay more streets i saw a picture of that roller in the last when we talked about this what kind of a paving machine do we have what size is it what size are we using now or believe me robert's using now and what does this compare to that uh this would be a large one i don't i can't speak to that i don't i don't know that i mean bradley do you have any questions i'm assuming it'd be that we'd make sure it's the same thing i mean we're not gonna obviously we want to see well robert booth did price the equipment robert booth has experience in in asphalt and like i told bradley i mean we wouldn't jump into this thing just to experiment with it i mean we're going to spend that much money and quickly we're going to pay some straights so we're not going to put ourselves at any disadvantage or get the same equipment that they had okay before i move on is there any other like i said not asking for board action uh just reporting back to you with information that i've gathered and then you know within the next few months we'll bring this back up to make a decision until then i have been working on the street list for 2020. we'll go ahead and start lehman roberts on the 2020 list for september and october so there'll be some streets that would go ahead and assign them so we're not losing any time you know while we're thinking about this but anybody else got any questions or discussion about it okay i'll move on and um next thing i want to go into is just uh since we were talking about turf talking about paving i want to just review just a and this is a suggestion okay bob please don't put this in the paper this is not you know don't put it on facebook this is just uh i'm just involving the

[0:47:04] public in a discussion okay so please um you know don't worry about your welcome but basically this is uh just a general suggestion on what we can do just for the board to be thinking about i reported to the board that we have a we have an excess surplus and what i mean by that is our board voted on a policy several years ago that we would be financially stable and always maintain at least 12 percent of our general fund in reserves so we do that so if you take 12 percent of your general fund now that equates to five million eight hundred and ninety four thousand and forty dollars so we want to always keep at least twelve percent in our reserves we say unassigned fund balance that's you know what um slang would be rainy day fund or or reserves so right now our unassigned fund balance is eleven million eight hundred and ninety thousand four hundred and eighteen dollars so we're cash heavy we have we have cash and so what this um proposal not proposal bob this suggestion very rough suggestion is what we could do like we obviously need to use the money for the taxpayers benefit you know we don't we don't need excess surplus just sitting there doing nothing so you could take um that eleven million eight hundred ninety thousand if you go down to the next uh paragraph uh capital improvements with cash that's things that we can use this for with cash so we've already talked about state line road resurfacing we believe that's going to cost us about 1.7 million the city hall renovation project is about 2 million and we have the park maintenance shop that's going now as well that's 1.2

[0:49:06] million then if you add the pavement equipment that i just talked about you could do all those things with cash and then still you still have excess surplus so you still have six million four hundred forty thousand four eighteen in your reserves which is five hundred forty six thousand three hundred seventy eight dollars above that twelve 12 threshold so you could that's what doing all those things in cash all right then uh when you start talking about capital improvements like we start talking about the turf infields at snow and grove and greenbrook and some other things this is what you could do with a bond in 2021 and 22 the city has a large amount of debt that's that's going to be coming off you're going to have your town center tiff debt which was the the original mall on airways that will be paid for in 2021 and so what you see in red is not the total amount that's not the face amount of debt that's the amount of your payments or your debt service so in 2021 the town center tif comes off which frees up 800 000 a year in debt payments then you have either general debt geo debt that comes off 527 500 and in 2022 you have 1.3 million in debt service that will be rolling off so that's freeing up 2.6 million in debt service for 21 and 22. so back to the proposal if you did a piece of that and then issued another a new geo bond which we know we're going to have to do that anyway for fire station number five fire station number five will be under construction in 2020 so we're going to issue geo debt the rates uh interest rates are extremely low they're 2.75 on anything 10 million and less a little bit higher if you go above 10. but this just shows

[0:51:10] a list of what a proposal what you could do these are very general numbers we're still crunching the numbers on turf we estimated 6 million that could could come down we expect that will come down fire station number five at 4 million we talked about not losing our grip on competition at greenbrick and snowden black vinyl fencing is what all the other newer parks have that's what you have in tupelo you have an oxford you have in jackson tennessee that's what they're all going to the fences at snowden are 20 years old and that's the thing is we know snowden has been a huge asset for us so it is important that we keep the park nice and we don't lose our grip or our competitive advantage the black vinyl fencing dresses it up it looks awesome all the new parts have that the roofs at snowden need to be painted if you've been over there they're 20 year old roots they're all different color red so we need to paint those that could be something that is paid for with cash i'll remind you that the 385 state line building is up for sale we have contract offers on that uh that amount of money is not in this proposal so if you do that you're adding you know another 1.6 to 1.8 million in a in excess surplus so we could pull the roots out of the bond and go that way with that tennis is it is blowing and going so all the people that criticized the expenditure of tennis just two years ago the tennis operation is just uh like i said it's blowing and going uh we have room to build four more courts the area in front of the park maintenance shop um on pine tar alley or freeman lane going back towards uh the park there's room for four more courts you could do four more courts for about nine hundred thousand we've got a few things that we need to do at the police and fire training centers uh we're still waiting on exact numbers on that but i did account for a little bit of money there

[0:53:13] but basically and this is just assuming you went large if you did 13 million in bond your debt service is 853 000 and that's a 20-year 20-year bond so you're rolling off 2.6 million and you'd be adding 853 000 so you'd be doing all those things and still you know with a still drastic reduction in debt service and then again like i said about the unassigned fund balance the the additional proceeds would go into that which is still going to keep you cash heavy and doing all these things no board action asked for just wanted to update everyone give you some ideas on possibilities um 21 22 offer enormous options as far as available debt service any discussion about any of that okay hearing none and we'll continue talking about that we'll move on the next thing as a follow-up to our last discussion about street lights again this was the issue that don't know how we got here don't know why there's no consistent plan among cities these do it differently but basically the concern came up recently some of our developers were asked by entergy to set up an account with them and pay for elect for the street lights until the the streets are handed over to or dedicated to the city the city doesn't take the streets until most of the developments are at least 80 percent complete but there's been a request to for the city to take the street lights between now and then we tossed that around so i'm just going to open that back up for discussion if anybody has any follow-up comments or opinions about whether or not the city should go ahead and take the street lights or whether we should wait until we take the streets and do the lights in the

[0:55:15] streets at the same time just real quickly the benefits to the city taking it now when there's a development that's going on you have streets that have to be put in in advance so until homes are built you have vacant streets which uh you know there's a lot of mischief that goes on uh so it's to the city's uh benefit to have the streets lit even before the homes are built there but anyway just talk to me a little bit just my personal opinion is we're not having trouble selling houses in southampton right now uh i think we should wait until the roads are finished don't take on that extra debt uh i don't i don't know how uh crime goes in a in a new neighborhood but i would imagine it's lower than average new people moving in uh that's just my opinion uh but quick question i mean we're currently taking the lights now right uh entergy has changed some things where entergy is uh we have taken the lights but when you where it really becomes an issue is like when you get into the ones where you're putting decorative fixtures in energy has quoted high prices for that i mean that that's what they say their cost is so so that's where it becomes an issue if you just put your standard lights in no big deal but if you start going to a more decorative look which we've tried to do over the last three years you know to make the subdivisions nicer at the decorative poles you do you do get a significant difference in price uh you're passing on or the builder is assuming that let's say if you have one that's you know got a subdivision that's taken three or four years you know we're not summoned a few months from it years you know the the developers paying the cost of the lighting well i would just assume that the

[0:57:17] developer if they if they're putting a nice neighborhood that they're putting in the fancy light fixtures i mean i don't i don't have a problem with us taking over paying for the electricity but i would assume a fancy light fixture that the developers were paying for well i actually injured you put some fixtures in but could they not charge the developer just for the light pole and then we have the account to pay for the electricity well they've done it we've again that's been complicated with energy they they rolled it all in together looking at the power line down though the energy doesn't pay for it they build a place for that they don't make it work yeah and put the water in and build a basement i mean just just awesome business yeah i don't i don't know the answer whitney did they um i know he just just had a handful of discussions with entergy but um with that what arnold payne's talking about is could the city take the power bill and then the fixtures be installed the way that they have explained to us is it's a turnkey installation basically you sign the deal before they install before you turn on the lights we have not approached them with trying to itemize out that build um but the response we're getting from the developers and from yvonne is before we put them in somebody has to sign this contract with us they're the ones who pay for the whole thing and that the it's a perpetual bill with the globe the arms the poll and the service it is it is billed all-inclusive every single time so they don't they don't separate it out we can ask them they have definitely not offered that and that's not something we've looked into i i don't know that they would do it simply because they tend to just bill us for everything forever it's just an all-inclusive build yeah in the discussions we've had they

[0:59:19] have it's you know they're relative they're relative together that's just in case okay i wanted to ask you the question in trouble but then there were four thank you good now let's put it i don't get to vote for once in my career but i i guess what i'm thinking i kind of understand what joel's saying but if i'm a developer and i know that the city is going to put in is going to pay for whatever light fixtures i ordered i'm getting the most expensive you see what i'm saying that has to be approved i mean yeah that fixture would would be approved by the city right um and we're not talking about uh washington dc streets or these elaborate ornate polls we're just talking about a decent looking decorative light pole yeah but you know it's just i just wanted to hear from i mean alderman gallagher has some thoughts on it what your what many developers would tell you is that yeah we selling homes and building homes yeah but they'll tell you that it's so significant they don't like it you know but we can change it later but i mean well that's what i'm saying i mean we need to decide because i mean this decision is i got to give some people an answer so you know like i said we when we talk about it that doesn't mean that we talk about it for three years it means that we talk about over a matter of two or three meetings and make a decision we talked about the county uh county how the county does it well the county is really not the same you know the county is you know you're not getting into as many you know we're going to be much more dense with residential developments than the county would be and per your request alderman payne um i went and talked to a bunch of cities to

[1:01:22] see kind of how everybody did it and just a quick summary uh tupelo inspects the installation of the lines and they take them immediately once the inspection is passed they said any requests for more decorative lights beyond their specs and we have a decorative acorn light spec for us we have the regular shoebox lights but anything beyond that then the cost goes to the hoa and the cover the city covers the bulbs and the surface ocean springs uh is the same thing the only thing that they do a little different is they do a preliminary final platform of the boards when the final flight's approved the curb and gutter and the bottom layer of asphalt is already in they take the lights at that point oxford is the exception um and as you know oxford's blowing and going and they take the street lights when it's when the uh when they accept the road and they're a lot like us sixty to eighty percent build out they'll take the street lights when they take the road uh decide okay as you've just noted bound on a street light hernander takes him immediately madison accepts them immediately but only after inspection of the conduit the electrical lines installation um then when public works goes out to inspect the road for a final lift of asphalt if there is a damaged street light out there then they require the developer to cover the cost of repairing and replacing that street light and then all the branch does the same as us they did say that they're looking into some type of what they call a plant fee that they want to do a unit cost per light to give to the developers up front but as of right now they do exactly what we do which is techno immediately i'd be okay with taking it up front if we charge the developer i think the problem they're running into and all that you know development fees aren't quite you know legal in mississippi so they're trying to find a way that they don't step on you know that type of issue but do it like a unit for cost if they've had problems with energy imagine this they've had problems with energy getting that itemized cost on how much each poll would cost them to install so they can then take that as a city and say okay it's x amount of dollars for energy to put this in so we're going to initiate that cost up front to the developers to come back to us so we can

[1:03:25] basically recruit that cost and that's what they're looking into now i tell them we're all kind of keeping in touch apparently this is a big discussion through all the cities in mississippi so nobody was surprised when i called them about it but that's essentially what everybody's doing right now like so the only two i can find are really kind of out of the norm of us right now is oxford and soto county any thoughts any discussion well i think honestly i think a developer should pay whatever the difference is on decorative fixtures i don't my fear would be is that it would cause more developers not to use decorative fixtures but at the same time i think it only benefits them and they're in their development if they do so uh you know maybe it wouldn't well and my fear is what you said my fear is if you do that that then they say okay i'm just gonna put the cheapest right and i will tell you this i'm not afraid to say this in public on camera we have enough cheap subdivisions in south africa we have plenty of we have plenty of low-cost housing in south haven we we don't need any we don't need to decrease our residential areas anymore they already are and so that would be my fears if you pass that or force the developer to take all the costs and then they just put the cheap fixtures in little things like that make a difference i mean if you travel you you go into the nicer areas you're going to see decorative light fallout that's one of the things that that dresses up a subdivision or a street more than anything is the decorative fixture so that's my fears i don't want us to whatever decision we make i don't want us to go and just say well we're not going to pay it you know whatever you take and then they go back just put the cheapest thing in it because it's not just benefiting them it's benefiting us too you know because then we're left with um you know we're lesser valued subdivisions housing and you might have been

[1:05:29] you might have been asking this all campaign but is there a way for us to somehow split the difference like say if they pay for the base model then we pay the difference in the upgraded model i'd be comfortable with doing some sort of split that way that way it's beneficial we're not taking on the entirety of the cost of it that's a good yeah i mean that's a good suggestion there and i didn't know i mean uh basically what we've been told is that we were taking it already we didn't know we were taking the help in the past we're taking the lights apparently we've been taking them at france um the whole time and that's the best thing bradley and i can find out it's come through public works for years well before riley's time and we've been taking them just immediately once the lines get installed someone be the developer or the city initiates a contact with entergy tells them to install polls and the first bill comes to us and it continues to come to us have we at least had inspections on those uh you'll have to ask bradley i don't know how the process works once when the installation still goes in and one thing that we started doing is that we started um you know encouraging the decorative poles and the new developments and which makes a big difference but then that's what got us here we start doing that then developers started coming to us and saying well entergy is charging us much more to put the decorative pole than what we've done in the past so that's why it's more of an issue i don't i think the cost of the lighting was not as big a deal you know the old way but now uh whether you when you add the decorative pole it's it's um you know adds up with some developments well i called them kelly's idea yeah i mean while we you know we can insist that we use the decorative lighting and just have the developer pay the difference of what the regular poll would be versus the uh and then you get into um how does entergy account for that because entergy wraps it up all into one package like they charge you the whole package and i would also say they're going to continue so it doesn't stop once the polls are paid off the bill is forever

[1:07:32] so i mean we'd have to come up with a lump sum for them to pay us because even if they pay the difference once it's paid off on our bill entergy was still going to be charging us for that forever and ever more so just be a temporary even if you split it it would just be temporarily still a good idea definitely is it like comcast where you rent the modem i'm not going to comment on comcast well we have a um another meeting with entergy and i'm going to wait after that meeting to share some other details but i've questioned a lot of that already multiple times it doesn't make sense to me why you charge you know indefinitely on upfront costs but they do i mean i'd rather be just a flat fee this is what it costs let's get that paid and then give us the monthly normal billing cycle of what the electricity cost uh i mean am i understanding that right they're they're charging you for that light for the cost of that light forever and every morning and that's to the mayor's point i mean he's been in contact with a public service commission trying to figure out how this is even possible i think the investigation is going through you know his office but yeah i mean i can't answer that it's just a forever never never built yes well i'll go ahead i don't agree with that it doesn't make any sense but i have brought that to the public service commission's attention and and energy says that they have the legal right to do that so you can and should have different i agree with you now we are looking at the possibility and that's something that brought in our we're getting the numbers crunch to get to the mayor before energy but there i mean what you see down northwest drive energy didn't install those we purchased those lights ourselves and once we install them then all they can charge us for is the service well i think that's kind of what oliver mccain is asking if we if we did all that up front then we would just be paying for the cost of the power the bad thing about that is you're talking significant amounts of money to do boring and put the fixtures in and all

[1:09:35] that but energy's always said well i wouldn't say this money it would would you say over the long haul certainly yeah that you're talking about i mean it's significant you might want to look at the numbers it's not uh it's not inexpensive because you're you know you've got boring calls to do you know lay the power lines you know underneath the roadways and that kind of thing so but they're going to run the lines right i mean uh well no we we do the boring which is the expense comes in with installing the structure installing the pole and the lowering and the landing conduit and all that so if we do what you're talking about we would be paying the cost to do all that and then we would just be renting the power you know just the electricity from them they would install the lines and we had an example last year mary and i looked at possibly lighting up central park right down by the schools so you had that stand up like those 13 poles um they would do everything we would purchase the poles the soda electric let's go install them do the boring all they're going to do is provide the lines and that was in excess of about 125 thousand dollars just to get those 13 poles installed outside the hardware at our cost i mean it's pretty pricey okay we'll keep we'll keep working on obviously we're not you know getting to a solution tonight but um we'll keep working on that and i'll report back to y'all and reach out to me and share if you have any other thoughts after the meeting please reach out you know individually share that with me too aldrin wheeler can come back call back okay and that's all i have we'll move on from mayor's report next on the agenda is our citizens agenda uh we do not have anyone to sign up in advance but um but we welcome anyone in the audience who would like to speak if you would like to speak please come

[1:11:37] forward anyone want to speak on the citizen's agenda it looks like no one wants to speak tonight so we'll move on uh next on the agenda is our personnel doctor mr mayor i'm both leaving the personnel documents presented on the state we have a motion bombing brooks second baltimore kelly is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is our city attorney's legal update um let's have two quick items uh first item with authorization for the mayor to sign an easement with the corps of engineers to allow for the habitat survey in support of flood risk management it's a study the corps is doing for flooding in desoto county this will allow them to have temporary easement to reduce certain parts of city property for that purpose i'll make that question a second for a motion bonner kelly second baltimore wheeler is there any discussion big nun roll call yes that might she carries and then next time at the last meeting we approved the resolution for medline um at this point we're in the process of working on them with the uh agreement with for the dip print just upon completion and satisfactory language for mga authorize the mayor to sign that agreement as well i'll make the motion second promotion baltimore payne second modern wheeler three discussion hearing none all in favor say aye all right any opposed say no i must have it motion carries

[1:13:41] next on the agenda is our utility bill adjustment docket mr mayor move we approve the utility bill of justice docking that's presented on the state second we have election month from payne second baltimore brooks is there any discussion yes that motion carries next on the agenda are claims dockets mr mayor we got two diamonds 460 and 32 cents including demand checks on document one we have a motion volume and painting second volume and brooks is there any discussion here he's done roll call yes yes yes that motion carries this move we approve doctor number two in the amount of fifteen thousand five hundred and fifty two dollars and thirty four cents a second on docker two have a motion moderate theme second bomberman brooks is there any discussion hearing nine royal call yes that motion carries all right next on the agenda is to determine the need for executive session we have a motion involving brooks second baltimore wheeler all in favor say aye any opposed say no eyes have it

[1:15:43] motion carries a need this evening is litigation and claims against the city's police department and public works department economic development with potential business locating to the city of south haven is there a motion to declare executive sessions but motion modern gallagher second byron kelly all in favor say hi can you post say no i must have it motion carries the mayor board will now enter executive session

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=1cC96jAg58E