12/01/2020

[0:00:00] please stand with us i'll be led in prayer and bring with you for the new leaders of prayer and please remain standing after that pledge and all our family do you have a thought we thank you for the day allegiance to the flag of the united states of america the new republic of which it stands for nation okay first on the agenda this evening is approval on the november 17 2020 minutes this will be our moving approved minutes at the regular meeting of uh november 17th in the admissions commission corrections exactly we have a motion balance second volume in brooks is there any discussion hearing none or all calling information yes that motion carries next on the agenda is a resolution uh to create an ordinance for the first leisure and recreation district in the city uh as i've mentioned to all of you guys at a previous meeting basically what this is is a district state law allow this two years ago to change the law allowing cities to have an area that's designed for entertainment the main issue with this is it in a specified district it would allow a patron to leave a restaurant with a container of alcohol

[0:02:03] and in this resolution it does specify the quantity how it would be contained that kind of thing that's all in the resolution along with so what we'll be doing tonight uh it's my recommend recommendation that we approve it uh what would happen at this point it still doesn't make it final yet uh what it does is prepares that and then when an estate first establishment does open in this district uh then they would be named on an application that will go to the state along with a letter from the police chief that's ready just basically you know stating how you would uh maintain public safety area uh then at that point uh with that then it would actually be created and that's what it would go into an event so basically the first step in getting this done is the resolution tonight y'all are all familiar with the area it is going to be a small area uh whitney cook our planning director i worked alongside uh me and chris and nick and uh and chief moore and trying to make sure that we specify this get it started slow and there could be changes made to it later as that area expands but basically this is the snow district inside the snow district this specified area which is noted on the map is on may boulevard where the silo square development is already in place so that's basically it and i'll just open up the floor it's my recommendation of the pregnancy regulation tonight hello i'm experimenting for the support of the decision to establish a leisure recreational district within the corporate amount of corporate boundaries inside the mississippi investigative geographic areas including boundaries us that destructive permanent purposes here we have a motion moderate brooks second of autumn flores is there any discussion hearing yes

[0:04:11] okay that motion carries so might bring our other almonds okay next on the agenda is the contract amendment when string mr nick manley this is a commitment with winstream that will allow for a contract amendment through our service or they're allowed the existing phone service to open more lines um i also allow for expansions from the fire station number five uh medical ultimate to the contract when you can accept those amendments this will be approved tonight for chris shelton's signature uh he's obviously not here but he can be done electronically but not just authorization for their contract with windstream um kelly is there any discussion okay yes but uh anyway the sole source purchased from that at the sodium growth replacing the um awnings and the fabrics that provide shade there this source letter has been provided for these items and the amount is 80 thousand roughly eight thousand dollars and allowed for those to be replaced on the soul sports basis and of course with thirty one seven thirteen and go to the

[0:06:14] soul floor center mr mayor i moved to resolution later north baldwin city south haven authorizing single source item purchase in the parks department let's pretend promotional maintaining second development brooks during discussions yes that motion carries next on the agenda is our planning agenda just whitney cook hey yes we just have one item on the agenda tonight and it is a subdivision application it's going to be for cherry trees south bay five i'm gonna be on the north side of star landing west of catwell uh property champions is 25.24 acres of property with 52 lots and five common open spaces you'll see it highlighted in yellow over on aerials um basically master plan was proved in 2000 and amended in 2004 what they proposed on this is compliant with that master plan and with that in mind staff are going to need approval planning commissions [Music] yes next on the agenda is our mayor's report we've got a couple things that have occurred since the agenda was set uh friday uh two of them had to do with uh with the financial information with the city kristen you come forward and just and discuss these two things we got bank repository bids and then also our gatsby audit which is done you know a few years

[0:08:16] ago we made the decision that our retired employees would allow them to stay on the city health insurance and in order to do that you have to have a special audit of the liability that the city could have both now and in the future so let's chris explain it in more detail but we will need board action on both of those things tonight so again apologize this came in late yesterday it's the same actuary current that we used two years ago as the mayor said in order to offer retiree post-benefit employments we have to account for those accounting there's a liability in our books and they do run actuary tables on what if every eligible employee states the city until they refer to eligible and impact even though as you know the retirees pay 100 of the premium still is a liability on us because we're carrying insurance so what we're asking tonight is the board author of the mayor to sign the breaker of lewis and ellis actuaries again to a nine thousand dollar agreement to do the audit portion of that for our 2020 audience wheeler is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes unfortunately this time bid out our depository under the benefit of a very strong bid for the last two years or 2.6 as you know our concern rates have changed over the last two years um two bids one from bangkok and one for bank for south the bank plus bid was the upper end of the fed fund rate minus 20 basis points which today would be .05 the bank for south bed was for a fed fund minus 50 basis with a floor of 0.15 so again we accounted for this in our

[0:10:20] budget we knew these were going to be incidental interest rates so as you know state law changed and we worked hard on getting that change to where this can now be a two to four year picture um after meeting with andrea and ann and edie and tish everyone's agreement to maintain recommendations to maintain our relationship with foreign for a two-year period um the best data that we have available to us now is head funding 0.25 to do right now the bank bank plus bid to be .05 the bank 4 bid would be at 4.15 so the bank 4 did only bank force higher now should the rates increase however and plus would then become a higher bid the most the best data we have now looks like according to everyone with the you know f o m t and the fed is that they hope to maintain the 0 to 25 basis going interest rates through 2022 that could change tomorrow but another part of the ditch is also that bancor is offering to weigh all fees and plus the monsters who wait some of the fees looking at it some of the fees they weren't waiting would be 50 a year a month forty dollars a year online buying things remote deposit things that we're currently using so any interest being phenomenal would almost be wiped away with the incremental monthly pricing um not to mention the time and effort is to switch complete banking systems over is part of the data consideration also while the law allows us to go to four years our recommendations go to two in anticipation of rates possibly increasing in two years and then we can still achieve higher interest rates but um it's a far cry from where we were we anticipated it targeting our recommendations to

[0:12:21] maintain uh now we have a motion monitor from flores second ballroom wheeler is there any discussion hearing mountain roll uh next topic we need to talk about is as all of you know uh we have part of our budget where we have requests that are made from charitable organizations we do that with our budget uh before it goes into effect on october one we got a request from the house of grace they we did not receive an application from them we set the budget you all may remember in 2019 we had a request from desoto county you know to do a one-time contribution to help the house of grace get back on their feet uh and then what we misunderstood is that uh it was not only a one-time thing it would be a one-time thing plus an ongoing annual contribution to them since we didn't get another request from them we did not include that in the 2020 2021 budget so they contacted us recently and indicated that they did have a letter which i have a copy of in my hand just got it today that was dated june 23rd requesting nine thousand dollars now we did not receive that i don't know what happened bottom line is house of grace is requesting a donation from the city in the amount of nine thousand dollars so we need to make a decision the county they they only indicate they don't indicate all the cities if you remember in 19 when we did this um we agreed to it based on a unanimous

[0:14:25] contribution from all the counties that are served by house of grace house of gracious not just service outpatient it serves not only to somebody county either but several other counties in north mississippi and so um it was presented to this board and me that uh there was unanimous participation with that one type of thing this report indicates um a budget line for the revenue which is titled from other entities but it doesn't specify which ones uh they do have other support like they did at 19 and then the desoto county has committed 21 000 to them so um i guess with it being in our city you know originating in south haven that's probably why we're you know one of the first and foremost was that they would seek assistance from the county has participated in 21 000 questions are they saying that we agreed last year that whenever we did this one time thing that it was an agreement that we were going to get 9 000 every year that's what i'm saying the way i i mean we could go back to my recollection the way i understood it is that they were in an emergency situation that's the way out that's what i remember i mean if they came that they were in a severe city look i'm saying it's not that i'm against giving them the nine thousand dollars i'm not a house of crisis incredible organization there's wonderful things for deserving people in our community but i guess my concern is know it was sold to us last year that this was to get them on their feet get them back running again you know we were going to give them that one-time money and then they were going to have other ways that they because they had failed and you know they had admitted that they had failed in their other fundraising attempts to to you know become solvent by the means so i guess and we didn't talk to them when their talks about they did appoint someone with the county to oversee their financial affairs and

[0:16:28] give the city updates and that's come through andrea we have received that for those of us i know i've seen them but i'm saying that the weekend those go out to the board and they just go to them okay so we have they did do that we have gotten updates about you know throughout this time about that but but we've not until today we didn't receive anything about requests and money for the fy21 visor and so we took 10 percent if i guess my question is did we vote on something a year ago when we voted did we do this for a long time that's what i thought that's the way mark does that pizza no i just have to decide tonight but i mean sir yeah that's why and uh i just got it you know after the agenda was set so i just wanted to inform all of y'all no we don't have to do it tonight if y'all are comfortable doing it tonight but uh just under mayor's report i wanted to make sure that i informed you that i did get it and that that is the request and why you've not seen it before then because we didn't get it until we met so um so we can uh unless someone wants to make a motion okay all right so there's no uh there's no motion to do anything at this point you know we will move on and chris would

[0:18:31] you the email which what you sent me today would you send that out to the full board of course they called us okay next um i won't wait and talk about this at the end there's a couple of uh just a couple positive things i want to share with everyone we've already got two soccer tournaments scheduled and i didn't print that email wes sent it to me but we have a significant i know the first tournament already uh is scheduled to have 16 teams in it uh west what are the days the first one spring fest weekend all right okay and the other one is before after that uh may 7th through 9th you say 7 29. so we already have two tournaments so this will be the first ever official city soccer tournament in the city springfest weekend we're gonna bust out that new springfest barbecue area that we've been looking at can't use uh so we're gonna do it off we have a bang up weekend so anyway but it's it's a big moment for our cities she's she's i know she's told me she can't she hated that we had to miss it this time um but anyway so it'll be the first ever soccer tournament 60 teams there's very exciting news we've got two of them already the the two beginning ones of many more 200s so that's a good report christmas events southern lights in our budget we did commit to changing some of the features and southern lights you know the southern lights is a very uh old tradition for the city a lot of the lights are a lot of the displays had aged and so it was time to freshen those up so wes and the park staff did put that request in the budget so they did purchase those new displays uh which are are very appreciated uh as shown by the attendance uh in 2019 a year ago the first thanksgiving weekend we you know charities get the money so

[0:20:35] charities raise 2 200. in 2020 is 50 children yeah so it's a good thing you know it's a good tradition our park style they work tremendously hard you know it's unfortunate that we do have to with some of the displays we have to stop vehicles from driving through there would be no way for us to have it ready i know that a lot of our citizens don't like that but there's really no way around that you know to have a quality of being like you have but but it is a good event it is something you know that it does generate money for charities it's a good thing so i think that was money well spent you know on the new new displays there so so everyone go to uh go check out southern lights it's open until new year's eve is that right uh december 30th december 30th could be up for december 3rd okay and then as far as other christmas events whitney christie had a great idea about uh you know this time of year i rely heavily on them they're the creative minds and so when we look at things i always kind of lean on them and we talk about christmas decorations things before we bring it to y'all we try to save you some time and kind of go through you know what we view as good and bad the bottom line is christmas decorations are very commercial christmas decorations are unbelievably expensive i mean you wouldn't believe how expensive so we were going to try to put we saw this thing in a magazine it was like a an all red christmas ribbon that would go around our renovated area there in the front and it was like red glitter beautiful eighteen thousand dollars and so for a ribbon so then we got this idea that hey we can

[0:22:37] paint something like that so i give credit to whitney and debbie and i don't know who all our utilities crews i think dan cordell gave some input on it too so we made a homemade uh ribbon like that just doing the garland the green garland putting the old bow was the bow that came off the huge reef that used to be on the city so we made our own so we say to save some money there we did go in addition to that we bought some wreaths just a green freak with a uh you know red bow and uh we decided that we would try to keep it simple keep it traditional keep it classy you know we've experimented with several different things and we had the banners years ago we have the snowflakes that are back up but we've experimented a lot of things but we want to go back to just a simple traditional classic look and so um so that's how we got the idea they had the idea of the race i love it so we got the reese up in parts of our city down northwest drive we also put them around the new walking path the recipes crews put those up and smoke then we're going to try to expand on that but then they had the idea too of bringing the chamber of commerce involved and encouraging everyone to just kind of follow that lead and be consistent you know and so carmen and her team at the chamber have joined in and done a great job marketing uh what we call wreaths around south haven and uh so let's just encourage everyone to be simple classy traditional with a green uh breathing a red boat and so a lot of the businesses will join us with that um so that's a nice thing i really appreciate uh whitney christie and the chamber for helping us with that and then the other thing y'all know that uh due to covet that's no secret that we had to cancel the christmas parade just to be extra safe i want to commend alderman kelly for realizing that our people want to enjoy we don't want to we hate that we've had to make so many sacrifices here with code traditions and this and that so he felt like it was important that we'd be able

[0:24:39] to have some type of parade or christmas display and so he's taken that bull by the horns and uh done that on his own so i thank you alderman for that and so what we have is we we're going to have a it's going to be a volunteer event and again aubry kelly has led that it's called that's going to be a drive-through christmas parade or more like a display so we're just reversing so instead of the parade moving and the people standing all together hold up watch us we're going to reverse that right we're going to we're going to have the flows stationary that people can drive through that way they're not crowding each other being safe from coverage and so i thought that was a brilliant idea in this part so thank you for doing that and that's december 12th she's very good on that and we're going to start it's going to be at the library parking lot is that correct okay so i encourage everyone to you know get your kids in the car um you know get some hot chocolate and drive by and check it out it's going to be a cool first year tradition so thank you okay then uh okay last thing is a a follow up you know in our last meeting there was a discussion about some of our older neighborhoods crime we discussed rental properties things like that i'm not going to rehash on that other to just say that the last meeting was not the beginning of our city having concerns about rental property um that's something i always like to use the uh this meeting i had lunch with uh alderman payne first time i met him in 2013 when i was considering running for mayor and i don't think i'd even made a decision yet but met alderman payne and one of the first things he asked me is what did i think about uh the growing number of rental parks in the city i don't know if you remember that i knew about the little hammer place as a concern yeah and so i did i shared the same concern you know because like i said in the last

[0:26:42] meetings you know i've had experience with that you know with insurance with rental properties i understand there's a major difference in owner and not under our property and as time has gone by it's proven to be an issue you know our police can tell you uh that when you um you do the statistics uh that there is a large number of large amount of crime and some apartment complexes and also single family rental properties and so it didn't this discussion an honorable hoots is on the line alderman hoots are you with us okay sure thank you um so this discussion didn't start at the last meeting it's been an ongoing thing had numerous numerous meetings in the past trying to find a way to look at what we do about rental properties and it's an ongoing thing so the report i want to give you tonight is we're going to keep studying this there are some hang-ups with uh federal housing laws that that restrict what a city can do with a rental property ordinance and also we have to be careful that we uh you know that we have one that makes sense and that is one that we can manage and enforce so the report tonight for me to you is that uh i do want to revisit that with the committee i will set up a committee in the near future chris has been helping me achieve more whitney we've got a team together that's helping do some research on our rental properties and crown statistics going with it and i've also done some reading chris's uh done a lot of research i've read some other ideas not locally but things that mirror what i've said and no doubt there's a difference in owner and non-owner as far as you know from a property value and a crime standpoint so we're going to continue researching that i've got a package i want to put together and i'd like to call a committee meeting to further research the other piece that i want to report back and that's when i asked about all of who's been on the line there were some questions that that some citizens asked in the colonial hills neighborhood they suggested is there any way to

[0:28:43] prevent someone from selling their home to an investor and the bottom line is there's not i mean you can't tell someone you know who they can sell their homes and i wouldn't be in favor of that either but they had concerns about it so whitney did some research and that's our report tonight is there is a thing called a community development corporation that can be created and one of the most local examples of one that has worked successfully is the cooper young area in memphis and a lot of times people say that well they did it cooper young why can't y'all do it at south haven and so i'm about to tell you how that works and just a just a brief overview the bottom line is if a neighborhood wanted to city camp restrict we can't tell someone any southern hometown we're going in that discussion that can't happen but what can happen is if private landowners property owners created a corporation then they can garner financial support from neighbors other businesses in the area and then they can set up just like a company they set up a corporation their own board of directors and then they can promote things throughout unification projects throughout they can they can do their own things kind of like an asian way you know they can go in things that the city can't do they can go in and say hey look you know you can't do that in this this subdivision anymore whatever but the other thing is if they really are serious about it um this corporation can also raise money and so when you raise money then the next house that is going up for sale if you don't want a rental property investor in california to buy it then you step up and you buy and then when you buy the home you can do what you want to so then there there is a way for them to actually control if it's if it's owner occupied or generally so that's kind of what happened in cooper young am i saying that it's fairly accurate and again i didn't read all the details but that's that is a very lengthy thing but that's the guts of the issues there is a way to do it

[0:30:46] right and you create a company and your company actually buys the house and then you do what you want to so you can restrict the number of rental properties that are in a certain area so anyway that's more discussion for one night i just wanted to give alderman hoots a report back to um you know columbia hill citizens that he invited to the meeting uh last time and uh so we can move on from there and keep discussing that you know further detail i'll also report back to all of you but when it's time to have the committee meeting we'll set that up okay i think that is that's all i have tonight any questions for me okay next on our agenda is our citizens agenda we do not have anyone that registered to speak but is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak on the citizens tonight looks like no one in just an update another update regarding that um i always love to hear from the citizens that i work for i love when people tell me what's bothering them i would much rather anybody say mayor you know i'm champ about this i don't like that you advocated for this or that or this bothers me that the board did this or that i love that because um the alternative to that is someone that doesn't tell you what's on their mind and goes home and they're bitter and so i'd love for people to tell me what they think about what's going on the city what they want me to do what they'd like to see us do as a city and so for that reason i always love it when we give people the opportunity to speak at our board meetings under the assistance agenda with that being said and nick and i've asked him a hundred times this and a city board meeting is not a public hearing and i think you know i think what kind of got the city off on a different path is the controversy that we had in 2011 and 12. you know i wasn't here never came to one of those meetings but i

[0:32:48] understand that it became like hey let's all charge the mayors tell him how unhappy we are with him that kind of thing and i just want to kind of i just think as a city it's time for us to back up a little bit and get this in the right perspective that's not what a citizen citizen's agenda is for uh and what a meeting is for this meeting is for the city to conduct city business we love for people to come listen we want our citizens to be informed we videotape the meetings purposely so anybody can come back at any time and go back and watch the meeting if they want to know what's being said and what's being done but we've kind of gotten off track a little bit with our citizens agenda and so it's my recommendation to make a few changes you know i've asked for a lot of input from all of you i've asked for input from from others that work for the city and i think we need to kind of go back shift gears a little bit and do one of two things uh the first thing is i think it worked well you know when we require people to register on friday because bottom line is if someone wants action there are many times somebody will send me a social media message or an email and it's simple stuff i mean it's like yeah we can do that right now and it's before noon it's done and so i think with most things it's like that if you want service in the city you kind of tank the city you know if you'll let us know we aim to please we won't put a smile on people's face and so i don't know that you know coming to a public board meeting which it just appears to me that nine out of ten people that come here they're not really coming to solve a problem they have another agenda plan a lot of times to that and to lots of interest real quick is to we're all our citizens have any issues it's not they don't have to come to the school meeting and necessarily just defend those i get it if they're not getting the answers they want reach out to us reach out and you reach

[0:34:51] out mayor's office like simply probably whatever issues fixed this is not the time to have a public hearing on every single issue and especially especially when we're talking about ongoing criminal investigations that is dangerous and it is improper and we should never discuss those things and open up the form yes thank you for saying that and i apologize i failed last meeting uh i guess it kind of caught me off guard i was to be very honest i was astounded that our police she was caught up in publicly to discuss crime i mean that's my fault i should have shut that down i'll promise to do that i wouldn't let that happen again but but back to the issues you know it's not a time for people to come express their political opinions uh the time to do that is election season um it's these meetings for city business it's not to come grandstand politically or if you don't agree with something the board did six months ago and keep on going talking about it we just simply it's not efficient use of our time it's not fair our employees are here it's unfair to other citizens it's not respected in the city and so that's why my recommendation is one of two things i want we don't have to decide again tonight but i want you all to help me just make a good decision with this my recommendation is either we leave it like it is for the citizens agenda after the mayor's report we require that you do register in advance on friday when we set the agenda or the other thing is we don't list it unless there's a request so like anybody can be on the agenda the citizen wants to be on the agenda we're still welcoming that it's just they have to get on the agenda like if you want to be on the agenda it doesn't say citizen's agenda it says it says mr payne sanitation concern or you know miss johnson uh potholes you know and so whoever wants to get on they can get on we just list them what they're talking about and what what they want to talk about who they are that way a lot of times like i said nine out of ten things that's

[0:36:54] simple stuff we can fix that they call christie want to get on the agenda christie had or i could have that problem solving you know 30 minutes one time so that's one suggestion then the other thing is we could go back and still leave it open uh but we just have to hold them to three minutes you know that's the thing is i hate to cut anybody off but we can't spend two hours every night not knowing who's gonna show up what they're gonna talk about that they're going to ask us to go back and recant things that were talked about for six months in three different public meetings you know that's not again that's not fair to the city so anyway those are just two recommendations if y'all think about that and then let's make a decision on that uh you know at the next meeting on how we how we want to move forward again it's not stopping anybody from talking it's just giving us a more defined uh agenda on how much time it's going to take you know and we can solve problems in advance in a lot of cases any comments about that all right we'll move on that's all i had um uh person next on the jenna's personal daughter mr yes our utility bill adjustment docks mr mayor we approve the utility bill leak adjustment dock in this presidential decision okay we have most of all payne's second monitor for kelly is there any discussion hearing none we're all called yes yes yes that motion carries

[0:38:58] next on the agenda are two claims dockets as our motion improved docket one mr mayor moved me through uh things like number one in the amount of four million two hundred and ninety three dollars 20 93 27 and 45 cents including the vehicles we have emotional docket one with alderman payne second of autumn flores is there any discussion hearing none we're all calling him is there a motion of print talking too mr mayor movie approved document number two in the amount of thirteen thousand and fifty eight dollars so we have a bunch of alderman payne second alderman brooks is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes that motion carries okay next on the agenda is the purpose of determining the need for executive sessions the need for executive session this evening is for planes and litigation against the parks department and public works department and economic development within the city is there a motion to declare executive sessions thank you we've got a motion bargain brooks i caught up with the pain all favor

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=f74pEph7HA0