05/18/2021

[0:00:04] happen and father we stand before you you're left with the president's lord and we ask you to give us wisdom making decisions tonight lord lord we thank you for the example that you set for us lord coming down as god to be a man lord to show love for one another we pray that we would show that same type of love to others that you've shown to us lord we ask you to bless our meeting and our procedures tonight of the united states of for which it america on the nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all first on our agenda this evening is the approval of minutes for the may before meeting this great move we approve the minutes of the regular meeting of may 4th 2021 with any additions deletions or corrections we have a motion honorable pain the second arm the brooks during discussion yes that motion carries next on the agenda is our continuing disclosure mr mcmahon uh recently you approved the polling of a team disclosure required by the sec with emma for your bonds have been issued that has now been filed with uh the federal government so tonight this is going to be placed on the city's minutes no actions required other than acknowledging the earnings as part of your requirements of the new sergeants oxley uh so now actually just making note of that hearing now we move on to the nexus on our agenda as our final tax exemption for phoenix insurance nlc yeah the ford previously approved uh uh

[0:02:08] real real property tax exemption amount of 39 million 350 000 um for um phoenix insurance llc that has also been approved by the soviet county and now it's been approved by the mississippi department of revenue so tonight um authorization of the mayor just time the final resolution for the tax exemption um for the personal real estate amount 39 million 300 000 for finance insurance llc second we have a motion baller before us second arm and pain is very discussion hearing none wrong yes that motion carries next on the agenda is the appointment of election commissioner missing we've got to get point two and i think there are two derivatives however we found this afternoon that we need to point a third because one they like to make those um mother died um so we'll need to point three um [Music] yeah i think we have to agree with this i think this election is uh june 8th so you got uh june 1st as well could we if we're going to do just a question for everybody we're going to do we got to do three yes can we just find out who the recommendation is tonight and then vote on all of them at one time yes is that okay with you arnold payne could do with that one that's fine who are you will there be enough time uh before the election i mean when are we going to nominate i guess is today the last date i just i mean my suggestion is that the

[0:04:21] board members probably won't know who these people are you know you have a little bit of heads up i'd like to know who they are so especially if we got to have three we're not going to be able to finalize it tonight my suggestion or what i would ask is that you tell us who you recommend and then we tim schneider and kathy connolly to the can you tell us a little bit about these people now first of all i appreciate your work helping us build these spots can you tell us a little bit about her for a long um do we have a third we all have a third we need a third one of them [Music] okay is there any other discussion about that it's up to the board and again if y'all

[0:06:28] want to vote tonight and i understand that we're pressed with time however i do think it would be fair for everybody involved that we have a few days to know that people are i appreciate your quality recommendation though and i have a lot of faith in that personally of you but i do think it would be fair for us to have a day or two to do our homework don't call special meaning when you do that i would like to coordinate that but it'd be my recommendation we don't vote tonight give us a may or two you know do a little research of our own obviously it's a very important decision is anyway we'll figure that out but if y'all are again i'm about on tonight i'm just that's just my suggestion that you know that we have a day or two to you know ask a few questions find out who these people are and like i said no disrespect i have the ultimate confidence [Music] accept that that's my fault for just thinking on this just to accept yes that motion carries okay next on the agenda is we have bill brewer and john tay with the subtle legacy volleyball y'all come forward and address the board appreciate you being here i'm gonna go first here uh

[0:08:30] hope you all know me i'm from bill brewer from one school and i grew up in greenbrook and went to school rivers elementary when southam high school that john's gonna get up here and talk about the business operations but i just wanted to kind of say i'm a coach over so legacy volleyball and my daughter's been there four years playing so i do have a dog in the hunt here um you know what i what i think is great about our coaches our master coaches our owners we're all involved in the community around desoto county and we just happen to be in south east which is great for the revenue stream here but our coaches our high school coaches from center hill who have won a national state championship in the last couple of years uh john's an assistant coach over desoto central with margaret and i coached margaret politco they just won a state championship we have other coaches one of our other owners is a coach at lewisburgh and we have another coach that's coached at hernando so we fully represent this other legacy and we're behind our navy and [Music] john has is awesome with what he does over there really cares about the program uh he has a business of his own that is a 20 million dollar business that he runs so he's taking it from zero to 20 20 million dollars so you know i just feel like as a as a city i want to have my confidence behind someone that has done something with that like that with his own company so some of y'all might recognize uh john he was at the veterans luncheon a couple years ago so that's probably a familiar face that's why but uh this is john dick uh thank you gentlemen for having me um i just wanted to introduce myself as who's running operations over there and simply for any questions you guys might have from me uh i think the operation we're running over there isn't doing phenomenal quite frankly from going from zero as a new concept to coming out with some of the challenges we've had this year or over the last couple of years we had a major renovation going on in the middle of

[0:10:32] this we also obviously had a pandemic um the numbers we submitted i think as far as revenue that we've achieved we're only going to go up in the future i think we probably under perform this year due to some of the pandemic uh attendance as well um but overall i'm here to answer any questions you might have this is no knock on my other bidder he's a great coach you know personally a good club i don't think this is about discussion solely who teaches who coaches volleyball better really honestly has nothing to do with that um i think it's who's gonna love this program and get you guys the most revenue i've been running this company that i started 16 years ago in every facet of operations marketing everything else i know how to make a training facility run i want to train business and proper democracy um so i'm here for any questions that you might have well first i just want to tell you thank you for what you've done with the legacy it's been a good a good marriage for the city and legacy like you like you mentioned we took a program that was non-existent you know a few years ago and turned it into a program that's opened many opportunities for young girls the obviously money is an issue we're a public organization money is an issue that's not the only issue you know we do appreciate the development you know for the young ladies it's no secret opens up not just opportunities in sports but it prepares them for other careers as well you know so the development program has been outstanding for so many young ladies in our city so for that thank you any questions for john necessarily the conversation i think it's more of who is the established book of business and the overall revenue it's a very small foreign let me ask you a question

[0:12:45] uh neighbors from asking for magnificent buildings um i think i think it's very doable to be more flexible with the city and we've been pretty flexible with all the requests that have come in i think now that the construction is all done and the bulls out of there and it's flattened out there is plenty of room for us to all coexist i'm not concerned other than tournament weekends themselves where we fill the building um what else what other things we're doing in there pretty flexible style with a lot of space we still have you've got a lot of concrete our yes during the days no question at all so i've got a question uh so how many of uh roughly how many tournaments did you have you guys had within the past two years like each year um like which tournaments i don't know a lot about volleyball in the volleyball tournament so uh are these tournaments that come to you that want to go there or these friends that you're putting on so in the last since we've taken the lease we put on 34 tournaments wow these terminators these tournaments are created solely by us um we market them we put them out we push them out to the region outside regions and then we execute and operate the city takes care of the gate and gets the concessions but the rest of the

[0:14:47] entire operation belongs to the race and these tournaments have included high school tournament school tournaments we do a fifth sixth grade tournament and then all the usab uh tournaments that are the national tournaments speaking of tournaments uh are there any kind of tournaments that you're able to have that maybe your competitor is not able to have um as of right now the short answer is in the usa there's a standing in the region we're in right now this is you can't have two tournaments on the same weekend within one i think it's one hour or 100 miles i can't remember which one there's talk of that going away uh either or i would argue that our brand of tournaments we take up almost 80 of the available weekends in the area with established tournaments so even if you could hold more tournaments not necessarily room to hold for tournaments there's other agencies or accrediting bodies that you could go through aau being one jba being another we've investigated expanding into those those usually push a little farther into the summer so that we'll take a little more of these inflationary parts to make sure that they can manage because that's a busy season but we've looked at that almost 90 percent of the tournaments still there in the delta region are helped by usab well at the moment i have the rights to the tournaments and they'll also hold them within an hour of building um even if that went away i would still argue that if we're both holding tournaments i have a competitive edge because i have a brain just another note

[0:16:56] it is fair to note that in the contract that we've had that legacy has operated age for the city so it's not just about renting the courts the city has received a service and operations for the recreational league again like i said earlier for the development of our young girls yes our summer league has done grown year over year and last year coming out of gold i think we had 165 children signed up for the different personality um that's fully on our costs on us to do um even though we state you know i have to perform 80 i mean it is the same there's no difference in the two i'm just pointing that out that it is a network you know that our kids have got to benefit the commissioner stated that he might put it up for a vote um i'm not even sure where that vote cycle is i think it's july or august season gets going uh it's been in place for 20 years i can't handicap if it is or isn't going away i'm not that right into the delta region board um but yes i have heard that it's not it's possibly going to be discussed because the region wants to run more tournaments but i think it'll have quite a lot of effect if everyone's trying to return it on february is the main governing body we fall under um the region is the delta region which is just arkansas mississippi and greater memphis area tennessee it's about 25 different regions um aau is also has a governing body volleyball like i said they don't don't really have a big footprint in this area uh and then there's a jba which the junior volleyball association which is

[0:19:00] following aau any other questions for jonathan okay thank you thank you thank you very much okay next on our agenda uh is the award of park beds related to the volleyball discussion mr wes brown the parks director please you'll make your recommendation yes i sent the email out friday afternoon explained my decision those questions that you guys like to be easier and just a summary of your recommendation obviously the bid as alderman brooks stated the bid was seven thousand dollars a month right uh and to that point uh rent's not everything but today we've done 150 restrictions quality organization just like they have high school judges they have um college level experience odp um my name is mike edmond i'm representing memphis volleyball academy on address of the 5804 in middle school southeastern mississippi and i'd like to point out in the 11 years that finn's logs have one

[0:21:04] leader and one leader to be able to answer questions his name is uh hi my name is director and owner of men's pogba academy um if you guys got any questions that you would like me [Music] uh uh despite the tournament's concern it is corrected all the tournaments are run by three independent organizations one being the usb the second being the jba the third and you just correct that the legacy has eight of those dates and has the first final refusal from usab volleyball only that opens up for nba to run tournaments under the umbrella of jba and also the eu nba stand around over 10 plus years now and we've shown a success rate that is unmatched in our region if you have a couple of teams that are ranked nationally um particular or 15 that this rank currently have about 20 in the nation and they just have 3 000 plus teams you got a lineup of coaches their resumes unmatched we got 9 or 7 current or past college coaches we got nine head high school coaches that won multiple state championships we have seven the multiple coaches has won

[0:23:10] thirty titles so um we feel like that with our experience and success that's what we could bring to this outfit as far as our ability to run tournaments uh now i've been doing this for 30 plus years now as a as an owner and a director of a club this makes a we have made some great strides in making friends and in fact when this idea of us being in south carolina came up we reached out a couple of those folks and we can tell you within just racial times you got commitments from clubs several clubs out of louisiana several clubs out of gulf coast areas a club from alabama and teams from nashville we operate at a different level our organization not only operate within the delta region we go play and compete nationally we travel dead to georgia to saint louis missouri kentucky florida and by doing so we are more attractive because we do have the talent that other club wants to come in and play and i think that is the attraction um in the past three years if you look at what legacy has done in that arena tournament they're averaging about 44 teams per tournament they're operating just slightly over 50 five percent i think

[0:25:13] you feel like at nba just because you do have some ties with other regions and other clubs we could operate that at a much higher rate when we ran our tournaments out of our facility and also a couple of other local high school gyms in town access to only seven gems but we are operating almost at a 70 and that is a difference we could feel a lot so i hope that answers your question about you know why the blessings are hard any other questions i want you to test the same question i asked him about walking tracks and that kind of stuff that was kind of superficial you know but uh we've already answered that question last time that we were going to look into that and see if we can add a walking trail the issues you get into again are not having to move the courts we don't want to create a liability for the city by bringing people in there the other thing is you know you do have to man it like now we have a schedule of volleyball so we know when someone's going to be there if the public want to use the facility they can reserve a spot so it helps us manage it at a lower cost if we do what you're talking about that's like a gym i mean you're talking about just open it up 24 7 or a certain number of hours a day that's going to increase the cost of managing the facility as well but anyway either way and i'll let wes add to this this decision is not going to be made by

[0:27:16] either one of these organizations will be made by the city we he's talking about opening up the arena like during the day like especially in the cold weather months where people can go exercise like a gym yeah you just have to train around inside the inside of the building around what i'm saying is there a trail with this smoking room he's talking about it he's doing the west end eastern pacific the trail of snow is not good enough so he's bringing up he's he's turning that issue again it is charlie it is go ahead and just admit it everybody here knows we all know and i want to say yes hey i want to help i mean even though that notion that the east end versus west end is 100 percent false that's the biggest cost in this city but if i listen to every citizen and if we can do that and have volleyball there i'm for that i'm the one if you'll remember it it pushed us leveling the floor taking the bleachers out and the reason we did that was to make the facility more multi-use more versatile for our other functions so we want to do that and we may still be able to do that like i said i answered that question for you two weeks ago there was concerns about you know this friend said that i was asking you know from these guys would they be but of course they would and i'll let him answer but of course he is i mean they're using our facility we own the facility we control the facility regardless of which one you go with so as far as where we laid we own the courts we bought the courts they didn't buy before so we can move the courts how we need to the problem again is that if you move them you got to make it to where it's conducive like what wes uh responded to that question is that we don't have a circular area we have an area in there because there's an awesome facility where people can walk back and forth they could get exercise but there's not a way to set it up uh right now where you move the quartz to the middle then it makes it less functional

[0:29:18] for all purposes then you also take the risk on tripping things like that so it's not it wasn't designed to be like uh like alderman gallagher is talking about the snow trail that's designed for walking and pedestrian use this this was not set up that way but again we're we'll keep studying if there's a way to do it we'll do it but the answer to the question is not for these wes would you like to add to that thank you thanks for updating me and you did that very well any other questions for mr and jack i'll uh wheeler is there any other discussion all right yes yes okay that motion carries next on the agenda is resolution for surplus um yes uh this is his contract uh with randy johnson she's at the center county circuit clerk um yes

[0:31:35] that motion carries the next one is a contract with water this contract has water for the sale of water from the city too when you settle the water in the city from this water in the event that measured water user has system failure for peak events they've installed the meter at your location and the payment rate that is currently charged by the city so tonight's authorization for the marriage signs [Music] second of all i'm in pain is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes yes the motion carries next on the agenda's purchase of city garbage truck i'll update everybody have been involved in this um you all know we have we contract both of our sanitation services out to a contractor uh we do have our own truck to help uh elderly people and those who have uh physical disabilities um so we have a run of our own particular garbage up and we have one truck that's got high miles on it and the truck a couple weeks ago was down uh so we're missing around only got one truck so we're missing uh missing the routes well then we obviously first thing we reached out to our contractor see if they have another truck obviously with all that's going on economically it's they're strapped as well um so there's no trucks out there so our citizens had to wait a week uh and it's embarrassing that we had to tell people that our trucks was shopping all right we're the third largest city in the state we literally told people that our trucks in the shop we should never be saying that so i advised uh bradley to check and see if there's any trucks in the area if we order a new truck it was going to be like february before we get the truck we had a truck in the general area that we could get and get our hands on quickly had to make a quick decision so

[0:33:37] we did that we have the money in our sanitation budget uh for that so we're gonna have to execute that involve the truck so we need this in the minutes for the emergency purchase yes sir that's the first purchase of the thirty one seven thirteen uh [Applause] so and we're just ratifying the purchase correct correction okay okay so there's radio the discussion hearing none roll call yes motion carries next on the agenda for the budget amendment is foreign yes yes okay now motion carries next on the jenna's resolution to clean private property experiment without the resolution without much money brooke second army kelly three discussions on the board hearing or seeing none roll call please

[0:35:54] oh yes so our first application is for an amendment to the existing desoto central pud this is going to be on the south side of melbourne west side of getwell road specifically there's a vacant piece of property um under that ppv called commercial area two it's approximately 7.95 acres and is vacant right now as it stands in the pvd which was approved in the late 90s it was approved for seaport so that could be any type of commercials our biggest commercial district we have in an effort to kind of follow suit with what we have going on with the silo dist or the silas square and snowden district the applicant has kind of excused development for this site and the request is to amend the uses on that for a mixed-use site with a three-story building with office on the bottom floor lost on the top floor very similar to what you see in silo square in addition they've got a gated community uh that kind of u-shapes around it that has what we have cottage homes eighteen hundred square feet which is above the minimum central pud known as deer chase the heat square foot minimums i do believe there's some renderings that are associated with this uh what you can see is it does have kind of mixed use warehouse design like sila square it is utilizing the materials that we're constructing the pedestrian bridge with so it helps tie that in uh there were some concerns presented at the planning commission by some of the commissioners that have all been addressed by the applicant with the submittal that you see in front of you now um some of them were moving where the dumpster location was a lot of the screening of the pools and the amenities in the back uh some of it was screening of the homes that are already associated with deer chase back there the applicant did concede to all of those and just to kind of give you reference i believe there are 90 92 units associated with the site one thing we addressed with this one just as we work with silas squares we don't want to put a heavy impact on the school system so this loft style is more associated with young professionals lofts studio apartments one bedroom apartments there are just they're they're very few two veteran markets because we don't want um you know an impact with high density for the children at the school so they

[0:37:56] did concede to that uh once all that was addressed uh it was voted unanimously in favor of by the planning commission is there any discussion yes yes that motion appears item number two is a application for a conditional use permit for 1330 goodman road this is going to be on the north side of giving roads east of sweden it is for a barber shop and as you know our ordinance requires they have a half mile radius between any similar uses so staff did a windows survey and found that the closest uh barber shop in proximity to this site was 4 900 linear feet which is close to middle mile uh that does comply with the requirements of the conditional use permit therefore we've recommended a one-year conditional use apartment with a four-year extension to be rooted annually and it was the language yes yes yes okay our final application is an amendment to the existing desoto park plaza pd which is going to be on north side of state on road just west of airways boulevard this application was originally approved back in the 80s um there is one make it lock left and it is it is located directly next to what you see on the screen right there which is the main street rv park pub which we approved back in 2020. they attempted to purchase the property

[0:39:58] to the west and include it into this pud which one you see there they weren't successful doing that but the applicant did have an agreement with the adjacent property to buy a lot keep it within the pud that is now and then add rv parking as part of their pd presently it's asking for mini storage in there which we see the rv park expansion is a much more positive impact to the property as opposed to many storage so it was recommended for approval and voted unanimously by planning commission number three 193 have a motion by army kelly and actually if you go to the next slide um this is the expansion with the addition of this area so what you have there is you have cabins uh you have a swimming pool you have a clubhouse area and then you do have the already parking right there it seems to be a thing that we need around here right now uh it's a good infield development and like i said prior to this application its use and that ped was for many storage which we do not see is a good fit for here we think this is much better fit so that's what your final site will be you see there's many storage already over to the left um so we definitely don't want that expanding so like in front of the main street well now what you see yeah yes it's kind of similar to that yes heavy lane escape and it's got the cabin areas the main entrance to it uh rvs are tucked back behind there and then if you look over to the left you see where the amenities are for the clubhouse everything so give some privacy to people here to stay on the site yes

[0:42:12] thank you next one agenda is our mayor's report i just a couple quick updates for everyone um before you are aware of our automated meter reader system for the first time in cities history we're going to automate it with our water system and read the meters we're installing that on our own that they have been installed so we're making great progress with our automated meter readers another positive update to share with you uh sales and tourism tax update our sales tax for this month is 375 000 ahead of what we budgeted our sales taxes exceeded with the exception of one month have exceeded every month this year so we're doing very well breaking goals the sales tax last year you all know was abandoned a little bit by covet we finished up like 14 million 700. the year before that we broke the all-time record in the city of fifteen million one hundred thousand and we're on pace again like i just told you to shadow that record for all-time sales tax revenues things are going well with our economy uh sounds that way to me uh tourism tax update the same thing there uh it's 75 000 up in one month uh obviously the tourism taxes a lot less revenue than our general sales tax but still to have 75k in one month up uh same thing there is exceeded budgeting every month this year so again things are going very well that's all i really have uh open up the score with the board any other questions okay we don't have anything we'll move on uh next one on our agenda is our personnel knocking mr marrow second bottom and flores is there any discussion hearing none we're all call

[0:44:17] yes yes yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is our city attorney's legal update again mr nick manning just two items uh authorization i mean these came in this afternoon this morning this morning um two popular contracts just one for the utilities department one for the planning department authorization for ray humphrey and when you took this sign those uh yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is our utility bill adjustment document mr mayor moved it through the utility contestant confidence is there any discussion appearing on roll calls yes that motion carries next on the agenda is to approve one claims mr we approve the claims docket and the amount of three million thirty thousand six hundred and fourteen dollars and seventy two cents including demand checks now we have a motion for bottom in pain second alarm and there a discussion hearing none roll call please yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is the purpose of determining the need for executive sessions uh

[0:47:07] and fix an issue that's going to cause us to lose seven or eight parking spaces that's going to put us out of compliance with the city and did you reach out to you did you reach out and get on the agenda set the friday before the meeting and just try we'll do i well the reason we do that is not to make it difficult just to preserve the integrity of the meeting because what has happened in the past is we let everyone speak and then we got to be with people and i know that's not true but right and it got to be where people would uh totally be ignorant of the previous discussion like they wouldn't come to another meeting and then they would come here once a whole board to rehash everything that's happened over the last two or three months and it just got to be abused so that's how we set the policy that you have to be on the agenda to speak with that being said that's not my call i welcome the chance to speak if the board wants to make a motion to allow you to speak and we'll go that is our motion so we got a first and a second um uh all in favor to allow mr ben to speak on better seattle all right any opposed say no i just have a motion carrier thank you is going to take

[0:49:41] seven to eight parking spaces that are in front of our building it's a building that's been here since 1961 and it's going to affect our pedestrian and then also parking and it's going to cause us to lose those parking spaces which are going to put us out of compliance with the city's requirements that a building that size have a certain number of parking spaces i've met with this show it's on main street it's 961 main street building congratulations and there's quite a bit of elevation from the from the street level to our building and so we've got a set of stairs that lead up to it from the parking area that either we could retain some parallel parking uh or maintain some type of access to the street because other than that we only have one way in and out of our building if you look at the lot lines a lot behind us has that other access and so i mean that there was a possibility of city moving ahead without or creating a temporary easement for the city to come on and then make the improvements that need to be made outside of any type of right-of-way and that's and we're fine to do that we yeah i'm not actually opposed to the sidewalk uh you know i know lots of people are composed yes and they have different reasons wow they hear that in all various you do know this is a seven year project no i do that's what i'm saying i'm not opposed to it yeah i know that there are people that do walk right uh and what is your just to help us we'll bring whitney

[0:51:44] up in just a minute but what is what is we we're all about compromise we want to put smiles on faces if we can we certainly don't want to do anything we wouldn't apply for this project seven years ago if we didn't think it was going to help the original business district in our city it would be a positive thing which a lot of people are excited about we believe it's going to have a lot of value but that being said we certainly don't want to we don't want to hamper any property owner we don't want to bring anyone so what is what is your recommendation as far as a healthy compromise well the first recommendation is that we at least meet i know i've tried the last two weeks we're trying to compete with all informal uh including today and suggested that we do just an executive session so we could all speak freely and everyone i know y'all probably don't know me but to try and work this out and come to i mean we want to work for the city just as much as we would think the city was going to work with us i just told you we did yeah and so you understand that we're in the 11th hour this is a seven year project whitney would you please come forward tell us some history about surely there's been some prior discussion about this because what you're telling me tonight's the first i've ever heard of this i've spent hours and hours on this project so i've never heard anything about there being a disagreement uh with the parking spaces that you're discussing [Music] okay so um this building the parking's been known forever in the front of person has but essentially doing our survey of the property it's actually on the city right away it's not on private property um the parking space is our own city right of way which is directly where the sidewalk's going so seeing that we didn't want to just come in there and take his parking spot so we obviously set up a meeting i brought a simple link with me and i went out there myself you know what are the options here um i had sibling draw up a concept for the back of property uh where you could just resize re-strike his diagonal parking and gain some parking there and we also looked at putting the parking back on

[0:53:46] the back side of the lot and we even got one of our tournament people to contract and see how much it would actually be so we could go back to them and say look you know hate you're losing them but this is what's going to cost we also went up the chain of command with mdot to see if there was any way we could route around the parking spaces to keep them for him uh just an effort to work with them mdot and finally told us no we have got to move forward the exact design or you're going to hold the project so talking to nick nick's like well look we need a temporary construction easement maybe what we do is pose some monetary compensation to help assist getting the parking on back um since we're taking it away from the front let's offer it to him if he accepts it we'll go to the board we'll pitch it to the mayor we'll go to the board and see if we can do that so the email i said to him uh that he's referring to i said look we've gone up the chain of command with them not there's nothing we could do or else it halts the project essentially they're in our runway we have to move forward the project this way i said the addition of the parking in the back is going to run around x amount of dollars what if i went to the board and the mayor and asked for five thousand dollars in compensation for the temporary construction easement which will help compensate you for the loss of the parking in the front uh and back at that point i think ben came back in and said no you know we need to meet i can't lose that parking front i need you to move the sidewalk i said we i've gone as far as i can up in dot's ladder we cannot move it uh so i think that's when nick and ben started going back and forth with emails uh i was copied on them and then the last thing i noticed was literally when i sat down here nick sent me a copy of the email saying he's showing up tonight wants to speak on my behalf but um the compensation was not we just wanted to see if there's an agreement we can come to the monetary amount to kind of appease the parking lots but essentially they are in a right-of-way what you offered how many spots can you add if you do it in the back uh with the 5 000 i mean our pitch to get all of it was around 10 to 12 and that would take all the parking spaces he had up front and it would restrike to getting two more additional spaces so i think it was gaining nine um so we were basically cutting in half is what we were offering so you're not if you did that that wouldn't be taking away any parking space we were

[0:55:48] trying yeah no we were trying to gain the parking background now he would have to hire the contractor and take the money we gave him to go do the design work and everything there um if they're out of compliance basically now through this square footage but i did also tell him we're in the mainstream district we have flexibility to do a variance on um you know compliance with parking we would be willing to do that as well i put out everything we could um offer to make this move forward and i think what ben's saying now is that that's six or seven but these are directly off of the street so what you're proposing does that add at least seven to the back if i propose 10 000 to get that plus an additional two we just cut that in half so it may give them six in the back depending on how they lay it out well that's why we were trying to work with you because essentially those those parking spots are out of like and what my proposal was was to have the sidewalk ground level so flush with the ground so then the that space that we own there we can still use this parallel park and maybe get three or four parallel parking spots out of it and then fix any other parking issue from my experience with mdot uh mdot is is not easy to work with okay when you change a project something that to you and i that sounds like common sense hey let's make an adjustment to it right now we to make this work and i can tell you from experience that mdot doesn't work like that when you change their design they sent you back we've experienced that in other projects the multi-use trail that's going down to oklahoma right now is an 11 year old project and

[0:57:51] the region was delayed it was delayed about two years because we had to change the route and then made a start over or go back right and so i'm understanding you wouldn't this is the same it was and we went as far as we could at the ladder and we were told we had a door shut on us at every level so what you're saying ben is we can't do that i'm not going to allow us to do that well that's i don't actually know that i don't know as far as variances within god and everything i think the problem makes with the original plans the original planets called the city coming in and taking down the brick all the brickwork the retaining wall and all the stairs and then backfilling the dirt to i guess to come down to the sidewalk which then would leave us with a big long but then no access to the from our building and so we're losing two avenues of ingress and egress for steers and then also we're not in compliance with the aba the ada requires it if you make an improvement like that you have to make it accessible from the street with a pedestrian to the business so you have to have a wall but you can walk away from the rear which is not a compliant as it stands from the stairs appliance i mean we can't help at a non-conforming stairs have been placed now the building was built in 1961 grandfathered in under the aba so in other words i agree with you we went in here we made these changes which is why we're not touching the stairs we're not touching any of that park because we don't want to get into an ada issue because i think that's why it wasn't addressed let me ask one question i know a little bit about this people i don't know what to design all that i just i don't know nick was saying is we still didn't have enough room to do legal separation between the pedestrian path and the on-screen parallel parking there still wasn't enough with and it still altered the design of dft approved so you couldn't eat like that

[0:59:54] well again from a design standpoint i don't know but i was not aware that they were going to be here to answer questions because this just popped up well again that's why we right exactly we were not aware of this so i don't have a designer [Music] not hearing those questions so i can't tell him but all i can say is we we we've tried to finalize as much as we possibly can um from my standpoint um we're starting on straight line right it's not going to be in front of his office in a week um but he tells you that statement is starting but there's a long stance but we'll do it like i said from the beginning of this conversation if we can put a smile on your face and still have a sidewall project we'll do whatever we can so what we'll do and our engineers are not here because we didn't know we're going to discuss this we now reach back out to engineers reach back out to him not we can do that to accommodate you the answer is yes that would be my recommendation to this board if we can't do that we're not going to forego the sidewalk project and if i'm just to make sure i'm understanding plan b is you offer conversations with the additional marking in the back and you would be putting exactly the same or more parking spots in the back so they would not be losing any parking spots that's correct okay i think that's i mean that's if the mdot and mdot won't allow us to get the other i mean to me that's a fair comment it's the only options we had at this point so and i'm willing to work in any way we can if mdot allows it i mean we have no problem allowing it as well what we can't do is stop a project [Music]

[1:02:32] the your concerns we'll address every one of your concerns you have their contact information right so what we'll do then we'll we'll go to the engineers we'll get them to reach back out to mdot and see what can be done and try to accommodate uh what you're suggesting and then if we can't we'll address it the other way and then this taylor will answer your questions too we'll get into it to be clear obviously we're not going to build a sidewalk and damage or we're not going to damage the building we don't want the building slides as you say we don't want to slide down to main street okay so we'll definitely we'll definitely stop that i promise you that but we'll answer all those concerns and then we'll get back in touch with you and let you know what i'm not telling you that's fine i just i guess my concern was the city wants to move forward and but you know we didn't want i guess work to begin my understanding is that the i guess the plan costs for the sidewalk to maintain its elevation which would in fact stop any type of particular travel in there and i mean if we can just hold off and give us time we can work this out and it's a matter of how much we have to contribute to make you know uh i definitely want to make things better not worse than i can so we agree certainly i guess i'm meeting with everybody um let me do this first thing and then set up a meeting with everybody based on our discussion tonight move forward the best way to address it then come back to the board with how we're going to address it that's okay thank you very much we appreciate it thank you okay is there a motion to determine the need for executive session

[1:04:34] promotion by alderman brooke the second one is this evening is uh purchase of property claims against the city police department and public works department city-wide personnel and economic development tourism within the city are a motion to declare executive sessions emotional growth hey how you doing here

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=JSARIutsa8U