09/21/2021

[0:00:00] this to be led in prayer this evening by alderman gallander please remain standing up to that we'll pledge the legions and that will be glad to all be in pain heavenly father we thank you for the opportunity to meet again lord jesus we thank you for the good things that you're doing in our community lord we thank you for having your hand over south david and protecting us lord jesus and lord we just ask for your wisdom and tonight's meeting lord and for [Music] okay just real quick i'm gonna make one adjustment to our agenda this evening we're gonna move 16 up uh to right now uh this is um recognition of constitution week and so what i'll do first i'm going to read the proclamation and then miss ginger brit he'll leave me up front we'll get up you want to get a photo right okay so we'll get a photo at that time so proclamation whereas september 17 2021 marks the 234th anniversary of the drafting of the constitution of the united states of america by the constitutional convention and whereas it is fitting and proper to accord official recognition to this magnificent document and its memorable anniversary into the patriotic celebrations which will commemorate the occasion and whereas public law 915 guarantees the issue issuing of a proclamation each year by the president of the united states of america designating september 17 through 23 as constitutional lead now therefore i darren muscle white by

[0:02:02] the authority vested in me as mayor of the city of southaven mississippi here at broward playing the week of september 17-23 2021 as constitution week in addition i ask our citizens to reaffirm the idealists that the framers of the constitution had in 1787 by vigilantly protecting the freedoms guaranteed to us through this guardian of our liberties remembering that lost rights may never be regained and outfitting in our country right now this is not written down it's me talking about it how fitting that we have to say this again to remind everybody in our country right now that the constitution was written for a reason to protect our liberties in this country and it's not good enough for one person here and there to stand up for that we need every american right now to stand up and be an american and remind people that the people that drew the constitution did it for a reason and what happened in 1787 the goals that they were trying to achieve still apply in 2021 so i challenge everybody that's in the audience tonight or that may be watching please stand up and protect our liberties as americans [Applause] and that applies to everything vaccinations everything you may need so is this good okay so our clients will come forward and we'll listen if we do one at a time

[0:04:21] this rare move we swear in our deputy clerk okay alderman payne made a motion to appoint our two deputy clerks nicole lario and ashley ford and then alderman hoops you second that motion right is there any discussion here you know a roll call please yes all right who's first how are you thank you for bringing the bottle of course okay raise your right raise your right hand okay again repeat after me i ashley ford do solemnly swear that will faithfully support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of mississippi and obey the laws thereof that i am not disqualified from holding the office of debut city club and i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which i'm about to enter so help me god congratulations and thank you [Applause] [Music] raise your right hand and repeat after me hi nicole hilario do solemnly swear

[0:06:25] that i will faithfully support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of mississippi and obey the laws thereof that i am not disqualified from holding the office of deputy city clerk and i will faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which i'm about to enter so help me god congratulations and thank you hmm okay next on our agenda is the approval of minutes we have one regular meeting and then we have two special meetings so i think one motion will in a second one vote will approve them all three correct nick yes sir so the meetings are september 7 21 is the regular meeting special meetings are september uh nine and september 14th there's our motion to approve them in these minutes second alderman hoots made the motion i'll repay me a second is there any discussion carrying on a roll complex next on the agenda is a resolution for the fiscal year 22 donations is there anything to discuss mr mayor i

[0:08:31] hope we approve the donations uh for the year 2020 and for the budget year 2022. we have a motion of alderman payne second ballerina kelly is there any discussion kerry miller yes that motion carries next on the agenda is the resolution excuse me a resolution to approve the nuisance property got motion ordinance hoots second walter mcgallagher i'll start the quick discussion just to recap we did have a special one of the special meetings uh just mentioned the purpose was that of that was to discuss ordinances uh one of the key ordinances that was discussed that day uh was something that we've been talking about for a long time and don't confuse this with rental property when i speak but this doesn't apply to rental property in any property in the city we've learned that south haven is not immune to the same problem that exists everywhere in america right now there is an abundance of rental properties and other properties where the owner of the property or not may not only maintain the property they're not taking accountability and ownership of what occurs on the property and what has happened in the city of south haven the last few years we've had some situations where not only is it a property condition issue it becomes a criminal issue as well some of these issues where homes are deteriorated uh not taken care of or there's not proper betting of tenants and then just neglect by the homeowners it's not again it's not just rental it could be situations where maybe a family owner that owns the home lives in a room a different location absentee they're not here they don't know what's going on at the property and our police are steadily fighting this you know we're having problems with this

[0:10:33] and so it's a situation that uh that i felt like was one of our top priorities in the city to be proactive and as as i've said many times in 2021 we have to be creative in how we fight crime it's a different era than it was 10 years ago or longer in the past our police do an incredible job but we've got to be more proactive we've got to think outside the box y'all know we're already using all kinds of new technology you know to help us combat crime but this is a major problem in every city in america and that's why this is a high priority and that's what prompted the discussion for a nuisance property ordinance uh just the highlights again we again we talked about in the special meeting but the bottom line is if there's three convictions whether it be a criminal conviction or a code violation in a 12-month period the owner of the property will be in violation of this ordinance and it would allow the city to um to write that ticket it would go to our court there is state law in mississippi allows a 1 000 fine but there are other penalties that can go along with that including a revoking certificate of occupancy for that property so it's something i feel like is a big priority for our city we can't sit back and do nothing about this and so that's the purpose of the ordinance and i'll open up the floor for further discussion mayor i just want to start with saying i already appreciate you doing this this is something that i've heard about since i think this is a great step in the right direction okay is there any other discussion hearing another yes

[0:12:34] that motion carries next on the agenda is an extension of our code in 19 lead policy and it's pretty much simple but would you just recap it for us please mr nick manley city attorney uh yeah this is just uh extension of the policy and they're important for the families first uh front of our virus response act extends the lead until december 31st for eligibility of full-time employees up to 80 hours paid sick leave and part-time employees in an amount equal to the number of hours the employee works on average over a two week period um for certain credit really related reasons to set forth in the policy and allowed by the um public repo front of our response act so tonight authorization just took soon that december 31st we have been operating under this currently so we need board action to extend it because it expires september 30th we have a motion ball in the payne's second argument kelly is there any discussion hearing down the roll call yes that motion carries next on the agenda is a renewal of our engineering contract uh with civil link mr daniel cordell oh this is my contract follows the budget fire this is an amendment request to extend it for another budget term um i'll come over with mayor and uh there's no changes for our taxes second we have a motion volume of fluorescence second alternate pain

[0:14:36] is there any discussion appreciate the good job civil link has done for us over the years we look forward to having another year in a productive relationship for the benefit of the citizens of south dakota roll call please yes food trucks using the city property i'll take that one i've written enough of that i should be able to explain it so basically before we ask for a motion just to update the board what we're proposing is again talking about ideas that some of our students y'all heard me talk about this a lot ideas that our citizens have that you know maybe seem like small things but they bring a lot of value a lot of fun you know to some of our people um we want to be receptive to that if there's anything that we can do to put a smile on one of our citizens faces if that's what does it then we can do it and when i say we do it so one of the things that's one of the most popular crazes in america right now is food trucks and uh i had to have christy google that to help me i'm definitely not generation c but but i understand that it's generation z millennials too but i think generation c are the ones that really really are excited about the food trucks and they're excited about it so um so we listened to that and we put a lot of thought into it you know met with you know fire department fire marshall whitney you know wes christie talked about all the details of it nick obviously andrea and so we believe we can do it we want to keep it simple and make it fun make it just one day a week not competing with our you know brick

[0:16:39] and mortar restaurants just make it one day a week we understand that a lot of brick and mortar restaurants also do food trucks and so it's a way to reach more clientele for them so we think it will be good and do it like ten to three every friday in the city have two locations uh one of those locations would be the spring fest pavement with the parking lot in the new paint parking lot at snow grove park then we believe that we have high visibility also at the arena on highway 51 at dorchester drive so have two locations do it 10-3 every friday obviously like i mentioned before we know that people always want to kind of challenge our system no el caminos with the trailer on the back with hot dogs nothing like that there is a formal definition of a food truck that's out there so it has to meet the definition of a food truck and so we believe this could be a good thing last week just doing my homework after listening to the citizens i drove up to court square in downtown memphis because i understand they have a pretty good event up there it was really impressive really neat around the old court square in memphis they have food trucks every day there it's a great place just to have like a little mini carnival atmosphere it's just a fun thing people get outside they walk they you know they're talking socializing while they're getting their food they sit on a park bench you know enjoy the outside while they eat their food and then they get back to work so it's just it's really a cool thing i think it could be a good new tradition for our city uh again back to you know competing with our brick and mortar restaurants uh many of you try to go if you're in a hurry and you try to go through a drive through uh any restaurant in south haven do you understand that you've got your rate of weight there's tremendous lunch demand in a hurry in south haven so i think this is something else that would give people a different option they don't want to go away they want to you know be answering emails or texting or whatever while they wait in line and get them you know get some of that food truck i think it just adds another option that will be good

[0:18:41] for our citizens so with all that being said it's really no more than that a hundred dollar permit fee application available to the city clerk's office we started we do have some expense our farm fire marshal's gonna have to go out there and make sure that the cooking um you know apparatus is correct with the trucks uh obviously we'll have trash pick up so there's a little bit of work for the city so for that reason we are gonna charge a 25 per day rental fee and then if you plan on coming every friday during the month uh you can save 25 bucks with a 75 a month i think so that's very low we tell our new kevin we have to start it low uh you know we can't get the demand up and get some vendors out there but that's basically it any other discussion or questions um we want to start it asap but i think what we'll do or my recommendation would be let's make it friday october 8th is to give the vendors time to be informed and you know we want to get like i said today we have one out there we're in business but we'd like to have more than one truck out there so my recommendation is that we make it effective october 8th what question will we know ahead of time what food trucks are going to be where will they just show up that day or will we kind of will be scheduled where we kind of make arrangements we have a limit on the number of locations we can uh facilitate at both locations but like i said keep it simple obviously our city clerk will have a record of that whoever does the application so at any time the answer if your question is yes we'll be available for the city clerk's office now as far as telling somebody where they're going to want to go we're going to let the free market system uh go they they pick their location if they want to go snow then we'll go to the arena we'll let them choose that obviously if one location is full then we'll communicate that we'll let them know that that's full but you go to the other location any other discussion or questions about

[0:20:44] that if not then i'm asking for a motion to approve those fees and to approve for the chuck price got a motion by alderman kelly i think colin mcgowan made a second and if there's no other discussion roll call please yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda uh is the approval of uh uniforms our public foreign this is just uh authorization public works to order their uniform census which is the institute that has the mississippi state contract so tonight for the public works office being our code works can you coordinate with andrea to get that process harder for a quarter of those uniforms a hot state contract and those expenditures for that purchase exactly we have motion of ottoman flores second baller mcqueen is our discussion here you got the roll call yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda uh with the uh additional police officers the city will be expanding and hiring we're going to need more body cameras so the next one is uh sally police department purchase of additional body cameras just real quick when you do that uh axon is the sole source you want to gratify that soul source resolution that's approved last year in the previous board and to ratify that and then as is there any discussion

[0:22:57] here you know yes that motion carries next on the agenda is the recommendation to award the ce and i contract for the getwell road whiting project to silhouette mrs william cook uh yes sir uh board we our prairie ledger parandot's procedural standards and we advertise from the 13th and the 20th of august we received the um contract proposals um last week we reviewed it uh civil link was actually the only one that we had proposed at that point in time uh we went through a selection committee process which included uh myself the mayor edie and andrea we thought they were very qualified they already do a lot of work for us they wanted to design this project for us so the ceni is your construction engineering and inspections so once we get actually under full construction which is set to be in march these will be people on the ground inspecting and ensuring that we're compliant osha regulations are being matched and regulations are being met so we keep our funding alone so it's our recommendation tonight uh to award the cdni contract to subway we have motion employees second order gallagher is there a discussion hearing that are all called police yes don't know she cares makes update jet is a request to advertise within the state line get well city entrance monument center we finally get to do it uh we did receive uh the easement that we had been basically stalking the lady for uh she was out of town uh she was the family member that was the representative uh she's out florida we had a bunch of storm issues happening i think everybody's aware of uh anyways we

[0:24:59] finally got her codified agreed to it you gave us the authorization to pay up to a certain amount we paid well below that i believe we pay around seven thousand for the easement which is well worth it um but that being said we are prepared to go to bed now that we have a asking permission to go a bit our projected opening date of event will be october 29th thank you very much from honorable florida second lawrence kelly it's very disgusting again just quickly to recap this is a prime location it's uh just north of state line on get well so right as you get to the state line ghetto intersection it will be a angle towards the southbound traffic to be a beautiful brick monument sun like we had in northwest drive and we have maloney goodman and we have it on interstate 55 near star landing so this is another kind of traffic volume uh area then we'll beautify our city and show the pride we have across that state line and coming to the south there any other discussion there you might roll call please yes okay that motion carries on the agenda the other deputy clerks in our city clerk's office we've got a motion monitor in florida second law that is our discussion here you know the roll call please yes that motion carries next on the agenda

[0:27:03] is a resolution to clean kelly is there a discussion among the board hearing none is there anyone in the audience that has a financial interest in any of the properties on the list that would like to see hearing saying none roll call please yes okay that motion carries next on the agenda is our planning agenda which will you cook again okay so our first application is a request for a conditional use permit to have a full service car wash uh to be located on north side of church road used to know more specifically in the npc subdivision uh it is located directly next to the sea store uh our corner which you see highlighted red is the location where the post or proposed facility would want to be uh there's a shared curb cut already on church road and there's also accessibility um we have an access drive so there will be no additional perks required um and one of the things we looked at was just making sure we're trying to saturate the area uh what we found is the closest one's approximately this is going um religious and different users on this site it's kind of an interesting science class district it's very small a lot to build on so we felt like the car wash would be a good cohesive type development for the c-score so we did recommend approval uh for a wonder initial use permit with a four-year extension um [Music] i mean i am

[0:29:12] [Music] you're not going to be able to transition out of commercial what you should um is on site um so in my opinion and this was my recommendation to approve it um it's probably one of the better uses for the property what's the distance between this one [Music] i will say there are some differences this one and we haven't got the proposal yet because i asked them to hold on to design we didn't sign phone until we got this process because we knew there's a lot of people that you know car washes didn't know um but this one is planned to be a full service um [Music] around here like that old school mr proud but most of our employees second order in pain and i will add just one other comment uh frequently when proposed businesses come to our planning department there will be final discussion i'm involved in the discussion at some point and so a lot of times you know when there is concern about something doesn't fit somewhere you know we're we're very careful we does a great job with that um and we don't ever want to reject anybody

[0:31:16] we put things for the benefit of the entire city things have to fit from a zoning standpoint it's extremely important and y'all know that um just west of here on the other side of elmore that's where your metropolitan district begins and goes all the way to pepper chase so this is actually outside the metro district and so my question to whitney a lot of times it was the same question to her in this situation is what do we you know what goes there you know what what goes in what's the best use of this property and so whether you like a car wash or not they are a lot of people like them they are needed and it it's needed and this is the best use of the product so for that reason i just want the board to know that we there is a lot of discussion at times it goes before it gets to you but i do advocate for this i think it's a good use of the property and i think it fits right here no so there is a there's an existing entrance off of church road to the sea store what will happen with this and it was planned when the subdivision happened is it will wipe to allow a full access that will be shipped with the two lots there's also um an ingredient that goes back uh through the sea store site and goes into elmworth and i will say uh obviously these will work very well together and they will have traffic designed together because the owner of the c-store is in fact as well is there any other discussion appearing on for item one yes yes okay that motion carries i was just talking to nick the next three applications are all rezonings in the exact same vicinity for the same reason which is going to be what you see right there um

[0:33:18] for the post homicide uh we were removed back in 2019 coming into us portion of property up on goodman road approximately eight acres on uh goodman road and wanted to do a standard sized honda site uh the franchise flag went to a gentleman out of out of georgia and he wanted to do one of his supersites he felt that there's a need uh this happens in a lot of the the larger cities but they came back to us and said look you know we still put the building line over his own however we would like to gain some additional acreage um in the back one because they were very very tight on the kitchen and green space and there were moving a lot of trees so they had a lot of replacement trees we put on there into they also wanted uh some overflow park so there's three different sections to the rezoning i'll go over them separately so we can vote on them separately but they're all associated with this development um so the first one is just one acre i believe there's one more overall site if we can go down one more great okay this is um kind of breaking it down what you see in the top of the big block it says it's already been resigned uh and then you have three different sections and they're three different associations so this will kind of help you see where we're going um the first one is one acre and it's going to be the two small half acre lots right there on elmore road just north of jenny's drive uh currently there's only c1 uh they would request to go to c3 so we look at the comprehensive plan uh to make sure it's consistent with the conference plan and then we look with the character of the neighborhood um c1 doesn't fit there specifically because it's not in a residential area it's across from the big box sam and other dealerships like that so we feel that it is justified and we are requesting approval to rezone that from neighborhood commercial to the c3 promotional honorary second waller gallagher is there any discussion among hearing none also with a rezoning is there anyone in the audience that would

[0:35:21] like to speak hearing you seeing none yes the emotion carries on too the next portion we're looking at is right behind it the two lots that are still on the north side of jenny's drive this is 2.741 acres and this is considered the labor and subdivision again it is zombie one which is neighborhood commercial they're requesting to go to c3 we would we would maintain the same argument uh it's not in a commercial area they're not small lots um which will be consistent with c1 uh and it's across from the big box areas and then hidden commercial area so again it is compliant with the comprehensive plan we do not feel with its own now as it cares for the neighborhood and we would request um to also reason on this from c1 disagree we have a motion on three bottom employers second baltimore gallagher discussion looking forward [Music] it's a great addition to our city um a lot of the property that we're

[0:37:23] dealing with on this one like i said it was mainly because we needed detention and green space there is outflow parking but uh the majority of what greece especially on the south side of uc creek um is going to be larger than i [Music] issues okay any other discussion okay and since it again it is being uh properties being rezoned is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak about the rezoning of this property hearing and seeing none roll call please yes everyone she cares so our final one is the six acres on the south side jenny's drop this is where craig comes into play and this one is a little different in the sense that there's a tiny portion on the southwest corner that look at the back side of omaha states um so some stipulations we'll put on this one again we do feel like it's in character the neighborhood is actually c4 which is a harder zone than the secret so they're almost downtown here on this one we still want to make sure it's in here to the neighborhood we still make sure it's compliant with the conference and plan which we believe it is but the stipulations we put on this were that there was a heavy natural buffer line that was to remain in place

[0:39:26] we have told them in the design they cannot have the overhead speakers uh like you see so many of the participants and we have also told them that we will monitor the lights and the wattages so that it doesn't have that overpowering does not their car dealerships known for happening they have no issues with that we also if anybody can know jenny's rob it is it's the best it's got some issues they're going to do a lot of the improvements and they're actually going to put a code at the end so we've got more accessibility for emergency services with this they did agree all these stipulations and like i said again it is complying with the conference plan we do believe it's in character that africa would recommend approving those simulations we have a motion while urban flores a second ballerina kelly is there any discussion that is a tower you will remember two board meetings ago we revised this subdivision which was the regular subdivision to take that tower and push it back over to the one on the left because the owner of that building which i believe bounced is the one leasing that property owns this property so when the sale happened he went back and captured the tower back in his lot although that is a cell tower any other discussion on the board hearing none is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak regarding the resounding of the problem hearing and seeing none real thoughtfully yes i know she cares next on our agenda is our mayor's report i just want to update on a few a few things that need some action on a few things as well just quick updates the

[0:41:28] automated meter readers in our city are now 82 and a half percent complete our guys have been working extremely hard as you know this is a great project for the first time in our city's history to have automated water meter readers the benefits to that are go on and on the accuracy obviously makes sure that the citizens are paying the fair amount for the water when there's a water leak it makes us more strategic and being able to diagnose when they have a water leak it helps the citizens in that regard and also again back to fairness you only get charged for what you use so so it's a great project i know that i always hear people love to talk about their water bills i know that and so i just want to assure everybody that the program is working and that it if you have a dispute if you have questions about it we welcome a phone call all you do is you call in a water department and we have staff ready to answer your questions to diagnose and let you know make sure that it is accurate but um but if you're getting a bill that's higher than normal chances are you use a little water so anyway enough of that automated beta readers big deal almost done um the second thing that i want to update everybody about again back to our new events our fun things uh that we're trying to get started the city uh we started the shows at sauce park recently um where we're gonna uh show movies on large movie theater outdoors and our first ever show associate is gonna be this thursday night at sundown and it will be at society park right behind city hall and it will be located on the western end the stream will be set up just north of the library and so there'll be plenty of grassy area for people to bring their families i have a picnic so to blank it out and bring the whole family plenty of room a lot of grassy area

[0:43:30] so we're looking forward to that um i plan on being there i invite everybody hope everybody will will make an appearance if they can for the first ever show at associate it is um the first movie is um the secret life of pets and then the second one that we're going to have this year is going to be in october and it's going to be coco so anyway hopefully everybody can join us out there for that um one thing that i do need board action on and as a result of uh one of my one-on-one meetings with one of our alderman arnold it's in ward 3. he pointed out the fact that we didn't have a sign denoting the name of the park on guthrie drive just near airways just north of la nice right there at airways and guthrie drive and so we went back and looked at that uh come to find out the park did have a name uh it was called light park i don't know the history of that so anyway while we started talking about that just the wheel started turning obviously it's on guthrie drive guthrie drive was developed by a south haven citizen named hal guthrie who is a fine citizen our city that recently passed away two years ago and mr guthrie was one of the most unselfish citizens that we've ever had he was known to in his retirement years to to go cook a meal and just deliver to organizations and for people he was just a super uh fine gentleman uh for our city and so what i'd like to do is um is ask for approval tonight that we made this park our guthrie park i think it would be fitting and i'd love to honor uh mr guthrie in this way and then it would give us an official name that everyone knows for this part and then we will go ahead if you all agree and do that we will go ahead and get another sign out there so we'll have

[0:45:32] a sign for the parks i've signed yeah assignment matches the evidence that we have um in our city so uh so i'm asking you mine is going to make a motion to name this car countdown okay we have motions of alderman flores second daughter in pain is there any discussion here you're going wrong yes yes yeah that motion carries the last thing i want to update the board on tonight um and it was not on the agenda because i was late getting this information i did email it out to everyone no board action has been requested i just want to talk about it and update you for years i've been a part of the mid-south mayor's council which is a just what it says all the mayors in tennessee arkansas mississippi we're in a council we meet periodically to discuss things that affect all of our cities as fellow mid-south cities and this organization is memphis based it's been called regions smart that sponsors the mayor's council and so over the years we've talked about different things and you know kind of like a lot of you know governmental meetings a lot of ideas are thrown around but sometimes it's kind of challenging to get things in action you have to make things move you know i'll leave you with that in government meetings a lot of times people just talk about things and nothing happens we did not ask and so this one has started to change recently and and i don't know exactly what prompted that maybe the efforts of a lot of people um but we realized that you know i don't have to explain the dynamics of the memphis metro to everybody memphis is the big city so there would be no south haven if there were in memphis there'd be no bar no germantown we all know that but things have changed over the years now there's been some animosity at times between the city of memphis and desoto county you know at

[0:47:36] times we've become somewhat economic competitors but the bottom line is we're still a suburb of memphis and what's good for memphis in most situations is good for south haven and it's important that we operate regionally there's a lot of a lot of areas around the country that have formed these regional pacts and it's astounding i was not aware of that they've actually formed these agencies that are almost like a lobbying firm or a governmental entity on their own and so they've been able to get the collaboration of the united states congress people together and get bills passed to get funding to their to their areas and i don't have to explain this again i'm not bringing up on a sore issue but it's no secret that the soviet county is sometimes forgotten in mississippi i don't know how that is since we thrive so much economically we bring so much to the state of mississippi but for some reason we get forgotten at times so i think it's important we have with growth there comes big-time funding meters you know a lot of times people in mississippi look at us as i think the term that i hear sometimes is where the orange county of mississippi we have all the money you know we're the land of milk and hunting and you know what we are blessed but with growth comes big time challenges and i don't have to go through the transportation issues that we're facing we have big-time problems that that are not funded in the state of mississippi uh is not funding those for whatever reason and so that's what sparked my interest that we've got to do something different we can't sit around and talk about the uh the widening of i-55 and church i've been talking about this for eight years i've been to washington four times and every time they say what do you want to talk about in washington i want to talk about i-55 live and so i think they see me coming there's a sign on my forehead that says here's mayor russell white we know what he's going to talk about he's going to talk about the widening of the church so after a while my parents taught me and coaches and teachers taught me a long time ago

[0:49:39] that if you always do what you've always done you'll always get what you've always got and it's so true you can sit around and say dog garnet we got transportation problems on i-55 y'all know that and you can sit and talk about it forever or you can finally one day say you know what i've been to washington four times nothing's changed i've been to jackson over and over i talked to mdot all the time about it and for eight years nothing has changed and so that's again what sparked my interest with this and what i've asked i had the uh the opportunity privilege to talk to uh senator senator cindy hyde smith recently and just ask her a simple question i said are there situations where you partner with the tennessee senators and arkansas senators when you all do that when y'all come together does it give you more bargaining power to get bills passed she said of course and so that's the whole purpose of this is for us in the entire mid-south area to have another avenue to solve a problem the big problem stuff that we can't solve on our own and when you talk about i-55s and dividing highway 51 things like that that are becoming a desperate need for our city and our county we've got to have help here i mean we need to be exploring other options in my opinion and there's a way that um that there could be you know some funding that was achieved by this organization where it had a benefit for everybody you know obviously when you when you involve more more people you got to set it up to where one one group doesn't get all the attention given money so what has happened with these in other parts of the country is they have a board where all the states are represented so it's not when they vote on something it's not just a majority vote for the whole board they also have to have a majority for each subdivision as well so like if we were to join this and this is st louis rep explained how this worked for us so in st louis they had to please

[0:51:43] illinois and missouri so they had a board but then nothing would get passed if they didn't have a majority totally and in missouri and in illinois and the reason that's important it doesn't cause people to get better and say hey all the money coming down from washington is going to memphis it's not going to southampton and that way everybody that has to be a piece of empire for everybody so i like the idea and just to give you a quick example i know we're limited on time the gentleman in st louis that came and spoke to the mayor's council explained this entity they created it it has bonding authority uh it's almost like i said it's almost like its own governmental entity but what they did it was huge in st louis they realized years ago that saint louis obviously with this location on the mississippi river has a has a great water port opportunity and so they were having serious crowds with water they also didn't have another bridge across the mississippi it was just for rail or to make it all on his own or the original was on so this entity got a new bridge over saint louis and it made a tremendous difference in the rail traffic from illinois to missouri they also took some of the money and improved the court and so i find that funny they're just bypassing memphis and going to st louis we're kind of missing opportunity but anyway it works and i believe that um that doing the research and listening to a lot of people talk it has worked in other parts of the country and we need to get smart we need to start thinking hey there's more than one way for us to achieve you know the needs that we have that are not being met now and so with all that being said i just wanted to kind of brief everybody on that i know that wasn't brief but i did my best but the other thing just like everything it takes money to get it going so what the initial step one plan is the gentleman i'm telling you about from st louis who has a proven track record of doing this is now a consultant around the country for this and so the proposal

[0:53:46] by region smart in the memphis area is to form a tri-state compact agency and the first step would be to hire this person as a consultant to get to get going and get it set up and um and that fee is 150 000 the city of memphis mayor strickland i'm very impressed uh stepped up immediately and said the city of memphis will offer half of that upfront so and and his logic behind that went through population so he's paying if memphis is paying 75 000 the ask is going to be for all the cities to pay the rest based on their pro rate of share based on population so if you look at what they've already done the way it works out for desoto county it would be 27 thousand dollars for the entire county and then obviously we're the biggest city in the southern county our share of that would be about eight thousand dollars so in the near future uh very near future i want to ask that we contribute eight thousand dollars to this i think it will be good for our city and confirmed so anyway that's that's a summary of it and so is there any are there any questions tell me about that it's a one-time fee to hire the consultant who would set up the compact agreement then at that point it would have its own board of directors and have its own funding mechanism so it's my understanding that this would just be a one-time fee to hire a consultant okay and that is uh again we'll have more discussion about that just want you to be prepared and talk more about it and that is all that i have so there's no other questions for me then we'll move on next on our agenda is our personal time when we approve that personal document thank you we have most of all our main pain second bottom and flores is there any discussion

[0:55:49] hearing yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is our city attorney's illegal update so for my first time in this uh memphis tonight's afternoon obviously the marquee is being taken down at uh 17-25 yes devotion and next time this came up uh earlier today i think you know was sent about it as well regarding the rates increase for our ems to increase those rates to i don't think the uh current rates are going to teach guys any questions the current rates aren't what we're targeting blue cross mission will cover more than our current rates allow also uh emotional arm employees second baller

[0:57:54] with pain is there any discussion yeah nick i've got a few concerns from this uh i was recently contacted by arrest and talking about that machine and [Music] so can we expand that where we get healthcare um [Music] uh it doesn't change other ranchers is that something in

[1:00:01] ourselves i'm not sure um to that i mean obviously uh we've had discussion about this this didn't start today uh so when we were discussing the rate how it initially began as it were much lower than everybody else even i mean if you look at the national averages that she's sent out we're drastically less on everything than national averages but even locally even our desoto county cities are charging more than we are so uh so it's just it's not a wise financial decision for us to charge less in the name of the cities i mean we have the same demand as everybody else as far as insurance goes we obviously would love to enter any agreement that helps our citizens but we got to be careful we're not it's not our role to be in the insurance business i mean that's you know our role is you know to properly charge for the services we render and uh whether or not because when you get into you know 54 000 citizens you're going to have a wide variety of health insurance policies some have some don't and so

[1:02:04] it's almost in my opinion it would be an impossible thing for us to you know to uh you know to someone get in the concerns we're not in the insurance business although again we welcome just like the blue cross blue shield thing if they're willing to do it at a fair price don't you've seen the reason we wouldn't do that dude that makes sense so you know in our discussion we were trying to make a proposal to y'all tonight we talked about that and our logic was we want to try to stay away from situations where the insurance pays and it's not enough and then our assistant gets a supplemental bill we don't want that to happen so that's why we chose to still step on the other side so i think what we got there is still very low right we can't do that we can't lower what i'm saying that's the main thing today if we had an agreement with them and you know the percentage we have great demands on our ems

[1:04:12] services we're not going to go we're not going to do it for free i think what that does is [Music] um the same um the state wall will pay so many things with 300 bucks but our cost is 525 our fee is going after um but you're yeah you're saying that we'll but not it binds us to that right [Music] you can authorize yeah have the first motion by itself and then if you want to come to motion authorized uh fire department looking at other options a separate motion to authorize

[1:06:22] this is something where i mean we we hire people to collect of course already this is something that we're someone doing already i mean we're trying to make it as easy as we can you know we want to get paid and we you know for the least amount of collection effort possible so that's something that's i mean we're already doing that it means something to you to put something in writing tonight i guess we can but i understand that when you're talking to a senior citizen here who thinks that he said well look you know you're gonna charge me with the police from over here you don't charge me by the fire and it's costing me almost 300 bucks you know because it's not an apple that's not an apple stock that's comparison i mean tell me about the demands on our ems it's not the same thing i would say as far as if we send the buyer apparatus to a firearm but that's uh across the county um was that not in the presentation of joking i thought i got the same thing was that what i provided was a national average but i have been in communication with all the other cities in the county they are already the average aspire for what we are building and they're looking to increase that as well yeah i talked about other cities websites so yeah the billing company they put rates on there where i shared with you that they won't put before but uh just talking to the chiefs and we have coordinators throughout the town we are already below them and they are

[1:08:24] all looking into um so the plan is that we all get on about the same rate because we spend so much time uh the mutual aid we'll go to formerly branch in fernando accounting for calls and applies versus the london city so we have patients that are you know in our city drastically different rates and again while we use the blue cross blue shield example you have a bona fide company who's telling you that they're willing to pay that's what they pay and it would be foolish on our part financially to not charge we're leaving money on the table for our taxpayers but and the other thing about that i mean i don't don't misunderstand me i'm i'm sensitive to anybody's uh health insurance needs but we're not helping what you're asking us to do is be a healthcare provider right for us to give free medical care that's what you're actually asking us to do so no i would not advocate for that i think that we have to be fair to our taxpayers and charge the federation for those services does that answer your question about his his question about what's the difference with the police coming in the fire truck coming they're given medicine there's just so many other things that are that are actually true cost you know in addition to our city that uh the other thing too just to remind everybody we did discuss this in the budget workshop this is one of the things we started talking about revenue that would be available for us to be able to meet our budget you know we look we look at every option for our revenue what's what's fair what's feasible and so these numbers are in the budget so the budget you approve it has these numbers so if you if you choose not to do this then we've got to change the question any other discussion and again i believe it's a fair price if you look at the national average and the others

[1:10:25] we're still not we can charge more you know but we are sensitive to the things that we mentioned okay if there's no other discussion um there's been a long discussion do we have a motion okay you got yes yes okay that motion carries and then last time i had was uh authorization to extend the token for one more year um we got about the gallagher second of all argument for us is there any discussion here you know yes yes yes yes you carries based on the agenda is our utility bill adjustment docket this will be approved until we go into the yes that motion carries next on the agenda are two claims dockets is our motion to approve document one mr mayor will be approved uh number one came out of one million nine hundred and three thousand seven hundred sixty two dollars and ninety two cents including is there a discussion on documents

[1:12:30] hearing now roll call please yes that motion carries now is there a motion to approve dr t 249 and 30 cents we have a motion on docker 2 alderman payne the second bottom of gallagher is our discussion yes that motion fairies okay next on our agenda is we have the purpose of determining the need for executive session is there a motion please say we have a bunch of alderman gallagher second ballers of pain palm there say on any opposed say no i was having legendaries for me this evening is economic development updates within the city and potential litigation against the city is there a motion to declare this intercession we've got emotional campaign second water matures palm bears say hi all opposed say no high scientific motion carries the mayor board of downer executives is

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=fyZj1ytA0lg