01/18/2022

[0:00:05] welcome everyone i'm not calling this meeting to order please stand with us i will be led by a prayer of aldermen remain standing after that for the pledge of allegiance and we'll ask aldermen at large george payne to lead us in that heavenly father we come before you and we ask you to bless our agenda lord may the fruits that come out of it lord lord give us ears to hear what our citizens want us to do lord and we pray that you not only help us to be leaders but also to be servants of the people of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all first on our agenda this evening is the approval of minutes for the january 4 2022 meeting we got a motion monitoring whose second volume in pain is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes yes yes no motion carries next on the agenda is a resolution of no protest and authority to issue bonds mr nick manley city attorney this resolution of the program the bonds were known in the last four weeks with the times tonight presents a resolution uh for the no protest as though protest was filed for the bond to authorize the issues of the bonds um also attesting there was no protest so the mayor can have opposition to sign the resolution that was intimidating

[0:02:08] being the pre-publication so we have marshmallow mcgallagher second byron flores is there a discussion the resolution any just any discussion i'll assume things get going you mean the construction of the project yes projects are under construction yeah yeah the dirt has already moved in the amphitheater in the uh grassy lawn area uh that's already been uh dirt has moved they'll come in and pour concrete for the seats so that's been underway for about 10 days now and then projected again projecting completion is um between september end of september so we do plan to we'll we will be working on trying to have concerts in october this year any other discussion questions anything hearing none roll call please yes that motion carries next on our agenda is our sanitation service contract extension there's no board action being requested tonight just wanted to go ahead and put this before the board of aldermen and let everyone discuss this we will eventually either renew that contract or if you your wish your wishes are to go out for bid again that's what we're here to talk about tonight so um anyway i'll open up the floor for any uh comments or questions about our

[0:04:10] sanitation contract i'm okay with opening it up again i've had issues immediately in my neighborhood with uh some of the rubbish pickup in years past they would you know cross how much you put out there they would pick it all up i've noticed here in the last probably six months they would only pick up so much yeah some of those residents were generally told by the guy truck which i'm sure i mean come down from above that they weren't allowed to pick up so many scoops and that you know house i don't agree with that uh granted you know each size lot is going to produce different amounts of rubbish to sit there and watch over a course of a month wait for about i would say about 120 bags of leaves well let me let me share some information with you that may kind of shed some new light on your concern i do i agree 100 that um you know that we should um you know pick it up and and every contract that we've had during my term as mayor we've had you know there's a lot of hands that touch a city the size of south haven and so all the contractors it's not realistic to think that you're not going to have misses occasionally but i agree with you they should be the ones that come back make it right give us good service the only thing i wanted to explain to everyone about the picking up some of it is um that's abused like we have some people that will put a large large amounts and that's not their that's actually not by the contract their contract is not to um to be like a home restoration company to do haul off or

[0:06:15] big jobs and and occasionally we have people that do massive massive tree projects i mean massive and if they did bring in like you said the other trucks and they went and picked up all that never left until they were done that would cause other citizens in our city to suffer because they couldn't get to all the others and so per our contract it is not their role to pick up an unlimited amount of haul off like that so they do have to have specifications on how much they can pick up that's why they do that because if they do what you're saying and stay there and brought in other trucks per contract they have to know what their the scope of their job is to know how much personnel to hire how many trucks and that kind of thing so for them not to know on any given day the workload that's out there that's not realistic for them you know to be able to you know to pick up everybody in the city on that day so that that's why they do what they do but there may could be something that we could add to the contract that maybe is more lenient for the citizens that it does allow more in some ways but um i guess what i'm telling you is it's not possible for them just to say if you put it out there we're going to get it that's not that's not what we pay them for we don't pay them enough for that so does that make sense that makes sense but yes sir the personal experience i'm feeling up there i've got seven full-grown oak trees in my front yard and i'm blessed to live where i live oh and i personally had trimmed those trees and had those limbs piled from one end of my lot to the other which was about 100 feet prime frontage and of course this was you know three or four years ago and they they cleaned all of them so now it's a matter of okay we'll pick up so much but just fine i'm sure maybe uh when we look at the next contract maybe some ammo homeowner produces that much maybe there's a number they can call and say hey by the way this is what i've got now so maybe the next you know contractor

[0:08:18] i'm planning on spending more time there but taking a month to do that and in this particular house this time it actually created a safety hazard because over the course of the um making so many trips there was a lot of rainstorms that pushed those bags and leaves into the street and it became a you know safety hazard yeah just something to think about yeah that's a good part street and you know trying to pick your stuff up it's like they miss some of them we haven't waited and um yeah and i will assure you that that has been made clear to them i can assure you that and and the ones that we've had before that same thing every contractor that we've had you know you do periodically have um situations where they have misses and i will say this for waste connections they have been very responsive if you if you point out to them they do go back out there and pick it up so i gotta give i gotta be fair and say that to them and i would say that of all the ones that we've had in the last nine years they have been the best yeah but but then again it's the board's call you know if it goes out to bid again that's what we're talking about we're talking about it tonight so good ones just so they're like the board

[0:10:20] knows their contracts before your contract that expires on april 13th um but under so we did cover 17 weeks the state will often go up to 60 years of those contracts uh and there is a nine day that contract the foreign time so uh that would still be out even if you did go with the traditional terminal if you didn't go to r and d you would want to do that you should run it later because it takes a hard piece or not an easy process is and every contract we're seeing more expensive contracts after cpi is along with the rubbish well we can get into the i mean you know

[0:12:22] they're not just going to do it because they're nice guys i mean we can talk about uh if we want to make amendments to the contract and like arnold jerome said they have done like he said at at one time they were whether it was fair or not they were picking everything up and they had to back that down because they they weren't able to make their whole route because of so much rubbish you know so um but no i mean i'll do however the board directs me to do it if y'all want to look at the contract and revise the turn to the contract i don't know exactly how we do that but we'll get to work and find a solution for that um saying you always say other people in the past i know i've gotten some issues i've talked about their training and stuff and i think not enough of you all from others they've done like a partial project people asking why they pick this up well when their contract they don't have to and also with whitehoods through refrigerator and washing priorities they all do that so so some of those are you know whatever but that's a necessary um but yeah

[0:14:35] yeah there's no doubt that there with that many people you know running the routes that there are some service at times yeah but i again i was when nick was saying that it made me think there have been situations where you know there are uh people in the rental property business that have someone move out of a house and they do a total clean out of the house and they stack it off the street and they expect that that's not you know that's not fair to the other citizens you know and then yeah i personally made a call one time because there was like a 60 year old oak tree that somebody had cut down and they left it all up the street i mean that's just not that's not part of the contract but we'll um we can check into that and um and we have time again just um you know if the boards will have it back on the agenda if the board's uh wishes are to you know to go out for bid again and then you know we'll have that vote i think i think it's still pretty consistent [Music] like you're you're an insurance expert it's the same thing you don't know how many you don't know which person is going to have a claim but i have 100 you know how many same thing with this they they know that everybody in the city is not going to have rubbish on any given pickup day they know by tracking it that they're only they're only staffed with enough people statistically that are going to have rubbish at the street so they're already accounting for the fact that everybody's not going to have rubbish on a given day but they so they they they staff themselves according to that so when you have one that does an

[0:16:38] exorbitant amount like that it does it does throw them all well this same company has all as recycling i don't know if i'm understanding this company has garbage um they have uh rubbish and recycling they do all three the rubbish bit has nothing to do with the company we use i mean they would all that's the closest rubbish fit so i don't know how is there anything different okay you need for tonight any other discussion about the sanitation contract like i said we'll have it back on another agenda center okay so we'll move on next our agenda is an urban art cast order nick manley again yeah this task board with urban arc is to oversee the construction of the amphitheater it's a one and a half it's consistent with tax task force 20 it was consistent with passport 19 which had the uh the task order associated with the design and bidding process this one is to oversee the construction that's one and a half percent of the costs so uh of the actual constructions of tonight's authorization of the mayor to sign

[0:18:41] passport 20 with urban ark as required by their master contract previously approved by the board we have a motion bomberman florida second monitoring kelly is there any discussion hearing none roll call please yes that motion carries next on the agenda is a quick claim d uh to the city from winston snowden grove llc for parcel and trinity lakes yeah this uh parcel uh is part of a utility or utility uh structure it's needed by the city so tonight it never was uh conveyed to the city so the um developer of that of trinity leagues is going to or is suggesting quit claiming it to the city so assign those interests to the city for this partial property that we need to maintain a pump station at this property so authorization to accept the quick claim deed from winston snowden grove llc to the city is required so the mayor won't sign it they'll sign up we'll just have our minutes so we accept the quick claim d as part of the conveyance of the city i like that question we have a motion by alderman payne second monitor and gallagher is there any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye any opposed say no as habit motion carries next on the agenda is authorization to seek bids for the getwell road south widening project mr dan cordell mayor ward um we're finally here this is uh we've gotten approval from mdot on the plans for get well road we need authorization approval to advertise it will come back before y'all want to receive bid

[0:20:43] to authorize the award of the bids based off mdot concurrence at that time right now we're just seeking approval to advertise we have most of alderman flores second ballroom in jerome is there any discussion yes it has been a long time coming it's a big project nine and a half million yeah it's the outside of um you know state authorized roads you know in the interstate system it is the number one it's the number one work congestion problems okay any other discussion hearing none rolf yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda change order for startling water system improvement space two the water treatment plant this is um this change order is really related to the whales that will be adjacent to the water treatment plant they're actually being advertised now to supply water for the treatment plant in discussions with ray and his team most of the time the whales are further apart from the treatment plant in this instance we'll be able to get the whales in closer proximity and he would like to have the whales and the treatment plant on the same backup system so that would require us to increase the generator size that was planned to operate the plant one well we'll add another well to it so we're increasing it by about 25 to a 600 kv generator but it also requires us to increase the variance sizes and some of the motor controls based off of the increased power size

[0:22:46] that we're going to have for the generator so it's being generated by the whale locations but it's retired too since this contract is putting the generator the line for all that to the treatment plan so our request is for an increase in the amount of 115 [Music] 407.47 to the star landing treatment plant project we have a motion monument florida second by arms and jerome is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes that motion carries thank you thank you next on the agenda is a contract with pitney bowes this is just oasis contract with 50 posts with parks office uh it's on the state contract and so that's hardware consistent with state contract long-term pricing just need alternation for uh city clear changes we have a motion balance in pain second baller than kelly is there any discussion on the agenda is a request for board approval to allow any requested permanent construction easements to be converted to temporary easements for the gatlow road south widening project all right let me see if i can explain this that's the one by the way that's the longest title of my career um you know we i told y'all we had approval to advertise we're in right-of-way acquisitions at property acquisition for github running the right most of the right-of-way has been acquired there are some issues

[0:24:48] related to uh permanent easements and to explain permanent right-of-way that the city maintains is typical for this roadway is 106 feet 53 on each side of the road uh typically if you're in construction you'll get a temporary construction agent if you have to make a field slope or cut slope to tie into off of that right away which you're going to permanently maintain because um there's federal funds including this included in this project uh mdot originally requested that we turn those temporary easements that we only needed to tie back in during construction as a permanent easter when you're dealing with property owners it's hard to distinguish to them the difference between the right-of-way that you're acquiring and a permanent agent that they're going to you're going to maintain and have forever versus a temporary user and so in discussions with mdot back and forth they have agreed um to allow us to back off for those permanent agents and treat them as temporary easiness which should have been the case to begin with they really wanted we've told them that it is in our ordinance to maintain those areas in other words if if we spend federal money to cut into a slope that's in a temporary heat but once it's done in grass that property only then maintains and our code enforcement doesn't allow them to go out and do modifications it's going to impact it and be detrimental to the road this is really just a board supporting of our ordinance that we already have to prove to mdot that we're going to maintain those slopes and improvements after the temporary heating was gone so how you say that we're still working on the wording of that but that's the intent behind this transition the border program from a transition from a permanent event to a

[0:26:50] temporary easement for this construction so that makes are going to sense any permanent use of becoming a temporary easement for purposes of federal funding and may make this important in my standards can you say again would work all that okay yeah okay so we have a motion by arm and floor is there a second second bar mcgallagher any other discussion hearing none roll call please yes that motion carries thank you thank you next on the agenda is a request for condemnation of 8090 shelburne lane east miss whitney cook uh yes sir this is a combination of a uh house we're requesting to have demoed and i believe nick do we need to have it as a public area of itself or you can just have it when it comes out okay uh well you'll have pictures on there it was a burnout uh 80 90 shelburne lane east uh we have inspected it from a fire code and building side uh it is not salvageable uh it needs to come all the way down we've contacted on several locations the property owners sent them official letters and then we went through the proper formal procedures via public hearing notice to them and posted it at this point we've had no response obviously it is a health hazard to the surrounding properties and what we're requesting to do now is um assess a timeline to the property owners

[0:28:52] if there's no response then we're requesting to have somebody come in and remove it and assess the properties for the demo well yeah we'll actually we all go all the way down to pad obviously we looked at we had two property owners transfer ownership thinking they could rebuild we went out there and looked on site because we don't know the damage that happened to um underneath the slab with plumbing roughing and things like that there's no way to say they can start from the slide up so we'll have no choice but to take it all the way down dirt uh the original owner when it burned down has transferred ownership two times since then um but it was an owner-occupied property it went through uh an insurance case investigation to determine what the cause was i don't know the outcome so i'm not going to say i do um but at that point they tried to rebuild they were refused uh it was transferred to another ownership and it transferred three times in a matter of six months uh we finally were able to track down the existing owner now um they again attempted to do a rebuild on it uh we've informed them we weren't able to get touched at one point in time we informed them it could not happen uh they said they understood that but then they just seized contact with us at that point uh i have i've only received letters but i've never been contacted about uh i mean the property uh i seen the letters and then uh but you know the letters only said that i had caught this date um i've cleaned the property and i've also came here and i tried to find the blueprints but the city only keeps them for three years so the house value was

[0:30:55] built in 2007 and the engine the builder for that property uh passed away seven years ago so i have no uh i can't track the blueprint of the house um so i had to go to uh i talked to somebody at uh planning here and um they gave me the name of chambliss so i i went to their office and then i asked them about they don't have no history of the blueprint because they don't they they only keep them for certain years as well uh so um they found an abbreviation of the blueprint so it's pretty much what the house looks like on the first floor and the second floor and uh they said that they thought it was sullivan's uh design so i went to sullivan and they could not find the blueprint they found something similar so what they had me do is uh take measurements of the whole slab so i took measurements of the whole slab that was last week uh i contacted him two days ago this tuesday i contacted him uh friday and then he saw he told me that within a week a week and a half he'll have me a quote for uh building the blueprint from scratch uh and uh i'm doing all this because before i bought the property the slab was inspected they drilled the slab and they approved that the slab was in good shape so uh as far as i know they it was there was a chance that i could the whole second floor of the house has to be torn down because that's where all most of the damage is the first floor i want to say about 40 is damage too so all that has to come down uh pretty much um to rebuild this house from where it's at right now the brake has to come down to a certain level so they can once they frame the house back again and take all

[0:32:59] the damage they can actually tie the brake back to the wall so pretty much most of the brick has to come down as well so yeah she's she's right she's it's almost a complete tear down but the slide doesn't have have to come out he was actually inspected before about the property and that's the reason i post on it okay we'll just kind of well first of all kind of steer you in the right direction the house this house caught on fire this thing has been like that for a long before you bought it so it's been uh you know it's a it's a nuisance and uh an eyesore to the rest of the community and i know you you know you just came in in september yeah so that's why we're at the place we are is the length of time it's taken for something to be done with the bird at home so i understand you correctly that you're you're you are saying that you're gonna demo the house all the way to the slab is that what you're that is that what your printing is pretty much oh yeah it's it's almost a complete teardown the brick has to come down as well and we need to know what your plan is is that your plan or is that your my plan is building this house as soon as possible and i didn't have so much he did find a plan that fits the i did not find it uh they have to build it from scratch so solar band is actually working absolutely uh client home plans they're actually working on the blueprint right now for me to uh and start getting quotes and getting this house available how do you build a different plan on the on the slab for exactly gonna be the same plan because uh uh they're they're they're making it now they didn't find they i couldn't track the original plan of the house so what they had me do is uh they found something similar which has to has the the slide is real close to it so i took measurements of the whole slab of my house and then i gave the measurements to solar bands home plants and they're actually gonna build uh a plan from scratch okay and

[0:35:01] just kind of again stick in the right direction you know there there's been no contact with our building department they need to know what the plan is and correct all that has to be inspected right it may be and that's what we important discussing this lab the people prior to you uh had approached the building department about keeping this live building your department because they don't know the extended damage that went underneath the slide they were not going to allow the slide to remain you know something has happened since then my belly department's not going to be aware of that could be something totally different um but it's at this point our chief building official was not going to allow the slabs okay well that's why when we get to the point we are when we're condemning a property we're way down the road i mean we're way down the road so we don't want to be doing this i appreciate your idea we just want you know the neighborhood to be restored and that to come down um but if you have a plan whitney what i would suggest is um he needs to be in touch with james gentry immediately he is his chief official and what we can do now you know usually if we have somebody come and approach us we would request a timeline for the demo part of it um at the regular part and we i will approach uh will you give me that i'll put together an outline well i think we need to know that tonight so we we don't take any other actions well i mean i have uh i already have a company you know i i pretty much got the contractors already on call okay that way once we once i get the blueprint i i didn't want to touch the house at full hands without having a blueprint because i can't even get a pull on on anything without the blueprint so uh but i have a demo company already on call just for when i get the blueprint we can start actually on the house so what is that projected timeline uh they sullivan told me that within a week week and a half he was gonna have to cool for me uh uh for me for the making the blueprint

[0:37:03] because i'm actually doing a little bit of additions into the blueprint the house didn't have a back porch and uh i'm adding a back porch and uh just minor stuff but i'm i'm changing the blueprint up a little bit so um once they have the blueprint and he gives me the quote you know i can't not i need that blueprint yeah so as soon as he gets back with me uh which i'm still you know i'm calling every you know two to three days so you're ready to build the house back i'm ready to put a roof on my kids okay sounds like the drawings may take a little bit i would say at this point the main thing for us is getting that demo down and that will require i can't start with that yeah if we can get that moving and then at that point it hit the slide or if it's just dark side it sits there beyond that just take a lot um so i think while we're working on getting plans there's no harm in going and getting the property done because they're not one they don't have right well my suggestion to the board then is that we not condemn this property and we need to put him in touch with with the building department immediately and and y'all don't get out of this room until y'all exchange information because we've been trying to find somebody from two and a half years i'm good with that because actually enforcement has arrived while i was there and he actually talked to me yeah so uh he asked me what was the plan i explained to him i explained to him every you know everything that i'm telling you and i told and i told them that the blueprint was on in the works okay and uh you know they were good but he never gave me a phone number or anything like that i gave him mine okay i gave him mine and then uh he asked me who was the owner and i was just so he got all my information okay so uh and i actually i have you know i have a video camera and then they're connected to my phone so i have pictures and videos of them pulling up and taking pictures okay i have you know there's a shop and you know it's got electricity and i have some of my stuff there but you know of

[0:39:06] course when i sold the property and then bought this property and had the intentions of rebuilding these property you know i had to move my stuff somewhere so mm-hmm okay that makes sense that um and according to that my recommendation would be that we've not condemned the property and put you in touch with our building official to help you get going and build and then i have receipts uh from you know the seated gun where i've actually cleaned the property up there was that the house was actually full of stuff and then i all that is not deceiving them okay so i have i have been working on the house okay that sounds good whitney would you help him please thank you very much good luck with everything okay next on our agenda is our planning agenda okay uh so on this agenda we have two applications uh both are going to be amendments to existing planned unit developments uh the first one is going to be an amendment to central gordon's pud this is going to be between whether you have it highlighted in red all this area mostly north nebraska between greenbrook and airways if you'll uh remember we had originally come through 2008 single-family residential for 55 and up there was an amendment a couple of years back that added in some additional property and took out some property with this change tonight you have a portion uh up against greenbrook baptist church it's approximately 3.3 acres what you see there is a proposed site plan for it uh and the applicant is wanting to add two mixed-use buildings in this area and also utilize the back property where you have the overhead power lines and the tva towers it's a dog park facility for that area it's a gated facility it has accessibility to the 55 and up that is uh next door to it the bottom floor they first see is some office space uh maybe some medical medicinal office space to be an offshoot from what you have on airways uh above that you'll have two floors of lofts um they're proposing very similar what you see here is the renderings that they're proposing they also proposed the option to put

[0:41:08] this on airways as well and then there was another proposal for car wash on airways as well when we looked at all the requests um we had no problem adding in the property the 3.3 acres which was purchased from gruber baptist church by this entity to bring it into central gardens so uh staff as well as planning commission did recommend that in looking at the proposed development type we did see this as a good possible asset to the intersection right there at rasco and airways i mean at rasco and greenbrook we did not see it as something that would be beneficial facing airways on that side so the request we recommended denial of for the airways portion we recommended approval of the greenbrook and rasco portion and we did recommend the denial of the car wash use being added in uh planning commission did vote unanimously in favor of those changes recommended by staff and it's in front of you now we have a motion on item one baltimore kelly a second volume in pain is there any discussion it's a little car washes it seems to be a new trim well you see trends come in and out c-stores obviously was their car washes were there many storages seem to be trending and they kind of come in waves and car wash was just one of them so um we're trying to you know diversify what we have in commercial areas nobody has any problems with car washes but you know sometimes there's just enough is enough and that's just something we're interested over there it looks like a beautiful development i think it's a great spot you know in an area one of our you know original areas of our city

[0:43:11] bring a new um new life there i think that that's uh will be a great plus for our city there at airways and the utilization of the property out as well okay any other discussion during non-roll call yes yes that motion carries on our second amendment is to snowden farms pud we're specifically district 21. uh you'll see an aerial photo in there that has the area highlighted in red and this is basically what you see highlighted in yellow there this is basically your your corner in your southwest corner of goodman and get well you've got cbs you have the tire place you have the bank um and then you carry on a little to the west and then it comes down a little bit past chick-fil-a where the whataburger's going and there's another out partial to the south of that um we are not wrecked we are not uh having any requests for an amendment to the actual layout or the acreage this is mainly associated with a request for additional uses added uh and just to make it really quick for you um the request for added uses were liquor stores dry cleaners nail salon nursery school physical therapy business uh studio restaurants with indoor seating and curbside seating and an addition of another quick service drive-through restaurant retail sales shop and services school campus canyon salon learning centers veterinarian clinic and yoga or pilates studio um in our report we explain at liquor stores we don't really regulate those that's the department of revenue regulation uh so we look at them as a retail service so we're agreeing to that dry cleaners we wanted to make sure that we differentiated between a full service and a drop-off pickup we wanted to make sure we stayed in the simplified version of a drop-off pickup area not to full service because of the chemicals and the size that's required nail salons we don't have a problem with those but we want to make sure we stay consistent with the rest of the ordinance and i have a half mile radius rule and the

[0:45:13] conditional use permits on there so we requested allowance of that with those stipulations that follow suit with the rest of the ordinance uh nursery schools day cares we have no problem with physical therapy offices physical fitness studios no problem uh restaurants with indoor seating was already approved um restaurants would with drive-through facilities we do have a maximum of four uh or the requesters for four uh we went through the previous discussions with that and it was set at the number it was and scattered out so it would not create that fast food row the planning commission requested that i put together this aerial photo you have right here which shows the amount of quick service restaurants that are in a half mile radius of that which currently is eight um so the planning commission and the staff felt like that was enough so we did request to leave that recommendation as a denial um retail sales shops and services were already in the pud tech so we did not see that that needed to be in addition because it was already there school campuses we felt that adding that was a good asset painting salons were the same as the nail salons where it should go through the conditional use permit to stay consistent with ordinance so we requested that uh learning centers will find veterinarian clinics we may wanted to make sure that if they were situated close to residential that outward kennels would be concealed and we would not have a noise issue and then the yoga and pilates and var studio would be added with no kind um so that was the recommendation of staff and that was upheld in the unanimous vote by planning admission [Music] is no they do not uh we had in the past looked at regulating the distances between liquor stores and we were quickly notified by the federal government to do that um between schools and churches and i think

[0:47:24] it's only like 500 feet which is a lot down two miles down so yeah from our city standpoint it's a retail service it's a commercial business that's kind of protected uh dry cleaners no we do not currently have that we have not seen a huge influx or a saturation issue with that so that has not been looked down on my already school that's true that's not something we looked at it's problematic but we did want to make sure that it wasn't full service because you do have a lot of chemicals and it's more of a light industrial type use when you get to that level so we wanted to make sure it was kind of a pick up and drop off those zombies okay any other discussion from item too hearing on roll call yes yes okay the motion carries next on our agenda we have a citizen request to speak mr brad glover this grant glover in the audience brad glover here okay i guess they did not show up we'll move on next on the agenda is our mayor's report i just want to update several things with you first of all at our last meeting when i did the year in review for 2021. we didn't have all our numbers in a couple other relevant pieces of information i want to share with you is extremely positive we got a total for new business permits for 2021 and 2021. we had 425 new businesses come to the

[0:49:28] city that's up from 313 in 2020 and 251 in 2019 so you can see a tremendous growth trend along with those 425 new businesses estimated uh new jobs 1956 uh the new jobs and then again this excluding um a lot of the of the large industrial but in 2020 the jobs are 729 so went up from 729 to 1956 new jobs in southam that's incredible new building permits residential in 2021 [Music] we had get this 568 new residential permits in 2020 we had 474 in 2019 we had 358 so it's the largest number of residential building permits in our city since 2007 so obviously it's clear that the residential housing market is thriving again in south haven so that's that's a great thing along with that there were 19 commercial permits as well for combined 587 to 2021. last week was the mml conference in the state of mississippi and most of us i think we're down there for those that don't know the the mississippi municipal league is an organization that promotes the the success and overall health of cities in mississippi so twice a year there's a conference one in the summer one in january so last week was the one for the winter conference in january we try to take that time since it's in jackson not only do we go you know do continuing education kind of things we do a lot of networking with other cities um you know we try to pick up ideas and and uh and we share a lot of ideas a lot of uh

[0:51:30] cities around the state look up to south haven they ask you know we've experienced things that they haven't so we share a lot of information with other cities as well and then the other thing that we do while we're down there is it's our time to be in jackson with a legislate legislative session going on so we can get updates on what's going on in our state and it's important you know we've said this for years and uh can't reiterate this enough it's so difficult for people in desoto county to stay up to date on what's happening in the state legislature if no other reason just because of the geographic distance but we don't have the communication channels that some cities have you know a lot of cities have their own television stations since we're in the memphis tv market we've always relied on the you know memphis television which you know is not interested in covering what happens in jackson mississippi so for that reason it works against us you know we don't have any coverage of jackson on tv newspapers uh we have some reporters in in desoto county now that do an incredible job but they you know pretty much cover for the most part what's happening here locally so there's not really a source for what happens in jackson and so a lot of our people have no clue what's going on and i can't stress enough that our city is affected and all the people up here are affected so much by what goes on you know within the state legislature and so for that reason i've done my part to try to share information you know with our local people because i think it's so important and i think it's my job i mean the people rely on me to and and your jobs too everything that's that's good or bad for south haven they were they expect us to to go to work for them and so for that reason um i have tuned in over the years uh through different publications uh and and then just you know through just driving down there myself building uh network uh networking relationships with some of the representatives around the state and just to keep myself in tune with what's going on so with all that being said i want to share with everyone here tonight

[0:53:33] everyone that may come back and watch the video of what's going on in mississippi right now and there's some big stuff going on there's some really good stuff going on so the the four biggest things that are going on right now and they're huge uh number one is there's um there is a bill that's been passed by the house that will be going to the state uh state senate to um eventually remove the state income tax you know that's big you know it's that that's a huge thing for our state uh medical marijuana is a big a big deal big thing a lot of discussion after initiative 65 was voted upon last year one of our desolate county senators kevin blackwell has kind of been leading that charge so um there there's a bill um that's that's pending now on that teacher pay raises uh we we've all heard that discussion for years it's one of the most frustrating things to me as a mississippian you know to see people talk about our pay situation for our teachers for i want to say 15 years i mean i i don't i don't know i i confess i didn't pay attention as much as i should uh to politics before uh being elected mayor of south haven but i know the discussion about our uncompetitive teacher pay has been talked about for years and years so um just quite frankly i understand what's so complicated about this i don't understand why we can't you know pay our teachers it's so important for our state not just for our teachers themselves that do an incredible job and they mold mold our future you know with with uh with the kids but it's also uh for the whole state image of mississippi you know when when the development's coming here they're if they're going to consider bringing their families here and all the families their employees they want to know that there's a good public education system and that that it's the best it can be so it goes beyond uh you know just the teachers although not diminishing that whatsoever it's time for a teacher pay raiser say it's time for us to get up to where we should be and so that's why i speak

[0:55:35] about it because it does affect south haven it plays such a big role in what's going on in our in our city and the last thing is every 10 years the lines have to be drawn for political jurisdictions and so redistricting is a huge thing going on right now in the state legislature and that will affect the state it'll affect all political jurisdictions then locally we'll be doing the same thing here so that's going to be a big thing in 2022. along with that and that's my mml update but i want to spend just a minute to elaborate on two things one of them is the state income tax the next thing is medical marijuana and it has a direct impact on us again and there's some uh time issues there's some things we've got to be prepared for the city uh we need to start that now but the first thing i want to talk about the income tax removal in the beginning i listen to so many things um you know either whether it be uh you know there's all these uh podcasts and all this stuff going on so routinely people will text me podcasts and they'll say you need to check this out you know and in all my free time i start listening to them but um but i do listen to them and it's it's staggering to me the amount of misinformation that gets to southeast from jackson and i'll give you an example one of them is the income tax removal so there's some people that are are very outspoken against removing income tax in mississippi and the reason for doing that is they say well there's no way to replace that funding if you take away the income tax we're going to lose services we can't pay our teachers or we're going to lose other services well that's false the proposal that's on the table now is everybody knows that you can't just take out a huge part of your revenue without having some plan to replace it so so the statement that that the state can't afford to do that is not true and that's not what's being proposed so what is being proposed i want to give you some facts and nothing has been passed but this is straight from um you know speaker gunn

[0:57:37] lieutenant governor hosemann and and governor reese what is being proposed is phasing out the income tax and so what they would do is start with uh right now you have an exemption of five thousand dollars so what they're talking about doing the first phase is raise that from 5 000 to 32 000 so that would initially save every uh worker thirteen hundred dollars and so again people say well that doesn't make a difference or whatever that's think about it this way just 13 and that's just the first phase just 1300 dollars somebody that's an employee person would have to spend thousand six hundred and sixty seven dollars for their benefit to be um better having the uh removing the income tax or or having it removed so like for example what they're going to do and i forgot to tell you this piece is they're proposing that they would uh raise the um state sales tax from seven to eight and a half so that's where that 86 677 comes from is 1300 divided by 0.15 so right now your mortgage your rent automobiles they're proposing reducing the grocery tax sales tax to four percent um your medicines insurance things like that a large part of the average household's expenditures already don't pay sales tax so you have to pay 86 667 in addition to all those things i just named for it not to be better for you to have the income tax gone and so that's just the first phase then eventually they plan on raising that exemption all the way in and phasing it out where there is no income tax so those are the key pieces of information so it's never been a situation where somebody says hey we're going to remove the income tax and all is good it has to be phased out and there is there are proposed benefits that come with that the other thing

[0:59:40] that many people may not know um and i'm not saying that elected officials don't sometimes do some crazy things but in this case i commend the state philip gunn and some of the others that they hired economists to go in and this is not something that some wild plan i mean tennessee has no inc state income tax many states don't have it and they've been enormously successful well how do they do that it's not a mystery what they what we have done in mississippi now is hired that estimate if the state income tax is removed it would increase gdp which is gross domestic product for those that don't give a rip about economics let me explain what that is gross domestic product means any product or service all of them every product or service that is paid for in your state so it would increase gdp in mississippi by 371 million dollars what that means is that 371 affects every every community on a state basis every city every county it helps every it just makes a tremendous difference you have people especially where we are on the state line of a state that doesn't have an income tax there are so many people that live in tennessee and that own businesses in tennessee that will not come here because of the income tax that is a fact i mean i'll debate that with anybody i can march people in here to show you and and they're mostly people who are wealthy people and the reason because um a five percent tax you know to some people i mean it affects everybody but when you're making seven figures when you're a wealthy person who has a business who can bring jobs and bring other people here five percent's a lot of money and so if they can do the same thing just across the state line they're going to do it so it's not just the saudi county there are many other vital parts of our state that have situations like that so if you eliminate the income tax you're going to have more

[1:01:42] people coming here you're going to have people that have money that are coming here that can change mississippi's financial picture and it would be a tremendous it would long term be a tremendous benefit so i'm just telling you the main thing is that's the report it's not that somebody just says hey we're gonna throw away the income tax and we're all good tomorrow everybody knows that that's not true has to be a phased approach but with those things done i commend the uh the house i think that this plan is a good one i think it will work so but anyway i just wanted that everybody to know the facts of that like the that they're considering removing the sales tax on groceries down to four but then raising the general sales tax from seven to eight and a half to fund it and it's a phase approach starts out with 32 and then eventually phase down total the next thing medical marijuana there's so many there's so much misinformation about this and i'm not going to get into some of the details that really fire me up but i'm just going to say it like this we know so much more about medical marijuana in our country that we didn't know just five years ago and so there is a major difference in medical marijuana and recreational marijuana a major debt regardless of how you feel about marijuana in general there's a tremendous difference in recreational marijuana use and medicinal marijuana use and so i'm gonna give you two quick examples number one there's no doubt we all know the opioid problem is coming there the opioids are killing people in south haven mississippi if not daily every other day our ems are going to an overdose and we're administering narcan to save somebody's life it is a random problem first time was a 100 how many deaths 100 000 deaths for the first time in history in 2021 with drug overdoses it's a problem like never before so we know now that marijuana and we're not

[1:03:46] talking about this another thing that fires me up some of the most ridiculous comments i've ever seen we're talking about kids who are born uh with mitochondrial diseases i mean these are kids that from the day of their birth they have had dangerous seizures they it's just a it's a pitiful life that they've lived and they know now that medical marijuana can eliminate the seizures and give them a better quality of life we have people we have veterans who have lost limbs in wars that that struggle with pain every day and any doctor in america will give them whatever opioid they want because that's how severe their injuries and their pain are but they don't want to be a drug addict they don't want to be addicted to opioids so medicinal marijuana can eliminate that pain or minimize that pain if you go on an unknown people that had cancer there are people that deal with chronic pain and and we know now that the marijuana can help these people and for some people to say that that a 10 year old kid refer to them as a pothead or or to call this weed like the you know the slang word weed give me a break it's not weed this is medicine it's you're not sending a 15 year old around the corner to smoke a joint you're giving it in a different form you're giving them marijuana in a different form that can help them so again i just have to say shame on the people in mississippi that don't at least acknowledge that this is a medicine now it's not it's not smoking a joint it's not weed you know a 10 year old kid that has mitochondrial disease is not pothead yeah they're kids that need help and we know that this medicine can help them and and it's time that we do this and so i don't know what's going to shake down but i hope that in our state that we will all open our ears and listen and and see it for what it is and see it for what can what it can do to help our citizens in our state now how medical marijuana affects south haven uh

[1:05:50] on the immediate scale is i i've not read the whole bill yet we're waiting on all that information but what i do know is that there's going to be a 90-day opt-out period so if the city of southaven said hey we don't want uh medical marijuana in our city you got 90 days to opt out and then there could be no marijuana in your city the second thing is zoning you know when i when initiative 65 was passed there were a lot of concerns among cities about the ability to properly zone the dispensaries and that's a big deal for the cities it's very important that we zone it properly and put them in if we choose to not opt out which i hope we won't we need to know where they're going to go they don't need to be on every corner there needs to be a space for them the proper zone for them so we need to be thinking about and we're already doing that whitney now already working with nick on that we're going to we're going to discuss zoning and what we would want to do we'll bring that back before you but i want y'all to be thinking about that now because it's one of the hottest issues in the state right now and we're going to need to know number one are you going to opt out and number two where are you going to put the dispensaries if you don't and so that's basically all on the mml update that leads me to one last thing um mississippi is in a lot of states in a situation that we've never been in before with the infrastructure bill the federal infrastructure bill there's four billion dollars that has come into mississippi for infrastructure projects we've never had that that's never in history the other thing is the you know the uh the arc of money the american recovery act um is going to have money and they're more specific on how you can use it but these monies are out there we have um major things in mississippi i was talking to lieutenant governor delbert hoseman and he always talks about how uh how impressive desoto county is you know how how many how good we have it how much development we have and our economy is so great and i reminded him that with

[1:07:52] that growth there come growing things there come infrastructure problems and he said in his statement that's a good problem to have and i said i agree it is but it's still painful and so we need help we need our share of the money in desoto county and with that being said it's my recommendation just knowing how much money is there how important it is for desoto county more than half the mississippi population growth from 2010 to 2020 happened in one county the soviet county it's estimated i think 10 to 12 of all the sales tax for the whole state of mississippi happens in one county there's 82 counties in mississippi about 10 to 12 percent of that comes from one county that's the solar count so we feel like that we have a right to ask we have a credible ask for a large amount of this funding and we need help getting that here we have major projects as you all know interstate 55 to go all the way from goodman road to hernando um that includes the starling interchange includes reworking hernando's interchange reworking church road that that project should have been done 10 years ago it's crucial that we get funding for that uh we have the sewer issue in memphis you know to change the the sewer from going to memphis to dakru possibly we don't have a permanent solution for that yet but it's a big fix it's extremely expensive and um and so we have these things highway 51 needs to be wide 305 and all branches needs to be widened all branched needs to help with the airport they have like almost 100 people requesting hangers at the alvarez airport but they have nowhere to put you know and so it's crucial all branch airport's the only airport in desoto county and so these are things that that we need crucial funding need help doing that and so the reason that all these things are the reason that i'm recommending to you tonight that we hire two lobbyists one lobbyist is going to be for the

[1:09:55] tourism tax extension as you all know our tourism restaurant tourism tax they do repeal dates every four years we had it in 18 so it's due now and so we need help that bill has already been sent to committee in on the senate side and we need help extending that so it's my recommendation that we hire lobbies to focus on that and then the council of governments with the uh sponsored by the soviet county economic development council we've had major discussions with all the city's board of supervisors we believe that um that our ask for desoto county with the infrastructure money off of money that we need somebody going to bat for us there too so i have i'm going to recommend to you tonight that we hire another lobbyist that the county has agreed everybody's agreed on that we're going to hire another lobbyist for that and now the amount of money that we're talking about for the um for the council governments for all the soviet county the recommendations that we hire the clearwater group this group has extensive political connections around the state we believe that they would be the most effective to help desoto county their fee to do a contract that carries us from now all the way through next legislative session 15 months will be 75 000 so what we what the council government's proposed is we break that down by population south haven has 29 percent of the population of soda county so our part of that would be 21 750 and so i'm recommending and asking for a motion tonight to hire clearwater group for that amount of money the funding we do have the money and sitting from up we can use it for city promotion we have the funds in order to do that so i'm asking someone to make a motion to hire not hire the council economic development council is going to have the contract so what it will be is a donation from the city of south haven to the southern county development council in the amount of twenty one thousand seven hundred fifty dollars we've got a motion volatile florida sectional you know we've got a lot of good people

[1:12:00] but you can't be there every day at the capitol um [Music] help our city and this is a one shot cleanliness said uh it's one shot big amount of money that's coming into the state and we need to get our fair share very well yes it is uh even though we're setting the contract up for 15 months um it can be uh our part we can be removed or the whole contract can be terminated within with 30 days or at night and mrs mary quick question so with the council of governments um you've already detailed as a group the list of what we're working with [Music] yes there's there's two actually two different asks because there are two funding sources the top three parties that the group agreed on for the infrastructure money was i-55 widening project highway 51 lighting and highway 305 widening and the olive branch airport there's a section of money with an infrastructure bill that just applies to airports so that's why it's big we have the airport project on there but those are the four projects on the infrastructure funding and then on the arca money the hornlight memphis hornet creek interceptor sewer district problem is number one on that list and then broadband for desoto county and you know it doesn't affect south haven as much as it does for the county but broadband is a huge thing i mean if you've got you got kids that live without brock without broadband they can't even sometimes do their school work and same thing with so many people working from home now we have to have broadband in the south county and so broadband is you know it's

[1:14:03] a huge forward there as well but you get understanding of two two sources okay so they're prioritized as in that order right or you know we don't know what's going to happen down there but those we made it clear you know with a unified voice from the summit county these are what we think are the uh most important projects this is the amount of money we gave them the amount of money you know it's going to take to complete these and so and answer your question our lobbyists uh will have those priorities every day in hand and that's what they'll be working on once again i think the state didn't you know sometimes doesn't understand that it's about the to what i call always have credible acts and i try to live that i don't bring anything before y'all that i've not researched and studied and stayed up at night and thought about i never bring anything to y'all in the cities out here but i don't think it's incredible and so i recommend it to the council governments the same thing look we're not going down there with just uh hey come build a you know a park in south these are things like you said this is not a south haven issue this is basically asking mdot to fund your own project it's asking the state to fund your own projects in effect it's been a top project for over two years exactly and it affects somewhat it affects you know the entire yeah no doubt about that so we we feel like we put a lot of thought into it and i commend you know our other cities and our county for all come together that's how you

[1:16:05] know i i challenge anybody to to bring six governmental entities together and get them to agree on three things uh that was a big accomplishment that was done in december and so i commend our county our fellow fellow cities for you know for doing that but but that's that's what the contract is and as alderman kelly stated you know if we don't get the results we need i mean you know within 30 days you know you can terminate that this is an experienced group um i know we don't have time to go into all the details tonight but i'll just believe it that they're an extremely experienced group in jackson uh with um you know with some relationships in the state legislature that can facilitate the key discussions okay any other discussion about donating that amount of money to the desoto county economic development council for their contract with the clearwire group hearing mountain roll call yes yes okay that motion carries and then i'm going to ask you again like i stated earlier that we have a separate lobbyist that just represents southam alone with one mission and that's the tourism tax uh in uh bpt strategies this contract would be between the city of south haven directed with vpt strategies and and again this is the one that i think could be the most effective in helping us with that extension so i'm asking for a motion same thing with this it's 12 000 uh is just for this legislative session so there's no obviously you wouldn't hire for 30 days and hire somebody else you don't have enough time so we're casting our lot with this person for twelve thousand dollars uh for this for this single mission so i'm asking for a motion for that

[1:18:07] thank you we have motion autumn and gallagher second of all in florida is there any discussion hearing none we're all called yes okay that motion carries um that's all that i have there any follow-up questions about anything we've talked about for me here now we'll move on next one agenda is our personnel doctor jerome is there any discussion on roll call yes that motion carries next on the agenda is our city attorney's legal update mr nick manley again let me brief um we had two uh two claims that were filed regarding liens and assessment for work that performed by the city contractor in accordance with uh issue code 21 1911. uh the first property is located in 2061 coral fields drive the property was sold on may 3rd but the tax roll was not updated reflect the transaction that's a notice for the 21 1911 was hit um so the recommendation is to remove the lien at 21 20 61 4-hour drive in the amount of 283.25 and the second property is located at 1430 fuel drive an excessive amount in that property amount of 1378 but the uh was actually the correct property than 13.95 dual drive so we'll need to authorize payment of that of 13.78 to the landowner at 14 30 jewel drive in exchange for release so they can pay the taxes on that property and then authorize the

[1:20:09] link will be filed on 14 30 fuel drive so it can be filed and collected next year but that makes your tax so the motions would be you make one motion but for both items um canceling the amount of 280 325 but 2061 coral wheels drive and the authorized payment in the amount of 1378 to the owners of 14 30 fuel drive for the incorrect assessment and also file lien in the amount of 1378 and according to 21 1911 at 1395 we have a motion farming flores a second honor to kelly is there any discussion yes no motion carries next on our agenda is our utility bill adjustment docket mr mayor is there a discussion hearing none roll call yes yes that motion carries next on our agenda are two claims dockets is our motion to approve docket one number in the amount of one 1 357 738 and 95 cents including the name we have a motion volume of pain second monitor fluoresce is our discussion hearing on roll call

[1:22:16] yes no motion carries is there a motion to approve doctor too mr mayor movie approved number two thousand two hundred nine dollars doctor 2 we have a motion monitor pain second monitoring fluoresce is there any discussion carrying on roll call yes that motion carries next on our agenda is the purpose of determining the need for executive session motion carries a need this evening the needs are claims and litigation for the south haven police department and infrastructure right-of-way acquisition city-wide personnel and economic development is there a motion to declare executive session second mother to jerome i'll bear say aye do you say no eyes have a motion carries the mayor and board will now in our executive session

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=lb64fDRofaU