07/16/2019

[0:00:00] please stand with us i will be led prayer by alderman gallagher please remain standing for the pledge of allegiance to be led by alderman heavenly father lord we ask you to be here tonight and to help us make wise decisions as we go forth with the city's business lord we also ask you to be with our children lord as they begin to get ready to go back to school lord i pray for safety in the schools and for you to watch over our children in jesus name amen and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all can you is this the volume sound right back there chris [Music] i'm just turning it up here is there any it seems like there's something different every meeting there's something different with this is somebody uh playing tricks on me it is [Laughter] okay we're ready first on the agenda this evening is approval minutes for the july 2nd 2019 meeting mr mayor i moved to approve the minutes

[0:02:02] of the regular meeting of july 2nd 2019. within the admissions deletion to our corrections we've got a motion baller machine second alderman brooks is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes that motion carries next on the agendas our amendments to our employee handbook mr chris wilson their board is simply going to be the um adding comp time as a policy in our handbook in lieu of overtime pay uh meeting with several employees it's we used to have this policy we did away with it simply putting it back in accordance with flsa and dol regulations meaning if someone banks over time they can take it at the time and a half comp time instead of in lieu of pay chris will they have to cash it out within 12 months to use it in 12 months when they bank it to use it within 12 months but it still will be there they'll just then revert to um overtime or hours earned under um should they leave in accordance with when you leave you get paid out to 160 for 240 environments so then we revert back to that so if they don't use it within 12 months then it's cashed out it's over time yes okay good so we won't they have to be compensated for the hours work we're not going back to scenario of they got 10 years ago and they banked it a bit no no no not adding anything because that could be banked to the higher rate getting rid of all right that was the reason we had gotten actually done away with that before right if i'm a i'm the one that brought this the reason we want to do this is just to give more flexibility for our employees also it could potentially be a save the city money and overtime pay the goal here is not to go back uh revert back to the the program the way it used to be when i came to work for

[0:04:05] the city and was aware of that i hated that because that's not the purpose of comp time the purpose of compton is to allow people to take a break you know to spend quality time with their families take a break and get away from it which makes them a more productive employee so if you're bank banking it you know for eight to ten years it's serving no purpose and that's what was going on in the past this is not that there is a 12 month limit it's just designed to get more flexibility specifically in our police department since we have high overtime in our police department so you know having a 12 month time frame on that will eliminate it becoming what it used to be it does agree at uh one and a half hours for every one hour overtime which would be the cash conversion time and a half mr mayor i'll make the emotion to add the common amendment to the employee handbook okay we have motion baller in pain second ballroom in hoots is there any other discussion hearing nonetheless yes that motion carries anything else the other thing just uh it's not prepared tonight but there's been some discussion with our handbook about uh visiting our tattoo policy so we are working on that but uh we had hoped to have something prepared for tonight's meeting but uh there's a little more research we need to do but um by the next meeting i'll have a recommendation uh for this board uh to look at revising our tattoo policy and employee handbook but um really i have nothing else to add so if you don't mind please no questions until i have more information on that so we'll move on next on the agenda's authority to advertise for our budget hearing and budget adoption it's rarely that we approve authority to advertise the budget hearing budget adoption that's

[0:06:06] presented we have a motion ballroom brooks second baller and wheeler is there any discussion chris the advertisements will be and again this is that strange law where you've got two conflicting laws about advertised four weeks august 6 13 20-27 with the budget hearing on august 20th okay any other discussion hearing on roll call yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is a contract with a t mr chris shelton mayor board requesting your permission tonight to sign an agreement with att to move our current caliper public safety software which is the mobile cop software that runs in our patrol cars we've reached an end of life with the equipment that we're running in the servers at this time and also on the versions of the software there so it's time for us to move up this kind of contract approves for them to migrate all the existing data and licenses to new servers a lot of enhancements with this but if you're familiar with globalcop this is what allows our police officers to be able to receive calls in the field on their mdts and also to be able to run tags driver's licenses and things like that several improvements and more stability over what we have today this is also part of a larger project county-wide where the 911 commission has approved to and sign contracts to upgrade

[0:08:07] everyone's cash system in each of the dispatch centers so the new cad is necessary for the new mobile cop and vice versa so this would uh be an amount of 30 846 dollars that includes the migration and also training for the new software i'll make the motion to make the agreement with att for the uh cad software second who's signing the contracts the mayor of chris and allow chris and or the mayor to sign contracts we have a motion baller in pain second of all in brooks is there any discussion hearing done all in favor say aye aye any opposed say no i haven't motion carries thank you thank you okay next on the agenda an agreement with entergy again mayor and board requesting your permission to sign an agreement with energy this agreement is to give us as a city permission to mount equipment onto existing energy poles specifically this mimics a lot like what we did years ago with magnolia wave placing equipment on their poles it's just an agreement like that but this is for our sky cop cameras we have a couple of cameras to deploy right now and of those being deployed there are two that will need to go on existing energy poles saving us the cost of putting new polls up these will be metered when they're on their polls like that and this is for the brookhaven park and for a cherry valley mr murray i'll make we have a motion baller in pain second

[0:10:09] volume and hoots is there any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye all right any opposed say no eyes have it motion carries so okay next on the agenda are change orders for our term bid contracts mr dan cordell mayor board thank you all um in august our term contracts um expire for paving our public works emergency utilities and pavement preservation and our striping contract i would like to and i need to do them individually according to nick as for y'all this is also the last year of our renewal so beginning in march april next year we'll be back to advertise request approval to advertise and go out for bids on all of these again next year the first one i have up is for our striking contractor riverside we're asking for a board approval and authorization for the mayor to sign a 365-day extension to that contract so move second good information modern florida second volume and wheeler is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes uh the next contract we have for is our annual contract this is with lehman roberts it is for us to have them to actually supply us asphalt at the plants for our own crews and for for our their installation on our projects which is a component of our city overlay projects i'm also asking for board approval for an extension of that for 360 for another

[0:12:12] year and all the elections for the mayor to sign absolutely one second we have a motion baltimore gallagher second baltimore kelly is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes that motion carries the next one also a component of our citywide paving or improvements program is our vance brothers contract which is for surface payment service treatments it also is an extension for the one year period and the last one so i'm again that's going to be off approval and authorization for the mayor's side so move thank you we have a motion involvement brooks second baltimore wheeler is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes you carries thank you the last one i have is our public works and utilities uh annual term contract which is with tri-pharma excavators uh it also is an extension for a one-year period in the last year of this contract asking again for y'all's approval on extension and probably for the later sign second we have a motion baller kelly second fireman hoots is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes you carries thank you thank you sir next on the agenda's resolution to clean private property mr mayor i mean we adopt a resolution granting authority to clean proper property presented on this state second

[0:14:17] we have a motion by alderman brooks second baltimore kelly is there any discussion among the board is there any discussion from anyone in the audience that has a financial interest in any of the properties please come forward thank you good afternoon i'm irvana griffin and i have an interest in a property located in cobblestone that's on that list is lot 13. i was made aware today recently that apparently the um the notice went to the previous owners and not to yes so i'm requesting more time to cure whatever the issue was with the lot and that we can notice okay yeah it can be resolved so what is austin which what is the issue with that property please sir well i believe um i don't know lot 13 but i know excuse me we met in traffic today and so i started researching that property and looks like our gis hadn't updated at the time and we sent out a letter to north mississippi community bank and i guess that's who you bought it from yeah so um we were gonna take it uh off the cut list and have her give her an opportunity to cut it but it was too late to take it off the condemn list so we were just going to go ahead and condemn it tonight are you going to is it just tall grass yes sir all right are you going to cut the grass yes okay which is our emotion to remove this come in my original motion setup okay we have a motion by alderman brooks to remove it from the list tonight second ballroom and gallagher any discussion do we need to know which one which property is on the barcelona yeah

[0:16:19] that yeah he just noted again thank you for coming forward okay is there any other discussion appearing on roll call yes okay that measures parents is anyone else in the audience that wants to discuss a property yes sir by the way the last vote was to remove the old one not to complete the list yes sir yes sir mayor alderweireld my name is george vaughan the commander of southaven vfw post 10567 and this vsw has been a proud part of this community since september 17th yesterday right now on the agenda we're just talking about condemned properties did you want to speak on the citizens agenda oh no sir that'd be wrong is this a regarding deal property no sir okay we'll go we're gonna come back to that we're just talking about condemned properties right now okay we have another uh on the agenda we'll have a citizen's agenda so we'll bring you back up then okay i'm sorry that's my fault i should have clarified that sorry about that thank you okay so is anyone else in the audience who wants to speak regarding any of the properties on the condemned property list okay hearing or seeing none to approve that resolution um yes okay that motion carries next on our agenda is our planning agenda mr whitney uh yes sir our first application is an additional use permit for a leaderboard sign to be located at 1407 church road

[0:18:23] this is going to be the new host baptist church which is going to be on the south side of church road just east of sweden what they have submitted which you'll see um in the digital photo on there a message of reader boards must be located below the actual signage utilize the secondary side lettering in the district can i exceed eight inches in height and designated as amber gold or white you can see by there's the middle that they have submitted a compliance sign and we're requesting approval to conditional use permit item number one on the planning agenda sorry when i have one we have a motion volume in pain second volume of brooks is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes that motion carries our second application is a request for conditional use permit at 65.82 gatwell road north this is going to be in the south edmond marketplace subdivision which will be on the east side of getwell road south of goodman per conditional use requirements facilities such as these can be located no closer than a half mile on each side from an existing similar business we did do the windows survey um two closest or the three closest facilities range from a half mile to over a mile which means they are compliant we're requesting a conditional use permit for one year with a four-year extension to be renewed annually mr mayor make that motion second on item two we have a notice involving the wheeler second alderman flores is there any discussion yes

[0:20:32] that motion carries our third is similar to the last one it is a request for conditional use permit for uh what is being called a nail bar which is essentially a nail salon uh at 1079 main street this will be on the south side of state line road west of mill branch again a half mile distance on each side rule comes into play the two closest nail salons in the vicinity are ranging anywhere from three quarters a mile to a mile and a half away therefore it does comply we're asking for a one-year conditional use permit with a warrior extension mr mayor make a motion to approve i'm number three on the planning agenda as apprentice and on this night second on one of three we have a motion of honoring kelly second ballerina hoots is there a discussion hearing non-roll call yes no motion carries our fourth item is an amendment to the existing cherry hill pud which is completely built out on the south side of rascada road just east of sweeney previous to this application we did do an amendment to take in some additional acreage on the north side this will encompass both that acreage we've already added in and some additional acreage they were actually actually able to capture along sweeney road basically it's 28.685 acres they are submitting the same pud text from the square footages and the lot sizes all the way down from the existing subdivision so nothing will change it's just an extension to the north we did have some comments regarding some open space and some detention areas that we're going to work through with the applicant there is a few concerns we were going through there's a 3-1 slope along getwell or along rasco road which means the fence will be right up here and the houses will be down here you can see the rooftops obviously that's not something we want so we're asking them to find a different way to work that engineering magic and make those come back up to at

[0:22:36] least as close to street level as we can get we're asking them to put a point of entry on twingy road that's actually a boulevard so it can be calculated as two access points for the fire department they conceded to that uh and then we're asking them to look at some interior open spaces as of right now there's not enough open space to meet the 20 so there will be a revision to ensure that that open space is in play we're asking them to kind of put an open park system in the middle so they're redesigning that uh and with those comments planning commission voted unanimously in favor of it mr mayor make a motion to approve item number four as presented obviously on item four we have a motion governor mckelly second baltimore wheeler is there any discussion okay our last application is a tax incentive request our west end district uh incentive package approval for the existing wendy's you see across the way at 880 with the state line road as you can see right now it's kind of boarded up shut down originally they came in to do some renovation work on the inside of the outside um once we got in there and tried to get it in compliance it just was a little too far gone um so we spoke with the owners of it and explained the tax incentive program we've gotten play uh they really liked it their decision now is to take it completely to the ground and come up with a brand new wendy's what you'll see up there is the prototype we're looking at uh the improvements to the site will be estimated at a total of 1.935 million to reinvest in there so we're looking for approval for them to start uh the lesson district program i'll make the most of the provider number five it's presented second we have a motion on item five made ballerman payne second ballerman hoots

[0:24:39] i'll start the discussion hey one at a time hey for all the critics of the west end business district it doesn't happen overnight you don't change 30 years of change you don't bring back 30 years of migrating business uh in one year it takes some time we've made progress we continue to make progress that's a beautiful wendy's i mean hey some people may you know just sneer it it's a wendy's but hey it's a brand new building in our original business district which will uh you know continue to snowball we've had businesses that have stepped up they've uh they've renovated their buildings uh we're gradually one at a time bringing back our original business district so i'm pretty fired up about that so outstanding and again uh kudos to the board uh the west end business district we did that i believe in 2014 and again it doesn't happen overnight but you're seeing the you're seeing an incentive there that worked uh they could have easily just gone in and did what they had to do the basics right you know to um you know to get by but they they didn't they took that incentive and they're building a brand new building so i think that's outstanding for our city i agree with you i want to tell you uh thanks great job on that suggestion we're excited we actually have a gentleman in the audience who doesn't want to speak i'm sure he's just here to make sure it happens but they've worked really well with us they really have um and this is a lot more money than they were putting in to do the compliance retrofit they finally just saw it as a better asset to do this so we were really excited and thank you sir we appreciate that okay any other discussion on item five hearing none roll call yes yes yes yes thank you next on our agenda is our mayor's report we have several things and we'll try to move kind of fast and have a large number of things uh first of all alderman flores had asked me recently about

[0:26:43] the new power lines that went up in front of silos square on getwell obviously we had preferred to keep the skyline clear you all may remember about this time last year whitney and i had met with entergy and we were very disappointed we wanted to have underground power lines there to keep the skyline clear they went through and did some work reported back to us just you know kind of explored other options throughout the state to see if that could be done they came back to us and indicated that that could not be done that the power lines that they do not pay to put power lines underground uh they reported to us that if the city wanted to pay for it we could do it it was uh in excess of it was seven seven figures plus so we um you know didn't feel like it was worthy to do that but i just want to make sure we update everybody this was what we discussed and that's why um i was very upset just not upset just disappointed because i felt feel like it is a negative but anyway i just want to report back to you now that the lines have gone up i know that alderman flores has been contacted by some citizens expressing concern about that i share that concern so the decision is if you want to you know go spend seven figures and go underground with it i'm assuming whitney is still an option we can go back and do that so um but anyway just reporting to the board it's out there that's why they're they're overhead lines but if y'all want to revisit that discussion i'll be glad to uh you know to arrange that delete that but just wanted to clarify in case you have other you know contacts by our citizens is there any other discussion on that one ryan thank you for addressing that yes sir okay and then um last meeting we talked about the state line road resurfacing uh just to recap that on timelines uh just real quickly we know it's a major problem i continue to

[0:28:45] get questions about that like why would i pave greenville parkway and not stateline and again i'll just i'll just say this clearly the streets in the city are paved generally by our annual street improvement line when we get into arterial roads large projects like state line and our big arterial roadways we look for co-op funding that's available through federal and state programs and at this time we're in a situation where considering all the other projects that are going on in desoto county we compete for that money metropolitan planning organization money is sent to a metro area so we all compete for that money we have a lot of things going on in desoto county and the memphis metro so we've gotten our share we've got several projects that are on there are funded the biggest one will be the get-well widening project that will be under construction either late this year probably next year um is about a nine million dollar project so we've gotten our share but i tell you all that to say that uh there's no more money left so if we want state line road done it's gonna be 100 city funded uh we have the money in excess uh unassigned fund balance and so in our last meeting y'all voted to approve that um so we're moving forward with uh resurfacing state line road which is in uh horrific condition uh the timelines on that we do have one culvert that we've got to fix uh before that because we don't want to go and mess the rope uh mess the road up after we put new pavement there so we're gonna do that first that will be in the green rook lake area as soon as that's done by our turnbit contractor we will start resurfacing we expect to see contractors working on state line road within 30 to 45 days so it definitely will be something that we'll be able to get done before the weather gets cold this year okay just to be recorded in the minutes board's familiar with the fact that we needed to buy about four acres of property on snowden lane for our soccer expansion

[0:30:50] and board approved that recently andrea if you'll just report in the minutes i did sign that contract the city paid 110 000 and uh for that that will allow us to have a soccer entrance our road to come off of snowden lane which will be more efficient for the rest of our park improvements and so it was crucial for that reason but if you'll just record in the minutes that i did sign that contract i just recently changed my contacts y'all just kind of forgive me i can't see anymore okay another update for the first time in the history of our city we're going to have a pro tennis tournament at our new tennis complex coming up in august this is one that used to take place in memphis and because of our outstanding tennis facility they indicated that they felt like they could bring a large draw to south haven and i'm trying to find my dates here hang with me okay so the week of um monday august the 12th that entire week there's going to be events every night at the tennis center there's going to be 80 professional tennis players that are on the cuff they're like semi-pro they're competing for a chance to go to the u.s open in new york so this south haven tournament is that significant so there's going to be 80 players that are definitely future stars there will be household names so you can see those at the stone grove tennis center here in south haven so we're pretty fired up about that we expect that there'll be about 2 000 extra visitors to our park that week which as you all know provides a real quality economic impact to our city but also it creates interest when you bring pro players

[0:32:51] to the city it makes a big deal to the younger players that are out there when they come out and see the pro players playing on the same court that they're playing on it just gives a little added incentive and motivation for them to continue their development as tennis players so that's going to be a big deal for our city the week of august the 12th we're going to try to publicize that a little more and chris shelton we you'll help us please sir with getting that word out on the on the website and through our social media outlets okay we had one other issue that came up recently we had a request from area 14 at snoke grove this is a gated community when we have a gated community we're not bringing public vehicles on the streets obviously because the gate is closed unless it's an emergency type situation they requested because of all the rain and the heat that they're having a mosquito problem so they requested that we bring our spray trucks uh through their gates and spray their community and so i need board approval to do that i recommend that if y'all will approve that i'm asking for a motion to allow us to spray for mosquitoes in stone grove area 14 gated communities i've got a motion by gallagher second ballroom wheeler any discussion hearing none all there say any opponents say no i just haven't motion carries okay next uh tonight as you all know with the um or you may not know i guess now is a good time to share some bad news with you it has rained a lot in 2019 when you have real grass baseball fields you can't play when you get excessive rain so i hate to tell you that we've had a terrible year with park revenues because of the rainouts at snow grove park it's been it's been challenging for us we still

[0:34:52] we still have hope that if the rain will stop then we can continue with the disney dane world series which is uh underway now that many people in town to play there they have been delayed but we're still hoping to uh you know to get that get that completed some other things as i mentioned with tennis we've still got some hope to bring that back but the bottom line is we have tough year the baseball right now have hurt us the reason i tell you all that is it is a hot topic as most of you know with used sports to go to turf fields y'all everybody here knows i'm a baseball guy i don't like playing on turf okay i played on turf i like plant on grass but you can't deny the benefits of turf okay so when people are traveling to come here and it's thursday and they're they're gonna travel for three or four hours to get here for a friday night game you can bet they're checking out the weather forecast and if they know we have grass fields they know what that means they know that we're it's very possible that we won't play so what happens is they cancel early before they get here which doesn't give us a chance to get the tournament in or at least have the as many teams in that tournament it's become a financial thing our competitors that for years have looked at smoke grove park as a model for youth baseball because that's a fact i mean you look at oxford you look at jackson tennessee cordova a lot of the area parks still view snowden uh they may not admit that now but at one time they viewed snowden as the model and the i guess the good the good news is we're the model the bad news is our competitors are catching us a little bit uh so i i tell you that to say that we've got some financials put together and that's something that i'll bring back before the board to consider making a decision uh to go with turf fields it is expensive to do that but the the lost revenue the potential increase revenue does make a lot of sense we'll revisit that on another uh

[0:36:55] occasion but until then uh it's the recommendation of our parks director wes brown uh that he and alderman brooks and josh that does the maintenance at our park uh that they take a trip to atlanta there's a special new turf that's out and they want to go to atlanta and check that out and so i'm asking for a motion tonight to authorize that travel so nothing too much i'm saying okay motion ballroom ballerman flores second by alderman payne is there any discussion um well it's it the light point uh complex that um for perfect game is in atlanta but no this is uh another uh actually a vendor that's gonna do a display isn't that right yes any other discussion are we looking at doing this at the brewery softball both yeah we if we did it we would do it at both complexes so we would do all the snow grow and then we would do the green brick softball fields as well so it would be something that it would it would involve a bond you know we would borrow money and we would fund that with the uh with the increased revenue and the uh saved revenue you know that we're losing now but uh we don't have the final numbers but uh it's i'm going to tell you it's it's uh it's north of 300k that we're down uh because of the rain so it's it's something to think about and and um and i know it's not the first year it's rained in a baseball season but this just happens to be a terrible year uh combined with the fact that uh teams have other options so like you know three years ago if they were looking at going to snowden or oxford they would sorry oxford but they would prefer snow now if there's rain in the forecast on wednesday and they got snow and rocks or they're going to oxford so that's why it's hurting us more now than it would you know would have been three or four years ago have you got a top mark on what we're talking about i'm gonna bring i have the

[0:38:57] numbers wes and i have like you know roughly gone over the numbers but i want to tune that up a little bit before i bring it to y'all to make sure that everything is tight uh but i'll i'll have that to you pretty soon we can start saving a lot of money too though mowings and fertilizers that's part of it yeah that's part of the benefit is you're gonna you're gonna cut uh basically you have no no dirt so you have no most of the baseball diamond most of the maintenance is chocking the lines and dirt work and the batter's boxing the pigeon mound and then grade and then you know drag in the field so you eliminate all that so you save a large amount of money and maintenance part of it is we'll give us a presentation how it works so though it will be a complete breakdown so it'll be we'll be able to bring it back to mayor and more to you're exactly right that's part of the cost-benefit analysis is the amount of money would save and maintenance in addition to the opportunity cost of rent outs any other discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye any opposed say no eyes have it emotion carries okay next um recently we uh we received bids for the central park snow grow park multi-use trail again just real quickly this is about a seven year project we've had lots of road blocks along the way that was is being funded by mdot but when we got the bids one of the changes we had to go through a couple years ago is we couldn't get the proper right away so we had to change the route and the route was going to go down to central parkway from tula home and then go back go back to get one and go north we got the bids many things changed in pricing since this project was initially designed and the bids were much higher than what we expected to be because the route is bigger dot well not it's an 80 20 thing but with the increase in bids they have a set amount of money so any any bad news that you get uh with the bids uh

[0:41:01] unfortunately you're bad it's not indot's bad news it's our bad news so instead of taking that big hit which is going to be about six hundred thousand dollars difference uh mr dan cordell went back we looked at doing a different route and so now we believe that we can uh we can do a more efficient route uh by going may boulevard instead of going all the way south if you envision going southbound tula home instead of going all the way to central parkway now we can hit main boulevard which is going to be cut through due to silos square they already had plans to put a multi-use trail in there so we can combine with that and shorten the route and save money so we feel like that's that's a better alternative than taking the 100 of the hit so the reason i tell you all that is we need to reject the other bids and then we're going to go back and rebuild that project again with the new route so is there a motion um dan do i need a motion to authorize for the new bid as well okay okay so let's go ahead and uh if i can for now uh just give me a motion to reject the old bids some moves see okay we have a motion baller brook second baller but pain any discussion hearing none roll call yes okay that motion carries now can i have a motion to uh bid the new route yes yes yes okay that motion carries and that wraps up my mayor's report it's real short tonight okay next uh on our agenda is our citizens agenda we're gonna have multiple people tonight uh first we'll go with the uh we do have uh supervisor bill russell

[0:43:04] and supervisor mark gardner with us if you guys would come up first i would appreciate that i think supervisor gardner wanted to speak about something else hey honor to be here we need to learn how to how to have a shorter meeting [Music] thank you all for what you do i know it's not easy i know you get a lot of calls and as a citizen of south haven i do appreciate y'all i just wanted to echo something that the mayor said i want to applaud y'all for your vision on tennis as as a past president of the desoto county tennis association and an avid tennis player you know we'd always said if you build it they would come and you did build it and they're coming and you go out there my grandkids are in junior tennis out there right now and michael's got all the courts full uh the vision you had for not only building it but hiring a quality director of tennis is paying dividends and i just want to thank you all on behalf of the 1000 plus usda members in desoto county for doing that and it's going great guns and and i'm playing the pro-am i won't tell you if i'm playing as a pro or i am thank you for saying that and we deeply appreciate you guys taking your time i know how busy you are um i didn't realize you were that busy but pretty obvious that you are and i know i don't know if you noticed but out of respect we dressed alike they're not counting issues but guys what uh what we're here to talk about tonight is house of grace you know i've been on the board supervisor for 16 years and honestly i've not had anything that i feel like is more important come up than than this time with the house of grace i think you all know i've talked to some of you i apologize to the ones i haven't gotten to but i'll i'll make myself

[0:45:07] available uh that's your at your wish to meet with you and and as well supervisor gardner at any time the house of grace has gotten is in financial difficulty uh i think we all understand how important house grace is to this community you know we're going through the same thing you guys go through i talked to all the mayors we're all in the same boat about charities we're we're in uh we're getting covered up with with requests from charities and our board is actually trying to cut back as i know your board is too uh but there's two organizations in this county in this county that i feel like are really important almost extensions of our of our law enforcement one is house of grace and the other child advocacy center i'm not going to talk about the child advocacy center tonight but i think you all know about it and how important it is and you'll be hearing from them i think in the future but what's happening with the with the house of grace uh is a series of things i'm not going to go into an awful lot of detail but i'll tell you this we all know that that they've had problems with their accounting structure uh they've had and but what you what what i didn't know is that the problems that they've had with their grants administration right in the middle of of their difficulty last year the grants organization which is a which is a arm of the health department in the state of mississippi had a fruit basket turnover they didn't release any money for about six months even though you qualified for it they had a complete uh turnover personnel and they couldn't they couldn't do anything during that time the house of grace really fell on hard times they still had to meet they still had to serve the women uh and children they still had to pay all their bills so they they made a series of loans from people right now they've got uh better than 150 000 worth of loans that they have that they have really no way to pay back right now now since then the the since the grants department has

[0:47:12] grants the organization has gotten straightened out they've released their grants they qualify for all the grants they're released the problem is the basic problem is right now that these are all reimbursable grants i know you all have some of those we do too we've got a stash that when something like this happens we can reach back in our reserve fund and we can pay our bills but until those grants are available but what you have to do is you have to pay the bill submit the payment and then be reimbursed they didn't have a reserve fund so they can't pay their bills in order to be reimbursed right now so it's kind of a catch 22. it's a pretty ugly situation we wanted to make sure when they came to us and asked us for for assistance we really we've been through this with for a number of years with house of grace we tried our best to help them but what we felt like they really needed a serious audit we didn't want to do anything until we got the secretary of state to do an audit and and uh and they did we asked the secretary of state to come in six months ago and do a complete and thorough audit now what the secretary of state does is they audit whether or not they're in compliance with the secretary of state's rules and and and how they're operating they don't do a penny's nickel and dime a financial audit well when they when we got the audit back they had a series of findings and and questions and and uh suggestions on what they needed to do go forward so i've got that i've got that report uh right now and i didn't make a copy for everybody but i've got a copy for the board and i'd like to give it to you for a minute also i've got a copy of the house of grace response to that now after they made a response on the back on the last page of the secretary of state's audit is the secretary the final letter from the secretary of state and that's what you've got did you did y'all get your hand down okay that number one the one i've got number one in the top right-hand corner is the final letter from the secretary of state

[0:49:15] which says based on the information reviewed during the examination of your response the division is closing this examination they didn't find any charges they didn't find anything wrong what they found what their are concerns about the way they're operating after we got that i was a little disappointed that they don't do a financial audit so when we got that report about two months ago we asked our ceo andrea freeze i think most of you all know andrea to meet with them and she met with them five or six times and went through their books one line at a time to make sure that everything was in order financially as far as as the money was was where it was supposed to be the good news is there's no money missing it's just there's a lot of just there's a lot of basically poor accounting principles and and overreaching their mission they were trying to do some things outside of their mission to help some other organizations and some other people that really didn't fit within their mission that that also it caused them to get more in difficulty so anyway that's the uh i'm going to give this to to you and and i'm sure your your office will make you a copy if you want and i would welcome your uh your accounting people andrea will meet with anybody uh we told all the cities that if your accounting folks want to meet with andrea and go through these reports but we basically told andrew andrea is really good you know she's got all the licenses and education in the world we basically told andrea until you grace this as far as as far as accounting principles and and success going forward we're not we can't help them and she did but what she came up with was this is what this is what they need to to number one restructure their debt and start paying some of these debts off and to move forward and be successful moving forward so

[0:51:16] what uh uh so that's where we are with them now what we ask what we're asking from the city is this on sheet number two what we did is is what andrea determined is that they need 90 000 this year that will that will help them get started pay the debts that they have to pay this year and get on track to to with a schedule of paying these debts off to be debt free next year we need we need ninety thousand dollars this year they need nine thousand dollars this year and they need another ninety thousand dollars in our budgets from next year so what we did is we took that figure and we asked them for an accounting of who they serve they serve ten counties desoto county and and you see the list here nine other counties what mark and i are doing is we're going to all the cities we're going and we're going to visit all these other counties we're sending all them a letter tomorrow and explain to them what the situation is and to raise this money we we divided we just divided it up percentage-wise on service desolate county for instance the solar county residents received 20 of the of the uh customers last year now there's an additional four percent that these these organizations help each other uh there's an additional four percent that didn't come from any of these ten counties they helped they helped some women from jackson uh they helped some some some families from arkansas so there's another four percent and the board decided that we would cover that expense as well so we feel like our share is is 24 so what what what we asked our board to do was we don't want your money right now what we want is a commitment that if everybody does their share that we will pay our share so that's what we're doing right now we're going around from city to city and and county to county asking that you pay

[0:53:20] your share if everybody else does now if we don't get 100 percent uh compliance with this then they're probably going to have to shut their doors within a month that's just that's just the fact they there's these bank the bank has extended them the uh the rental on the rental property that's been extended now for about six months and they're going to call those loans and these folks that have loaned them money there's a there's a church and there's a another group of families out here that have loaned them money that that are going to need their money back so they served 246 women last year with their children this count is not just women and children it's women with their children now just to kind of tell you what to help you understand what they do they take these women some of them they'll take for two or three days if they can find some some other place that'll take them the maximum they'll take them is about three weeks during that time they've got to have 24-hour coverage in the house they've got to have 24-hour counseling coverage they've got to have counselors for the kids they've got to represent them in court when they go to court now if these ladies and go back to that situation i've been asked this before if they go back to that abuse situation do they take them back and answers no they have taken some some ladies back and helped them who went out on their own and and were still struggling and had and needed a little more help but if they go back to that abuse situation after the counseling and after the help that they give them they can't take them back they just don't have the the manpower and the place to put that many people so what uh what our board said was we'll commit we committed we took a vote two weeks ago we committed twenty one thousand five hundred dollars for this year we're taking an hour out of our reserve form and we committed twenty one thousand five hundred dollars in our budget next year

[0:55:21] now what we're telling them is number one we're going to tell you how to spend that money and if your accounting department wants to be a part of that we would welcome it but we're going to help you restructure and we're gonna and and we're and the money for next year and i think south haven already does this it's gonna be allotted in a in a monthly uh uh allotment so that you know if this thing starts failing we can cut it off immediately but we've gotten so far we've gotten a hard firm commitment from horn lake and hernandez so we've got three commitments right now and again these commitments are that we will commit our money if everybody else will so basically that's where we are today there is a number three is just a list they have caught fire this has gotten their attention they've got a lot of people in that report is a list of their board of directors and i think you all will know most of them they're really honest hard-working sincere people they realize you know the difficulty that they're in right now they're also so passionate about this they're not giving up but they need some help and these are some things some fundraisers that they're doing within the next couple of months to help raise money for next year and i'll tell you the the way andrea has set this accounting up if they're successful if their grants continue and they're successful with their fundraisers that they've had for the last few years they won't need our help in two years this should help get them this this this 180 000 if they spend it wisely this should get them out of debt and on the road to recovery so this is this is what the ask is i understand we've been working on this for six months we went to the secretary of state's office six months ago we got the report back two months ago we've been working on our financial audit for two months i understand that y'all need some you probably need some time to think about this and to look through it but

[0:57:23] my ask is that please we've got to have an answer by the end by next month by your first meeting next month we're we're telling the counties that uh i mean these other counties and and ollie branch is getting the same message tonight so if you can help then please do if you can't we understand but but i don't know what we'll do uh without this organization because if you talk to the police these families have no nowhere to go this is all they've got when these women get beat up and and you know you can't visit the place but i know some of them personally mark does too and if you've seen them and seen the pictures they carry around with them of their black eyes and their busted lips and their abused children then your hearts go out so that's what that's what they ask is mark and i just want to echo what bill said you know we do a lot by committee we're the committee but you can see bill's been carrying the water on this uh for sure he spent a lot of time on it making rounds with the cities and the counties and and and this is just what our and our board was unanimous on this if if everybody will do a portion we'll do our portion and we we want to build and we did and raymond and i talked today we adopted a philosophy a few years ago that we've been cutting back non-profits 10 a year and over 10 years we were going to wean them all off and that included them we were at one time at 30 000 and then the next year we dropped for house of grace we dropped back to 27 000 and next year we dropped that another 2700 and got down and so we we still plan to do that i i don't necessarily think it's government's role to fund all these non-profits and that's our philosophy at the county this one is somewhat unique and as he said the child advocacy center because our sheriff's department takes a lot of people to the house of grace our sheriff's department and yall's police department

[0:59:25] takes children to the advocacy center so those are services that we might be providing by government if there weren't good solid organizations and the first thing we wanted to do was make sure there's financial accountability and all of you know andrea phrase and she has been over this and and giving us a a clear audit report and she's going to hold their hand there which is basically going to hold their hand through the process what i was telling alderman flores today you know our our contribution we'll give them 1 12th of it in october and one twelfth of it november or one twelfth of it in december and when andrea hands them the check it's gonna be pay this bill this building this bill so we're it's not gonna be a hands-off approach and again always find y'all's financial staff is welcome to have a part of that with with us but that that's where we are you know our heart goes out we're we're making the rounds and we just want to appeal to you and if you can't or you don't feel led to do so that's fine too we're all still friends we're going to work together on the next project as we work together on plenty and i'll i'll say that i think government works works together is better when city county state federal government can all work together we can accomplish a lot more and this is one of those cases well thank you both for um for coming forward tonight presenting that and and specifically with your uh you know your you're uh zeal you know the health organization we know that there's been some uh struggles there you know for a little while now so i appreciate all your efforts and you know it's a lot of effort to do what you're doing to go around to that many board meetings and talk to that many people so you obviously your heart is a lot more than i thought yeah i can tell but but you've uh obviously worked hard and it means a lot and i appreciate y'all coming forward and doing that and we will make sure that we have follow-up and to let the board uh give that some thought

[1:01:27] we'll make sure that we uh keep that on you know put that on the agenda for the august 6th meeting and again any of you guys who would like to meet with us individually or meet with with andre we'll be glad to meet me sounds good thanks again thank you thank you for the time okay and then um i apologize with the vfw i forgot what your name was i'm sorry would you come forward now yes sir paul what is your name sorry i'm george blah mayor seems like i've been here before uh i am the commander of the vfw southaven polls 10567 and this vfw has been a proud part of this community since september of 1988. we also want to thank the former city officials for naming our street veterans way we appreciate that the location of our postal is somewhat obscured from the general public because we're kind of located in the far west end of the street kind of like a horseshoe drive there he's sitting in the middle it's kind of like the pot the meat's all in the middle and nobody can kind of see us from highway 51 over there and we're asking the citizens representative board for direction or advice basically concerning what we can do within the city ordinance i like to install and we'd like to have a flag poll or a sign directing the citizens of our community to our location whatever direction that this board can give the pulse toward this situation would be greatly appreciated as you know we're a non-profit

[1:03:29] organization of veterans we perform many charitable functions and services to several individuals and organizations within our community this is our service this is our model this is what we do this board's expertise and knowledge of our city as to what is possible would be greatly appreciated by the veteran of wars of our community and i would thank you for whatever you could do to help our organization because we definitely want to be a part of this community and we want this community to know where we're at thank you yes sir and may ask you a question first of all thank you for your service and i appreciate you being here tonight to speak on behalf of the veterans uh specifically what you're asking are you talking about a sign or a banner on the building are you talking you mentioned like visibility from highway 51 are you talking about a sign on highway 51 yes sir like a sign on highway 51 or a flag like you have west end east end something like that a flag that could go on one of those utility poles with their direction showing our post okay going over there right by uh veteran's way okay yes sir and then would you need one on uh because it is a horseshoe drive would you need one on state line too or are you just talking about it's just i'm sorry 51 or stay long actually stay 51 51 would be better right that's true okay okay we'll check into that we will would you get whitney would you write his contact information down would you whitney cook is right there at the front desk would you give her your phone number and email address so we can reach you and we'll do some research research on that and see what we can do and we'll follow back up with you yes sir thank you thank you very much thank you for your time thank you thank you okay is there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak on the citizens agenda okay i don't see anyone wanting to speak

[1:05:34] so we'll move on next on our agenda is our personnel doctor mr mayor i move that we approve the personnel documents presented on this date second we have a motion by alderman brooks second ballroom wheeler is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes that motion carries okay next on our agenda uh city attorney tonight we're going to pass that okay so then we move on uh next is our utility bill adjustment docket mr merriman we approve the utility bill adjustment docket as presented on the scene second we have a motion of alderman payne second involvement kelly is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes that measure carries next on our agenda are our two claims dockets is there a motion to approve docket one for smart move we approved docket number one in the amount of two million nine hundred and fifty one thousand two hundred and ninety dollars and ninety nine cents including demand checks second on document one we have a motion volume in pain second volume and fluoresce is there any discussion hearing none royal call yes yes yes yes that motion carries is there a motion now to approve docket too mr mayor move we approved docket number two and the amount of three hundred and fifteen thousand thirteen dollars and six cents a second on doctor two we have a motion by

[1:07:36] alderman paine a second volume of fluoresce is there any discussion yes that motion carries on docker 2. okay next on the agenda is um we need to determine if we have a need for executive session second a motion baltimore gallagher second ballroom at brooks paul beggar say ah any opposed say no eyes have it emoji carries the need this evening is economic development within the city and then uh personnel department wide to follow up on the employee survey that was done a few months ago and is there now a motion to declare executive sessions i have a motion ballroom in florida second ballroom wheeler all in favor say aye all right can you post say no i just have a motion carries the mayor board will now enter executive sessions

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=VuQ6GYpqc-M