09/18/2019

[0:00:01] welcome everyone i'm not calling this meeting to order please stand with us i will be led prayer by alderman gallagher after that please remain standing for the pledge of allegiance and alderman payne will lead us in that city heavenly father lord we come before you lord to ask you to be in our meeting today lord lord we ask you to be with our country lord as we're going through some tough times lord jesus that you would just give our politicians and leaders wisdom to conduct their jobs like they should lord lord i pray for our city lord that you would continue to have your hand on us and bless haven in your name we pray amen i pledge allegiance to the life 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 okay first on our agenda this evening first of all can everyone hear me again michael is it is it can y'all hear me in the back okay excuse me just a minute i want to get the mic right so i like to talk yeah i think that's fine we never noticed test is that better test is a better dance okay thank you sir okay first on the agenda this evening is approval minutes for the september 3 2019 meeting mr mayor move will approve the minutes of the regular meeting of september 3rd 2019 with any additions deletions or

[0:02:04] corrections we have a motion of honor and pain second baltimore brooks is there any discussion hearing none roll call alderman yes yes yes yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is our swearing-in of our mayor's youth council i'm going to meet everyone down front if everyone will come towards the podium and we'll do a like a joint swearing in at this time i may just work my way over here first thank y'all for serving on the youth council you're going to be involved in a lot of big projects and we appreciate your service uh on these days maybe i'll be sitting up here and so the rest of us uh can retire and get out of this this crazy business we all will y'all commit to doing that now maybe somebody at least yeah i'm just joking okay if everyone we have a uh bible don't we have a volunteer bible is behind us right here if all of you will um raise your right hand and repeat after me just say i'm going to say i and then legal blank you'll state your name all together and then we'll go ahead and do a swearing in as a group so okay ready aye do solemnly swear that i will faithfully support faith the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of mississippi the mayor's youth council of the mercy

[0:04:14] council and i will faithfully faithfully discharge the duties of the office of the office upon which i'm about to enter congratulations [Applause] okay next on the agenda is authorization to bid for paving equipment and i want to back up just a little bit this was on the agenda um i informed everyone publicly at the last meeting that uh the current proposal to pave we felt like that it's better that we post positions and seek employment first the equipment that we would need is in the general area so it's not like we would have to wait for a lengthy amount of time to have it you know custom ordered or you know manufactured there is equipment that would meet all of our needs it's local so that's not our number one concern our number one concern to make this a worthy venture is to be able to hire qualified personnel so actually if i may tonight i want to back up i don't want i'm not asking for authorization to bid for the equipment but with this on the agenda i would like to reopen discussion at the last meeting i brought you complete information after all of our research on the potential cost savings with paving our own streets i also told you that the reason it was so attractive to me is that if we have our own crews we can pay nine months out of the year instead of what now equates to about two and a half

[0:06:16] months and bottom line is i'm just looking for a way to pay more streaks you know we allocate two million dollars a year in this year's budget for street and just knowing what i know over the last six years we're fighting to lose them back we've made a lot of progress the streets are in much better condition than they've ever been in uh but they still don't meet my standards and i know they still don't meet the standards of this board and it's uh it's not fun being that person uh that gets to tell someone who has a street that lives on a street that is in almost exactly the same core condition as a street that is on your list and tell them that they're going to have to wait another 12 months and i'll just tell you i hate that part of the job and i hate delivering that news and so i will never quit you know working to try to make our operation better and for that reason we move slowly with this but i'm just telling you the the fact that us being able to pave streets nine months out of the year also to um you know to have more control over it you know we're at we're at the contractor's mercy now and to be able to say hey you know two days from now go pay the street or tomorrow go pay the street we can make a big difference for our citizens and i just believe we can pay more streets for less money there's been no information that i've gotten through this investigation uh that has shown that we can't do it and like i said the number one thing that we're concerned about is being being able to find qualified personnel so that's that's basically my thoughts on it my recommendation is that we move forward and that we make the personnel changes it would be budget neutral what we would do is just decrease the current street improvement schedule budget by the cost of personnel and then the the upfront equipment cost is estimated at 550 000 we would have to bid that but i would recommend taking that out of current surplus but anyway we don't have to take board action tonight

[0:08:18] the only thing i would say is that this is something we do need to make a decision if we don't make a decision tonight in october we need to make a decision because we're you know we're holding up we try to get some streets done in the fall we're going to go ahead and you know get lehman roberts to work on some of the streets in the fall but it does hold us up you know not knowing exactly what our plan is so it's my recommendation that if this board does not want to do this um that you tell me that uh either by i mean ideally by the end of october i'd say but i would like to open up discussion and last meeting i gave you all the numbers uh but we didn't really have a lot of feedback so basically i'm just asking for feedback from the board tonight how many how many personnel are you going all right six six total three crewmen an operator and two dump truck drivers and that would be um alderman payne brought up a good question that's not all that could be needed uh at times so we we do have a current crew of four that works on our streets they work on uh patching now uh so we could combine that four with the six and that's uh that's that's more that's even or more than the cruise now uh where the private contractors are using okay that was my next question i thought the private contractors were using around them between 11 and 13. so no ideally um no having 10 total is fills all the spots that are currently being used by the private contractors and same thing along along the same lines with the equipment there was a recommendation of buying two dump trucks uh we need more than two you need more than two dump trucks we have we have four others that are not in the greatest condition but they're still functional and then it's not uncommon even with a private contractor that depends on the day that they will they'll contract out for some other trucks and basically all the trucks are for is just to bring the asphalt to you from the plant and so it's you know at a

[0:10:22] fairly inexpensive cost you can hire in fact we had that in the proposal a set amount of money in case we didn't need other dump trucks from time to time just to get the asphalt to you in a timely way uh milling if we uh contract that out uh that takes away i would make some employees that we might need uh at least a driver well that's a good question but actually no we would still now we don't need milling for every street you know we have a lot of streets on the list that are the final lift of asphalt and a new development so there's no milling required all you're doing is overlaying same thing we do have some streets in our city that are not curbing gutter anytime you don't have curb and gutter there's no need for milling they're just going in and over landing so but we still would need a milling contract and that's in the proposal too right so we would need to keep a milling uh contract one of the other questions was if you're contingent upon the private contractor now to overlay would you not still be contingent upon a milling contract the answer is yes but it's not just one you're relying there's plenty of options for a milling contract so uh we believe that um that that would not be an issue as far as you know scheduling the billing the milling to be done and then we come in with our own cruising overlay now mayor i know we were saving money uh over the past two years using a seal coat uh process where it was drastically cheaper i'm assuming that's something that we're not gonna be able to do would that affect the amount of streets that were budgeted to pave or how would that affect our bottom line it still wouldn't it wouldn't affect your bottom line because still if you're just doing an equal comparison on uh spending two million dollars there's two million dollars worth of overlay that can be done without doing seal coating but that we would not this this proposal is not to do our own seal cutting those so if we have streets that need seal coating we would still use the company at this time dan cordell and i have discussed this uh the contractor that we use uh comes to uh

[0:12:26] it's just like santa claus it comes once a year they come once a one one month a year and if it's not on your list then you wait another year and uh so that's not really satisfactory either we're working on that trying to find another contractor that can be more flexible for the seal coating but um but no to answer a long way to answer your question um just doing an equal comparison there's enough streets that need overlaying that it would be you would spend you'd have that same uh efficiency with two million dollars and if you have steel coating that you want to use you would do that and just adjust that in your budget so like you wouldn't spend your full two million dollars you would allow you know whatever it is that you're going to silk up in any given year one of the starting our hourly wage is to make this job these jobs attractive folks will want to come work and stay because if we're going to train people to do this we're going to want them here for the long term as well uh great point and the thing is is we're not going to train that's why we're going to hire people that are you're experienced and that's where the big question mark is again that's why we want to start with that we believe that we can put together an employment package where they we can keep them employed 12 months a year whereas a lot of these people that work for these private contractors are working during the the warm season when the roads are being resurfaced and then they're collecting unemployment in the winter so i would think i mean i don't know this but i would think that if you can offer someone a job where they can have a 12-month job with retirement health insurance and not be laid off and collect unemployment for a few months a year i would think that would be attractive for them and but as far as the amount of the wage uh that's in the proposal and i i don't i certainly that's just yeah just means that we're gonna be we have to be competitive as well yes we would what we've done is uh set the rate of pay for someone who is um doing this now like not somebody we've been trained but someone who for a private company is doing this now who's going to supervise the world

[0:14:30] uh the way it works is the when you have a your own what we do now is we contract through civil link that's part of their agreement with us we pay extra for that but they have personnel on site on every road that's been worked on the reason is just to verify that the asphalt thickness is applied fairly that we're getting what we paid for we run into some situation not with the current contractor but in the past we ran into some situations where when we weren't supervising that that some of the asphalt thickness that we were paying for asphalt that we weren't getting and so that's the point it's very important so that's why civil links crews are out there to make sure that the thickness is applied correctly so in this situation you would have your your own staff would be working for you obviously they have no reason they're getting paid the same regardless of the thickness of the asphalt there's no trade secrets to you know increase your profit margin because there is no profit margin for these people so our own crews would do the supervision well i mean i get that but what i meant was are we going to have a cruise supervisor for this road that's um that's a good question and i'm sorry i should have cleared no i get you um that's what the operator is the operator has paid more the operator is the one that will be uh the crew chief of the so we're going to hire that position that's one of the positions that's in the proposal yeah and it is a higher paid position than the others maybe just so i understand you're saying that we don't we we won't we won't have to have a crew of 11 people is that because i mean i went back and looked at some pictures of some of our crews working here paving this stuff and they had between 10 and 10 and 12 people out there working you know they had flagged me and they had you know you know two people shoveling working rakes that kind of stuff we don't have to have that many people yes let me say it again we're proposing hiring six we already have four so we have 10 right now so we believe that 10 is sufficient and then if we had to like if we had a situation where we needed another we could pull that now that's

[0:16:34] another another valid concern that i discussed with dan cordell is i asked him the same thing i said is there anything else that we're leaving out are we missing anything so because before we do this i want to make sure that i investigate every situation and his only concern was basically well two concerns he had concerns about the maintenance of the equipment so i updated that and raised that in the proposal and then the second thing was if you're pulling those four that are normally patching throughout the year you're pulling them off that and we believe that that we can absorb that with the efficiency of having them all year instead of just short time so for example robert booth who is our street supervisor that sets the schedule if we have a week where we're going to knock out overlay we're going to do streets a week we pull those people that week and we assign them that way then the following week we just do that in the schedule so like whatever they're doing from a patching standpoint or other street uh maintenance responsibilities we just work that into the schedule but we believe that we can absorb that having them 12 months out of the year rather than just having a contractor here two and a half months what happens though if we're if we're paying and we need we need a match we'll be able to pull some money for sure and again that's the beauty of having your own people you can determine the schedule so like uh what alderman brooks is talking about if we we we have a week where we're going to knock out some paving and then we have another let's say that we have bad weather and we have you know to move the cruise toward uh you know the patch do some other patching on other streets we have the flexibility of doing that you know so and that's that's another thing i love about it is i just hate i hate facing my citizens and tell them that i can't get to your street for another 12 months whereas this way i would be able to address it quickly did you say they made us did you say there's there's another list of of course that you've said happened since the first one was it the first one reflect that the last board

[0:18:36] meeting i brought handed out reports to everyone okay because there was one that came in the email i guess it was the first part of this was it last week this is that should be the same thing yeah when i say i changed it when i first started putting the numbers together after i met with i had several meetings to gather information so since the first meeting until i gave reported to the board i adjust that maintenance of the equipment upwards so what you have is the most current and then the other point is that you know i did three columns in that presentation we had it on the uh big screen last week our last meeting but i started with two million just so we can show like how many streets we can do if we allocate the exact same money that we're doing now and it was less then or you get into the big savings and what and the reason i think it's something we should consider doing is when you get into like paving three four million dollars worth of streets you can do that you know for almost the same cost that you're putting now in your current budget so and i i don't have the number again y'all have that on email but but it goes up drastically like the higher amount that you do you're still having to pay for your asphalt your materials but your efficiencies increase because your labor cost stays consistent and your equipment cost stays consistent so the more streets you do the better the decision is to have your own crew now with all that being said hey we all know anytime you do something we're going to run into some problems there's going to be some things that happen that we're like hey you know what we didn't we get well this is a little tougher than we thought you know there's going to be stuff like that i'm not here before you tonight to say that that i have a crystal ball and it's going to be perfect what i am here to tell you is that the numbers make sense and we got to do i believe we got to do something different unless y'all want to you know pull out the money tree and

[0:20:38] double the street allocation for this year i think that we've got to consider doing something else i think that really the magic number what i think for our street should be around four million a year and we're at two what is what is the time frame you've been needing let's say we did this what will be the time frame you need to hire and do the transition the interview will interview higher and then transition to us to it well what we would do is um i sent out the schedule to all of you and i color coded it and what i did just so we don't lose time i color coded what we will go ahead and have lehman roberts do in the fall and so they'll go ahead and get started while we're considering this i don't want to waste any time so that we got some streets that are already the ones in green on your sheet that they've already been uh given to lehman roberts do you want to be working on while the weather is good this fall then the ones in orange are the ones at the sealcoat contractor when when they show up they're supposed to be here in october when they get here they'll do the seal cutting the ones that are in blue are ones that would be left for us to start next year so as far as a timeline like oliver brooks is talking about the timeline would be the first step let's say that in october we'll all vote and we say that hey we want to move forward with this at that point we would post the jobs first and we'd try to hire us ideally uh we would try to have the staff hired um either by the end of the year or january then also like late year january if we're you know seeing that we're getting qualified people and we know we can move forward that's when we go ahead and get the equipment and then ideally we would start in march or april with our own crews has i haven't had a chance to do it myself but has the math been done to figure out if we'd go through with this how long it would take for us to catch up because i know we've originally planned on increasing the budget by maybe half a million every year about seven to ten years we'll be able to catch up to where we can only worry about the overlays have we figured that

[0:22:42] part out yet no and i wish i could tell you yes but and i'll just tell you i will i'll credit civil link again i think that in the last since 2015 i think that we've been as aggressive as any city our size in america on street improvement and i would challenge anyone to show me different because we've paid a lot of streaks since 2015. and with that we did the um the virtual tour of our street conditions we paid for that survey had all our streets rated and it's great i don't regret doing it was a good thing but i don't think that there is a magic and and we in that proposal there was an estimation like you're talking about what it would take to get us caught up i don't believe that that's accurate i think that our problem is a little bit bigger than that um i i don't know the answer to that but i will say this that just on look what i sent y'all two days ago those streets are on there all those streets i think uh um this year is 2.5 million that's that's with the assumption that we're going to get the internet sales tax money which we expect to get in january which is going to be graded upward over three years so the first year it's only going to be about 400 000 but that's with the assumption that we would use that money for streets because we have to use it for infrastructure um but then so that's 2.5 million for fy 20 and then fy 21 and 7.9 million and those are just now listen to me those are just the people that have either called me or you all of you or that i on my own said wow this street sucks and so i went back to my office and boom i put the street on the list that there are other streets that need help right now that are not on that list at all so that's why i tell you that i really

[0:24:44] think that you know if you're at three and a half four million a year in streets i think that you're knocking well think about that if we were at four this year and four next year that's eight million so in three years you've knocked out all the streets that are on that list in three years and then you can get into you know there's a tab on there too by the way i meant to tell y'all that's cocktailed i mean uh named subdivisions and these are like entire subdivisions that all the streets in the subdivision are about the same condition so it really doesn't do any good just to put one string all the streets are in the same condition so if you'll click on that tab it'll also show you the cost of some subdivisions that need to be totally redone and some of those are you know 400 000 a piece you know so anyway long way to answer your question i'm just trying to share information but no i don't have a magical number on that but i do believe that if it were three and a half to four million you would knock out all the streets on that list in the next three years and that would give you a great head start on getting to some of these other streets that the people haven't complained about and then one of the other questions i have is during the three cold months what are what is this crew going to be focusing on we would cross train them we would move them to other projects you know when in the uh in the winter months that's when uh potholes become nuts you know and in december and january we start having bad weather uh especially we have some icy weather you know we can load these people up on the streets catching up on potholes um and then there's other things you know with you know ditches niche maintenance things like that uh bradley am i saying that right there's other things what else besides those two things normal patching potholes ditch maintenance what other things um still be doing

[0:26:53] even if they're doing cold and there is one other point i want everyone in the audience to know too and and the board make sure everybody understands this that um alderman payne brought up and i don't know if this is what you're asking but you reminded me of this and so i appreciate that when you see the um perfectly cut rectangular cuts in the road like on state line before we go and put the overlay what we're doing is you have to do that before you put the final lift of asphalt there are compromised spots where water has gotten in and has hurt the sub surface and you can't just go over and just put asphalt on it if you do that then it will sink and you'll have a hole on a soft spot there so what has to happen is you have to patch before you overlay so they cut that perfectly um you know shaved rectangle out in the winter when you don't have hot mix you can't do that like when you when we start getting thousands of calls in january after a bad winter storm and we're going out to patch a pothole you have to have hot mix to do the the rectangular square so what we're doing is shoveling cold mix and that's why it doesn't look as good you know it's bumpy it's just you know kind of real unclean so that's the difference that's why when you see a freshly cut square or rectangle that's you have to have a hot mix to do that has to be in the summer months to do that we have tried to go back uh bradley and his crews at my request have gone back to some areas that get real clustered with a bunch like a bunch of clustered potholes and we've gone back and cut those out and fixed those i don't know if anybody's noticed that but

[0:28:55] we have done that in on some streets right when we did it on sweeney uh swinging between uh between goodman and church we did it there too mayor i do want to say i'm really impressed and you put a lot of work into this there's no doubt about it i mean with all the numbers and that kind of stuff uh since we don't aren't in that big of a hurry you think maybe we can in the next 30 days maybe have a work session and see if we can find if there is anything in gyms like you said maybe things we didn't forget and so before we bring it back to a vote sure have all that stuff done and yeah and that way because i mean you put a lot of effort so you know no doubt about it it's there but like you said there's probably going to be some things that we didn't see uh i would just feel more comfortable if we you know if we had like a work session we certainly can let me clarify what i mean that we didn't see i mean after you with anything once you start doing it yeah that's when you realize you know oh wow you know this is different from what we thought um so there's there's some things that you're not going to know until you actually start doing it but the main thing we want to do as a mayor board is not jump into a decision that has a game-changing piece of information that we didn't know that could hurt us financially or affect us from doing the streets now with that being said the answer certainly let's please do that and i would ask all of you if there's something you have a concern about helping let's reach out for more information but i will tell you this the numbers that i put in the proposal those come from robert ruth he's our current street supervisor he has previous asphalt experience it also comes from involving dan cordell who's been managing the street uh improvement schedule for the last six years for us and it's actually data based on what we've actually been doing like the number of personnel the exact equipment the exact materials so i didn't just like like say hey look this sounds right you know i went back and got exact numbers on what we've been spending to do a street and so um i believe it's i

[0:30:57] believe it's pretty accurate i really do but uh so anyway just to be efficient with our time if there is another source you want to reach out to let's go ahead and do that and uh but i welcome any other information do we need to make a promotion to it no we don't need to do anything at night the only thing i'm asking is like when i bring it and say we don't need any board action tonight that if we're talking about it and spend this much time talking about it it's important right and it's not something that you know needs to just like go back on the shelf you know for two months it needs to be whether it's a yay or a nay we need like i said i we need to make a decision in october preferably at the next meeting october 1. so if um you know if we want to have a meeting or or whatever you know we want to have another ordinance committee meeting or or an infrastructure committee meeting we can do that between now and then if you'd like but if y'all will ask you not no board action night but bring me if there's anything you have concerns about please talk please talk quickly please bring the information you know if you think there's something that we haven't addressed is that fair enough thank you for that thank you okay we'll move on quickly next is our resolution for change in our meeting location our city hall is going to be renovated this board meeting is going to be under renovation the entrance is going to be under renovation soon there's going to be a new roof on the building that construction will start in october so we need to pass a resolution for public notice to note that we will change our meeting location our meeting location will be in our municipal court just down the street on northwest drive that's an ideal location i appreciate thomas masten our court clerk for making that uh suggestion it is set up ideally for a board meeting so we shouldn't have any problems there so at the next meeting we'll have everything set up to conduct business down there but we do need to pass this resolution uh mr merriman will adopt the resolution of the mayor board of

[0:32:59] autonomous new south haven temporarily moving forward meeting location of the southeast municipal port building as president thank you we have a motion bombing brooks second monitor kelly is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes alderman kelly yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is a contract amendment with banker services coverage mr nick manley this amendment is just for an additional year with maker services for the media reading and it will be at uh 0.985 per meter red um something like authorization for the mayor to sign the um extension banker services company in the amount of 0.985 familiar rent and everything else will stay the same as the current contract right the original contract so moved second do we need to stipulate that he can sign the contract it may or may not reflect the american sign contract we have motion monitoring flores second volume in pain is there a discussion what were we paying before 97.971 okay any other discussion yes no motion carries next on the agenda are variances for parks rental uh yeah this is just authorization for variants for uh serving a service of alcohol for rental by michael hatcher at the stone house or the thursday night and under the facility juice policy you have to have a variance for alcohol mr mermaid we approve the variance from michael atcher as presented we have a motion baltimore brook second baltimore gallagher

[0:35:14] yes that motion carries next on the agenda are copier contracts for public works and the city clerk's office yes uh the these contracts are with rj young um for copiers uh for a city clerk's office for the purchase of a copier and now 995 dollars in public works department um for leasing of a copier just need approval for the bradley to sign the public works and injury to sign the city clerk's contracts with darth vader mr mayor i'll make that question a second we have a motion bomber in pain second baltimore kelly all in favor say hi all right any opposed say no i was having motion carries next on the agenda is a resolution for liens if these are the uh you know are the properties that have been cut and or pin down pursuant to 21 1911 they'll be filed as liens and then they will then be converted to assessments after uh september mr meredith would adopt the resolution the airborne baltimore city south haven adjudicating the cost of cleaning property imposing a penalty posing lien the same against property as presented second we have a motion balance broke second dollar in pain is there any discussion among the board hearing none is there anyone in the audience that has a financial interest in any of the properties you would like to speak hearing or seeing none roll call plays yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is a resolution for sanitation assessments this resolution will just be authorized either collection through the car tag and or a program or filing a link for those unpaced

[0:37:15] annotation assessments pursuant to the mississippi code mr mayor i move we adopt a resolution assessing unpaid sanitation fees as presented second we have a motion balance second monitoring gallagher is there any discussion among the board hearing none is there anyone in the audience that has a financial interest in the properties or these um assessments were levied that would like to speak hearing or seeing none roll yes that motion carries next on the agenda is a south police department mou with the flaunt group incorporated yeah this uh mou is what obviously the saudi police department plotted through um recently grandview lakes purchased license plates reader and granby lakes and the block group and allow these i think at least have access to that license plate reader so as part of the um access for the south haven police that decided to send my uf plot group we've made a couple of changes so tonight um that'll that were consistently law so tonight we see authorization for a chief more to sign the mou with block group inc for access if if requested for the license plate reader absolute data for a second we have a motion baller gallagher second ballerman hoots is there any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye aye all opposed say no i just have it motion carries next on the agenda is the southern police department donation acknowledgement this is an acknowledgement and um receipt of donation from cliff freeman foreign police department

[0:39:18] motion to accept donation second we have a motion balance flores second dollar matutes is there any discussion hearing none all in favor say aye all foes say no i must have it motion carries next on the agenda is a request for no parking stipulations and signage on airways place cove north of goodman road on the east side of airways cook yes sir you'll have a remote that i submitted to the board along with an aerial photo of that area we've received several complaints from business owners up and down this cove area about parking on both sides of the street parking at the end of cove it affected their businesses so i got a cheat more asked him to look into it as well he had an officer go over there and witness what was occurring over there we did feel like there were two issues one it was negatively affecting the property owners that were trying to get people in and out of their areas because it's hard to get in their drives i wasn't blocking any drives without blocking fire hydrants but it was very tight fit the other issue that came into play was emergency vehicle apparatus is needing to have free flow through there so chief his recommendation was to put one-way traffic no traffic on one side we would additionally like to add in no traffic signs around the actual radius of the code that seems to be where most of them are and in a situation with fire um fire trucks and things going in there they can't make the turn around the proper radius um so what we're requesting to do is to put no parking signs on the south side of the road and along the radius of the cove and leaving north side for parking uh we relayed that over to the private uh business owners and they were okay with that so that's recommendation from both my office and the police chief's office uh to allow that to be a no parking on that south side and around that cove

[0:41:20] mr murray i'll make that motion second we have a motion ball remaining second by harvard kelly is there any discussion i thought i said it actually and alderman kelly's second are you okay with that too absolutely that's part of your second any other discussion hearing none roll call membrane yes ottoman kelly yes carter yes yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is a resolution authorizing the cleaning of private property and we'll um we'll have a hearing person correct next well it's just for me this one's just for one property since there's a tear down okay yeah you can start it off with uh um authorizing and having the hearing concept which closed meeting then i'm gonna number three so you can just have it here okay so what this is about is um a resolute a resolution to condemn uh private property owned as such 78 85 highway 51 north it's several different addresses you'll have that there basically this is the building at custom 51 that collapsed on december 31st of 2018 part of it has been torn down but the part that remains standing is is according to our fire marshal still a hazard does not meet building fire cover requirements so it's the recommendation to condemn this property and so at this time we will open up the floor for a discussion in a public gear what you're seeing right here these are

[0:43:29] pictures that were taken about three hours ago of the actual structure um and just to give you uh this has been an ongoing project uh just some summer dates um original code issues were sent out july 19 2006. these were going to be code violations concerning elected holographs fencing things like that uh go to further down the line there were abatement letters sent from obd building department fire department after annual inspections uh these abatement letters were set on april 2016. uh obviously on december 31st 2018 fire damage uh occurred to the south wind building further collapse of the tenant spaces occurred due to weather conditions and heavy water damage so knowing that we were in a state of severe dilapidation the first notice of issues with the damaged building was set on january 31st 2019 but it was rejected as a certified letter we then went into uh public hearings uh processes so the first notice of a public hearing for the the demo was sent via fedex on august 21st 2019. a second notice was sent after there was a partial demo without a permit on september 4th 2019 also via fedex uh in terms of the court hearing summary dates uh we got this from thomas mass and our court clerk first court appearance was on march 21 2018 there were 31 code violations 16 were pled guilty to court agreed to hold the fines until april 25th 2018 to allowing time to make the repairs to the building second appearance to determine the property's compliance with those repair stipulations was on august 1st 2018 the property was deemed not compliant still uh mr mencal informed the court that he fired its attorney and new one would represent him in an appeal case at county court uh medical failed to appear in appeal court on multiple occasions the county sent the case back to the city on may 30th 2019. the letter was then sent to mindacao on may 31st 2019 by court informing him of the change of venue and also the occurring fines starting on may 31st the letter was returned unclaimed on june 2019. a second attempt letter was sent via fedex on july 15 2019. the

[0:45:33] letter was refused by mr minicow uh a benchmark was issued for contempt of court um so we went out there during the demo and informed the contractor on site that uh removing a portion of the building was not sufficient we also didn't have structural design or a permit to go along with that um so we set out that second letter notifying him that that was not sufficient and the fire department building department were not able to go out there and see what was removed what wasn't removed how it was structurally sound how it was repaired to become sound before this hearing i reached out to the building department in the fire department and said what's your take on this um where are we at in terms of you certifying that it's strictly sound now it can be reoccupied both are in agreement that at this point the damage was significant enough you'll see in the pictures here both on the back side where there's still weather able to get in and out uh and also on the front where you see some dipping on the front facade where the structurals uh it's katie and some it is their opinion that it's still not structurally sound so it is still the opinion of cute enforcement the fire marshal and chief building official that the remain of the building being demolished um so that's where we're at with it i do understand that mr minnick is here in the audience and would like to speak on his behalf um so if you have any questions for me i'll be over to the side and um i'll let you see this was posted on the property as well yes you'll see pictures everybody has pictures where everything is posted on the property it's also been posted in city hall um it was sent to every tenant space in the building it was sent to his home uh so we sent it to every address that we could find did the title abstract everything was done um for our city attorney's requirements mr maddie count here yes please come forward yes are you the owner you're the owner of the building yes um if you guys are familiar with it it was built in like 65 i believe by mr long who's maybe used to be mayor um if you've kept up with the property i had it looking better than it ever looked new facades new glass fronts had all my tenants put new signs in it and then in november of 17 there was always compliance issues but i was always working with him i was always working with robert with the with the building department he'd come by see me working

[0:47:36] my son's back there worked every day of the summer where we repainted everything cleaned everything up um i had a couple issues where the cove department was demanding that i paint the brick sides of the building which had never been painted and i kind of had issues with that i had the co-department come to tell me that the spaces they had always had venetian blinds on the window i've been there since i bought the building telling me that the venetian blinds had to come down where the subway is in terms of the corner their walk-in cooler went up against the glass and when they went in there originally i guess they painted the glass black or put vinyl black vinyl on top of it and they were telling me that was illegal to have the glass covered up even though if it wasn't there you just see the side of aluminum cooler and uh so it was it was always ongoing but i was i've always been working on it then in november of 17 there was a firework where the tax place was it was actually next by his insurance guy he had stored some papers next to the furnace there's an insurgent state farm i had a ruptured disc couldn't meet safe farm out there still do but they wrote me a check for 29 dollars and said it's smoking water damage and i'm sitting there going no there's it's barked all the way through the roof so uh i had to get engineers out there get them to write letters state farm to this date so that's other than i believe you've talked to the attorney for state farm who's handling it and um so then while we're going through that and i still i got paid twenty nine thousand dollars in original damages on that which you couldn't do anything with so i've been fighting state farm on that so then while i'm still fighting them the space on custer the tenants it was a venezuelan church and one of their members decided to put a single plow roof on and the rest of the building i'd already put like where the subway is a brand new roof new air conditioners and where the dominoes was at the end

[0:49:39] that space was gutted and we're using it to store all our materials and stuff and so it's it's always been just you know all the building materials and stuff that they've been working with well then when the roof collapsed the state farm sent engineers in from texas they evaluated it uh it seems like the guys who put the roof on for the church didn't put the roof drains back in basically created a swimming pool and caused roof to collapse uh i believe you've been in the insurance business state farm has required me to furnish every financial document i've had going back 10 years every email i've had going back 10 years every text message i've had going back 10 years to finally determine that no one had ever told me that hey the roof was ever leaking and two that they were going to put a new roof on without my consent still i've not been paid for the custer space the lady was just up here said set me up i've received two documents from the city of southam fedex these are the only two i've ever received they say i've refused them i've never been i'm not there to refuse they deliver during the day i'm never there so i don't know who refused them there's nobody at the house so i've never refused anything if they got returned they got returned but i it wasn't me i've gotten these two fedex things one of them from this choke states that they demoed it without a permit i've got a copy of the permit you guys issued it it was paid for to do the demolition so it has been parliamented the demolition works been done i've contracted for the uh for the uh environmental stuff to get it done so we can get working on it but until state farm does something i still can't do anything i've got an engineer's letter that says what's there of the building structurally sound

[0:51:41] um i've got uh it's it's a stamp from the engineer that uh so you have butter with you yes this is on the you guys have was there mr foster at one time this is going back on this is on the end where there have been some damage before where we're all been repaired that's david december 14 set third i mean yeah december it doesn't work you're right okay that was uh it that into the building where the dominoes was when domino's was there they went in and they had put in all their bitter hoods and air conditioning systems and whoever their mechanical contractor was decided to cut all the x's out of the trusses while they're doing their install so it caused the roof to start sagging so this is this is the engineer's report because i had to get to get that done and get that all prepared and said that it's been repaired structurally you know sound so that the uh the only structural issues with the building at this time is with where the fire was that state farm still has not paid me for since 7 december 17 or november november of 17. so it's not to my benefit for that place to be empty i've got the tenants that are out of it all want to come back like i said we had that place looking better than it ever looked with new facades new trim new channel around the edges new gut downspouts gutters it never looked better than it looked before before this before the fire even when the fire still didn't look bad but then when the when the roof collapsed it looked really bad we had a court case on all the

[0:53:45] on all the there was never issue when we were in court it was never structural it was all code stuffed with grass and paper and stuff like that in the parking lot and i would get excited there's a hispanic lady with a grocery store there and she works by herself and she put her boxes out the back door when she get there in the morning and wait for her children it worked in the afternoons to take him to the dumpster so she wouldn't leave the business alone well i get excited for her leaving the boxes out the back door and they'd just be there for a couple hours so i get psyched for the boxes being left outside there's a title loan to place and i get excited for his cars being parked out there and uh so i was constantly getting sighted from people who have businesses there that the code guys could have just walked into the businesses who have used occupancy departments and business licenses they could have walked in there and said hey you need to to clean up your stuff and said they would they would psych me every time and uh i'm not down there every day to know that stuff's going on but uh it so then we went to hernando and uh the attorney that i had which said you know i've got quit doing this i didn't i didn't ask him to leave he asked to leave because he does so much in the city of southampton courts he said i can't go against the city they said you need to find another attorney so um then they said it for the 16th and hernandez which i was there and the judge the judge wasn't there so then they said we're going to reschedule and we'll let you know when we were scheduled for because the judge wasn't there so they rescued never let me know when it was rescheduled i called down there i talked to a lady named vicky oh yeah we'll let you know since we rescheduled so they rescheduled it and i wasn't there and then they got made for not being there and then i think they sent it back to desoto county i've been through i've literally contacted at least 10 12 attorneys given the whole file every time and every one of those

[0:55:48] attorneys will not come to south africa and represent me okay i mean are you reaching out to mississippi attorneys or tennessee mississippi attorneys in salvation they said i make my living in southaven court i might go down there i won't do it um i even talked to the pharisees there's gonna be twenty thousand dollars fine let's do it no we're not it's not our best interest to do it so i mean i just don't really know what else to do i've uh i've been out there i've worked my butt off down there just like you're talking about doing your painting i do the paving i do the painting the inspectors down there they come by every day while i'm there they see me on the ladder they see me working my butt off and then when it comes time to go from the court they say something totally different than what they've been telling me you know like i said it i've been doing i've been doing property since i'm 17 years old i've never had a property look worse after i've owned it every piece of property i've ever done i've done historic restorations i've done old buildings downtown in memphis on the river i've done all this stuff and all my stuff looks good it's attractive and um but down here i mean just honestly i've been poked in the chest every time i've come down here i mean it's constant well if i may and and i don't know about your history i don't have any reason to doubt what you're saying with your with your past but i can speak to the building that we're talking about we're talking about two issues obviously this hearing is about condemnation but it is important for the board to know the other you're you've been found guilty of 16 uh property maintenance code violations at your property yes uh this has gone on i've personally been i'm glad to meet you you've been like a mystery guy to me i've asked so many times i would love to see you and talk to you and i'm sorry you've all got my phone number i can't tell you how happy i am to talk to you face to face

[0:57:49] because i have been trying to talk to you face to face for three years and do you know how rare that is that the mayor is involved with one person about a code violation i will come talk to you but i was scared to death because everybody told me the mayor is after you i'm not after anybody but i'm just telling you that that's the message i got well i will say this is somebody who makes a mockery of my court and you've made a mockery of the municipal court in south haven the city taxpayers that kind how many times in this meeting have we talked about this building people have uh repetitively contacted me asking me why this eyesore is there why does the owner of this building not have to abide by the ordinance of the city like everyone else does i'm not after you for any other reason i understand that you're making a mockery out of our court and at the integrity of our ordinances and like i said you are you have been found guilty of 16 violations that for three years you've not done anything about we've been trying uh trying to bring you to court you're currently in contempt of court i i'm assuming you know that i don't well you're in contempt of court i've gotten these two i've got these two notices from these two fedex notices one that told me that this meeting was happening and then the second notice that said they did the demolition without a permit i know we got a permit i've got a copy of the department can we get the copy permit to the attorney we informed him to get the permits uh i can also tell you that the reason why he only has two letters is because we did send the letters to be a certified male and then ver there be a fedex with a requirement of signature we never could get the signatures so i finally asked our city attorney can we just send it and have fedex deliver it without a signature because that's the only way we're going to know that it's been delivered everything kept kicking back to us we had tried several times from the court side and from the code side to get something delivered and nobody would ever sign for the documents so that's why you only have students answered so there have been many many others

[0:59:50] many others so let's take this like i said we're dealing with two issues here yes the purpose of this is to talk about the condemnation of the property but i just if i may just since i'm finally getting to talk to you if i may i don't have anything against you the mayor of the city is not after you it's embarrassing to know the amount of conversations i've had the mayor the city has had to have regarding your property and it's not because i want to it's because my citizens who i work for have contacted me repetitively about the eyesore and asking me a very fair question why does mr medical not have to abide by the same ordinances that i do and i always say he does so i don't have anything i'm not after you the only thing i want you to do is to put making a mockery out of the ordinances in the city of south bay mississippi i don't think i ever have because i think if you talk to the code guys they see me down there working i mean that no sorry that's not what they'll tell you the i know you asked robert i know everything about his family roberts austin's here austin would you please come forward austin tongan is our coach i'm supervisor right i've met mr austin down there i think so austin just real quickly we're gonna have to move on but would you please just in a nutshell tell us um how has our experience been with the med accountability well i mean it's not been good i got a file you know it's really thick and just uh uh sheds blind on it he's not really telling the truth about a lot of the stuff he said y'all i'm sitting here going nuts but um he is in violation now i can currently write him tickets i have pictures uh he hasn't been here you know and you know since the building fell down since we've been trying to contact him i haven't seen him one time and i promise you i've set out there no since i said multiple times in my truck waiting on him i know what he drives i've been waiting on him i've been looking for him now he has been out there a few times with his son who sat back here i've met him i've seen him pick up some trash

[1:01:53] um our code says it has to be a workmanlike and professional look he comes over there and he'll slap some paint on the building and it doesn't look good and there's still you know stuff that needs to be fixed over there us putting fence around it has helped him to not come over there and do the work that he needs to do it's kind of bought him some more time especially with the uh when he appealed our decision it bought him a few months he is right the judge didn't show up one time the second time we were there they filed the paperwork wrong the third time there he was absolutely contacted the judge said that he didn't show up he's kind of giving you all these these uh you know well he told me taking on this he told me taking on that he hasn't spoke to the 16 violations that we currently have and that's why we don't even need it if he feels strongly about this then he would have showed up and appealed it without a lawyer you know i mean he would have showed up in appeals court just asked the judge for leniency over what we did he didn't even do that and obviously he knows he's in violation of this 16 violations that he's still currently not and i took these pictures last week of grass and trash that are still out there just the grass and trash cut your grass and pick up trash that's easy to do you know not i'm not bashing the pain i'm just talking about the simplest things and and those small things like that aren't even being taken care of yeah i mean i met you out there once right with rob no we've been out there two or three times i think all right but i didn't have to get i don't know my only point is to review what you said it's not accurate i've been involved in this house i understand it's taken a lot of the taxpayers pay my salary it's taken a lot of my time but i should never be involved i agree and and all i can do is is apologize i promise you i have i had it looking pretty good i mean please give me that i believe i lived in that subdivision my my i grew up right behind your building i've seen that build many many for many many years for 40 years plus and i totally disagree with you that

[1:03:56] build has looked tremendously better in the past yeah not since i voted yes sir sorry but uh yeah i i mean i like this budget i i'm believe me i've never meant to make a mockery of southaven i all i do is work i'm a i'm a one-man band i when i'm not hurt i'm 12 16 hours a day seven days a week i don't i i mean to hear you guys say that i neglect my stuff i don't it it feeds my children and puts my kids in school i don't neglect what feeds me um well the 16 the 16 violations i mean it's stuff like one downspout doesn't match the other downspout no sir that's not true it's many other things in addition that bottom line is this you're invite you've got 16 violations and you're in contempt of court by our municipal court judge um but that's that issue we'll deal with that later um that has nothing to do with the condemnation but nick the reason i want to talk about that is to let everybody understand that the point he's making of the board is not all accurate and i respect that i hope that uh what i would ask you tonight will you make it right well you will you will you make it right for the 16 violations will you show up at court because you're not showing up at score i i didn't know i'm supposed to be in court i've got nothing from the court i promise you i've gotten these two letters if if if you guys send a registered letter that comes in the middle of the day there's nobody at my house to take to sign for something i mean they've got my phone you know you didn't know that you're in uh you're that you're uh in violation of 16 different i knew the original 16 years ago so when were you going to make that right well then do we have to bring you to call no no well then well all the 16 violations were prior to the fire and to the roof club they're still not right my point is when when were you going to come make it right if you want us to respect the fact that you handle your business the right way when when are you going to come back i have so with the insurance company to fix all that stuff and i can't they've

[1:05:59] been holding me up a lot of the things have nothing to do with the insurance laws a lot of that a lot of the other code violations were were there before the insurance i mean i paid i pay somebody to cut the grass and keep the lot clean and i i assumed it was being well you have two buildings so you could have come and worked on the other building well is it is the grass not coming around yet i mean i should honest to god i mean i'm saying we're not home right i drove by yesterday and the grants had just been cut so right that's already been decided this is not the court right you're in violation of 16 different codes well that was the issue what i'm asking you is and you guys can think of me what you want it it's it's obviously i have a monetary interest in that property i mean it's a it's a big investment for me you know and and i wish you guys could see my other properties because they're meticulous and and i would love for that one to be meticulous also um i can promise you that as soon as i settle with the insurance company and hopefully that will be soon i think you've talked to the lady that's representing the state farm out to club she told me you spoke to her um if they will settle with me i promise you i will spend every time they give me fixing that property up i had that property looking pretty i'd sealed the parking lot i restricted i patched potholes my intent was to fix it up and be able to to get rid of the piece of property because i just have felt like every time and i've never experienced this before i've never been disrespectful to you have i i've never been disrespected that's irrelevant i mean but my my my the way i operate is that the bill inspector tells me something if they say something i said just tell me what you want me to do and i try my best to do it the way they tell me so there's no question about it if you'll come to court then we'll tell you every detail like i said i had no idea about that

[1:08:01] okay i mean like i said you're in contempt before that's another issue right but hey let's get back to uh let's get back to the building so the bottom line is what's been done there now is still not structurally sound tim roland would you please come forward he's our fire marshal and tim if you will update us on the on the building like why why would we want to condemn the building at this point well as i stated in my letter uh on multiple occasions whenever i went over there i even called you over for the um new year's eve i was at your building on new year's day i was there you weren't there when i was there unless you were hiding no i'm saying um well you were there for a couple hours and then a few minutes after he left you showed up um the pictures that i saw that whitney had i mean i've got everything from aerial views and all that also to include you notice in my letter i stated in there that i saw with the collapse of the church area it had taken off part of the wall separating the church and subway got into the space where the fire had occurred at that point in time the roof was being supported by two by four shoring four before that this is the space that the state farm wanted to pay you twenty nine thousand dollars for saying that it was just smoke and water damage well and with all due respect we don't have your agreement with the state farm that's between united states right that

[1:10:03] has nothing to do we have an obligation to our citizens and i understand and i would hate to answer your phone i promise you if you dealt with this i mean after looking at the building that day i mean i deemed that at least 50 percent of the building 25 percent had already collapsed another 25 percent was in danger of collapsing i met with your insurance company and their engineers over there and looked at the old dominoes area which once again also that was february of 2016 whenever that side of the building was struck by a motor vehicle correct no that was well motivated it just took out the corner it didn't do any structural real structural damage the motor vehicle what did the structural damage inside is when dominoes was in there they cut out the hexes of the trusses and that caused the problem in there and that's that's what you know i've already had the engineer and they've 2016 when domino's moved to their current location correct either way whenever i was in that space we also noticed some shoring of the roof in that space so now i have 25 that it collapsed 50 that was at risk of collapsing therefore that is why i deemed it structurally unsafe and i believe the building official james gentry also concurred with me on that and uh space that he's talking about where the domino's is that's the stamped engineers letter that i showed you it says it's structural assessment so to summarize we've got 16 codes of outlets we have the fire marshal and our building inspector both

[1:12:04] say these come down correct let's say stainers okay quick question is is the two before or the four by four still up holding the the verify there's a section of three bays between where the subway is and where the domino's was between two firewalls that part is scheduled to be we're waiting on the environmental letter to come back that's gonna the plan is for that to be good and those that was three days to be rebuilt but your engineer is not saying that those are structural no no no no no no i've got the engineers saying that they're not that i had to get so that state farm would pay me for which they still have not paid me for it as you can see from his pictures it's not 29 000 worth of smoke and water damage it was parked all the way up through the roof the guy that was the insurance company guy there he had stored all his papers that they normally the posters they put on the window he decided to storm next to the furnace and caught the building on fire but uh domino's face where he says it's held up with shoring and stuff is not held short it's uh it's had new beams put in and i've got the engineer's letter saying that that it was the beams were put into the engineer's spec to support it and it was all right that's the letter that i gave him a minute we're going to show him a minute ago um the building is not structurally on town where the where the blocks came down on the side where the church came down those blocks are fairly easy to repair now that the now that the church is gone the church the church face i have no plans to rebuild that's going to be who determined that it was not of an instruction where the fire was so you said the building destruction is from the insurance company

[1:14:12] said that it's not it's not an issue well i think from from the city's standpoint and he may have a letter or he may have an engineer come and tell us it's structurally sound but from uh the city's standpoint our liability standpoint we go in and say we tell him he can revamp the tenant spaces and then our building department and our fire marshals go in to inspect it one thing i would ask them is do you feel comfortable going in there now just with a letter from somebody else and it's structurally sound putting your name on a certificate occupancy where there's going to be tenants and customers and everybody in those spaces i think that's what the problem was is they're not comfortable with that they do not feel it so i don't know how you can i don't know how your letter versus their opinion is going to sway one way or the other right well it's a stamped engineer's letter we have engineers as well we have structurals on our side of our marshmallows gospel we deal with it all the time where one stamp engineer will say something different from one that we hire and it's whoever's paying our building officials are not comfortable signing off on a certificate of occupancy for tenant space i don't know where we go from there well obviously it will be every space there is going to have to be will be all new electrical auto plumbing and it'll it'll all be permanent and they'll have to be inspecting it while it's being built so i think i think that i don't think the plumbing and the electricals i think it's the structure itself that they're going to have to say okay that will all be removed between the two firewalls it will be new between those two firewalls holy root structure is the building structure right now structurally safe right now i went over on the date of the collapse i went back for the joint inspection at that point in time i would not go in the subway space i have not gone in the short space since then and i would not go in it today okay that's all i'm going to do right the short space is definitely

[1:16:14] i wouldn't go in the short space that you even admitted it okay that's right what are we gonna do here okay well we i'm just trying to be fair and give the man ample time to speak is there anything else we need to wrap it up is there anything else would you like to say no i just i think that if uh and i know it's none of y'all's concerned as far as what the insurance pays or whether they ever pay or ever do anything my problem is i can't do it until they do i'm not financially able to spend four hundred thousand dollars doing it until i get the insurance check well that's why we're here tonight we don't we prefer not to be here talking about this tonight the reason we're here is because there's been an indefinite amount of time we've got to do something different we can't wait anymore they've been numerous again the citizens of our city that live there it's not fair from a safety standpoint you know for the people that live in our city to to first of all for safety second of all for them to look at that every day this is you know that was december 31st today is september 17th so that's why whatever you guys say is what you say i would love to be able to build it back and bring it to the current code and work with inspectors and get it exactly how they want it i mean obviously i can't do it any other way i just had i don't have four hundred thousand dollars to go do it i'm dependent on on the insurance funds to pay for the damage i i have a question about that i'm an insurance myself what's the issue well i mean yeah with the homeowners they've only got a certain amount of time before they can hit where they can as i understand it was any certain steak farm as i understand it from all i've been through state farm this is outside the realm of what state farm normally insures it's commercial right they they realize that they probably never should have written the policy then they also realized that they should have charged a much larger premium than what they were charged and then it's it's a massive loss i mean

[1:18:17] they're looking at between the fire between the fire damage and the other and the roof collapse they're looking at like 500 000 or more well that has nothing to do with it right insurance contract well what what they what they're looking for they were trying they looked through literally i had to provide every text message i've ever had every email i've ever had the truth about it is like i said insurance agents so right they were on the if they were on the property they owe the they owe it period well except for they're obviously looking for some way not to pay so they want to go to they want to go to the church that they're ready to space that hired the roofers they want to go to the roofer to try to get the roofer to pay again that that happens all the time i've had a situation where somebody a tv repairman was uh fixing something in an insurance house the house burnt down insurance company paid immediately and segregated against the guilty party the firework they've sent engineers in from texas several times they even rented a skyjack thing to lift them up so they could take pictures of the roof they've uh if everything you're saying is accurate you've got a good case for bad faith against them so here's the question and it kind of leads to that let me just this i've learned a lot about insurance companies and if you're in the insurance business those policies are written to the benefit of the insurance company and anything they ask you for you have to provide no matter what it is going back for forever there's not a time left so every time they ask you for something you have to give it to your girlfriend but that's too difficult i i got a question and it's i guess it's a concern to me because i know you're waiting on any more insurance money in order for you to fix the problems but what i'm hearing is is that i mean you own the building and it was a tenant of yours that did something to your building right that messed it up on the domino side and then it was a

[1:20:20] tenant of your building that did something and didn't cut the whole that fixed the roof that he shouldn't have been fixing and fixed on his so if i was insurance company i don't know that i'd be covering that because that's as that's a legal civil issue between you you don't have a choice but it's you don't have a choice the if the dwelling is insured and you're on it you're on it it doesn't matter what alderman gallagher means when he says own it he means that you have a valid insurance contract on the property regardless of what you do regardless here's the deal with the commercial that's the question which is on commercial property the tenants it's normally like tripling it the tenant is responsible for everything inside their build out their response they put their better hoods in they put their fire suppression systems in they've even like for the donald's even put their own hvac system in because it had to meet their requirements so they did that years before before it started falling in i mean they're they're okay it started sagging after you know years later and then when we went to inspect white the roof started sagging it was because their mechanical uh contractors had cut the x's out of the trusses to put their mechanical systems in i mean it's just you don't do that right yeah i understand the insurance agreement that's between you and your insurance carrier that really is not relevant to the discussion right the only thing that's relevant to it is you using that as a creps to the board to say that you've not had enough time i can tell you that in an insurance policy nine months is adequate time to settle a claim like that what that would tell me i'm not getting into your business i'm just saying what that would tell me as an insurance professional is there some something going on with your insurance contract with your insurer there's something there's something that's they feel like that maybe you haven't done what you're supposed to do or you feel like they haven't done it but really that has nothing to do with it other than to say that nine months is not the norm that's not a normal

[1:22:22] situation but the city can't wait any longer your relationship with your insurance company really is not relevant to the discussion tonight uh what is relevant is that we've been patient we've waited for a long time for something to be done with the building it hasn't been done it's unsafe for our city and we have a fire marshal that's uh saying such and so at this point you know we're going to end the discussion and we're going to ask the board what they would like to do mr maryland we adopt the resolution the airport baltimore city south they can authorize the cleaning of private property making provision for collection pursuant to section mississippi code section 21-19-11 for the fallen properties 1494 custer drive 78 85 highway 51 north 78.87 highway 51 floors 7895 highway 51 north 7901 highway 51 north and 7905 highway 51 north as presented on this date second we have a motion bomber in brook second walderman flores is there any other discussion among the board my question i hear everything that you're saying and i've listened to it and i've heard you say this repeatedly state farm has only paid x amount of dollars my question for you is your attention if they don't give you the full four hundred thousand dollars and they only give you x amount of dollars what is your intention for that building if if they don't pay me they've got to pay me some more than 29 000 but if they don't the only thing that i could do is demo where the roof is falling down and leave the dominoes in where the in where the subway the subway and where the domino's was and having two independent separate buildings instead of being a strip center that would leave this building here and this building here with asphalt in between them and asphalt over here like i said on the tube the where the dominoes is or was and

[1:24:26] where the subway is those both of those buildings like i said i've got an engineer's letter where the domino's was and i've had an engineer look even on the the engineer that the insurance company hired says that where the subway is with structural sound except exactly where that block wall needs to be fixed and pulled some of it down where the uh where the roof caved in financially that would be the only thing i'd be able to do is to say those two buildings that have the masonry walls on each side of them and pass all the rest of them any other discussion among the board hearing mountain roll call yes okay that motion carries thank you sir okay next on the agenda is a resolution to claim private property kelly is there any discussion among the board hearing none is there any discussion among anyone in the audience that has a financial interest in any of these properties hearing we're seeing none roll call please yes yes that motion carries okay next on the agenda's planning agenda nothing else we have nothing there next on the agenda's mayor's report just some quick updates the state line resurfacing there's a culvert that has to be replaced near green brook lake that will occur next week paving will also start like we're talking about earlier what they've been doing for the last 10 days is patching but the actual overlay will occur next week which will bring new asphalt from

[1:26:29] i-55 to tulama and also bring new asphalt on the west end of state line from highway 301 to horne lake road that'll happen next week springfest pavement project which will pave and landscape the the barbecue contest area springfest we've talked about that publicly several times that is underway now they started breaking ground on that today so that project is underway it will be done before the next spring fest the um uh last um our baseball term just a quick update our last baseball tournament snowden uh produced 110 thousand dollars of revenue in one weekend that's a that's a big weekend y'all know that we've had some problems with weather earlier in the year so that was a big shot in the arm to help us with this budget year so that was great news then um someone else had brought this up i filled a lot of calls about the ceasefire project on the southeastern part of our city ceasefire is putting in cable that's going to improve internet service and phone capabilities for television i'm sorry i should say improve faster internet service primarily but they have that project going right now many complaints about the workmanship when they go in they're putting a box in then they're running the cable so there's only there's like an entry point and an exit point that they're digging up and but they've um the work has been poor i had a meeting with uh ceasefire and they came in and admitted that the contractors that they were using were not uh providing service uh according to their standards uh they apologized for that they have now made an effort at my request to go back to the subdivisions where that's happened to put flyers out at the residences with phone numbers of the person that's on site to call to correct any problems so

[1:28:34] if if you have any citizens that contact you or if there's anyone in the audience if you know someone that's unhappy with the way they left your yard um i'm on your team i i disagree with the way they've done it they do as well they're gonna come back and fix it and and we will make sure that they do and that can be as as minor as um you know put come back put sand if they need to put a new side there uh sand it whatever to get growing again uh we want our citizens to be happy they understand that they're going to make it right mr mayor do you have that phone number christy has it christy has a flyer with that that we're also going to eat we're emailing to people to get that they're distributing them so if you need that you can get that from christie to distribute to any citizens that contact you okay follow-up discussion alderman flores brought up concerns over state line road since we're putting a new surface down uh he brought up concerns with it being a truck route and it being damaged again there's no doubt that heavy truck traffic is plays hell on roads there's no doubt um so we've again gone back just to explore options to see if there's anything we can do to save the road um there's really the unfortunate news is there's really not any way you can't discriminate a particular company even though one company we have a large trucking outfit that's just across the tennessee line they they use state line frequently but we also have major major industrial developments that are businesses that need uh trucking to and from on airways and also along state line so the only way that you could restrict that is to change it from not being a truck route and you know the bad news is there's really nothing else that we can do we talked to chief moore uh we've uh quizzed him with his knowledge uh whitney um also reaching out you know to other trucking companies and to see what all that we can do and the bottom line is there's just nothing that we can do unless we don't we change it from being a truck around and anyway that's the update i'm sorry i

[1:30:36] don't know what else to do if y'all know any other information that i don't know please bring that to us but we have done our due diligence so we feel like that that it's kind of a situation where you know even though it's bad that the roads get destroyed it's a good thing that you have industry in your city and you know they have to be able to have truck traffic they've got to be able to get there and the the unfortunate part of that is it is you know it's tough on the road we have received a bid on the city hall roof as you all know that we got a bid back in the summer that we didn't feel comfortable with we rejected the city hall renovation bid because it was a bit at that time with the roof uh and the um the building renovations all done together uh we came back uh urban art came to us we split that re-bid it so we do have a a bid number now that's 340 000 less so the decision to separate them was a good thing the good numbers and what i'm asking united to accept this bid it's the recommendation of urban art that we accept the bid and the uh the company is norman's roofing uh out of meridian the bid amount is 792 08.87 and like i said that's 340 000 less than the roofing component was in the in the other bid so it's my recommendation uh that we accept this bit i'll make that illusion okay we have a motion gallagher is there a second second second automatic pain is there any discussion did not submit a complete bid okay any discussion i know we've talked about this a lot hearing none royal call autumn yes kelly yes yes yes audrey wheeler thank you so much

[1:32:39] yes okay that motion carries um the snow pedestrian project it will put sidewalks throughout snow grove park connecting the tennis center it'll also put sidewalks on snowden lane which will get pedestrians off of snow and lane coming from concerts that'll make the park much much safer that project was a mpo project we received federal money to help us with that that project will also start this week all right last thing and i'm gonna just no i'm gonna pass i'm not no i'm not gonna discuss it tonight hang on let me let me tell my list real quick okay i think that's all i have this evening next on the agenda is our citizens agenda and we have a person named terry rowland who's uh signed up to speak mr rowland if you would please come forward answer from terry roland no 10 to 10. i have a customer that i rented a building to in south haven on southeast street and he went to get his business permit and when he went to get the permit the fire marshal and the bill inspector said we had to do some things and i've got the list of things that we're supposed to do and i agree on most of them except for and what we put a sprinkler system in and we built it when we mr murphy built it for me back in 87 at the time that was everything was too cold and so that's really what we're here about now i've got mr murray here to explain some things to you glad y'all hear us yes sir uh you all know about the south bay i mean the state line quarter and how we're getting some buildings that are empty and how we need to keep some people here so we had a couple of

[1:34:42] proposals that we not go against the city fire codes or anything like that but where i think everybody'd be happy but it was right on the board we got old marvin johnson to write a letter which i think you've got here and uh when it was built is under the southern standard building code everything was done recording called inspected by the city now we've adopted the icc international code to 2012 and even the international code states that it's a non-conforming building of course and section 508.4 says that the the mixture s1 and m1 which debating back and forth whether or not it's you know retail or reptile whatever and it says it's still not required to be sprinkled that's how we read it that's how the architect reads it but we do have a couple proposals that i think the city would be uh okay with uh we can add a tenant separation which uh the code 508.4 states that separating the offices and all up front from actually where all the warehouse stuff is that's one way and then we can remove on the lean-to side which would be the south side of the building we can remove two of the bays and that would take the building down to where it's in the 8 000 range less than 8 000 square feet and be in compliance in mr johnson's letter he had stated about some exit doors and all we had recently installed three more exit doors all over on the north side on the west side on the on the south side also where it is extremely close proximity and it's uh you know and then the third proposal when you start your asphalt company he will sell you all that building

[1:36:45] but we got a couple of like-kind buildings and i counted 22 buildings on the east side of 51 highway today they were built in the same kind of time zone that we were mr roland is on this building and it's hard to get tenants down here where we're at and we own the building no father down y'all on the wrong plus the railroad track it's hard to get tenants and then you get tenants like you know they don't want to pay their bill but you know we have to get what we get we'd rather have somebody in it it's a big vacant and it's bad for our city he's kept the grass cut the building structurally sound it's a pre-engineered building it's a type 2 of construction there's a little of any wood in there that could burn they do have clothes and other like the dollar general 88 51 51 and 86.50 the family dollar store both of those are about the same kind of size and they both have the same kind of products yet neither one of those are sprinkled and it just was allowed back in the southern building code it's not allowed now if you know because of the local ordinance and because of the icc 2012 importance and we just asked that the city think about our state line dilemma and take it under consideration that we would not have to sprinkle it and louis springfield said no it has to be then we reduce the size under 8 000 feet by taking those two two bays off it's just a length of now so i got to do is take the top sheets off and the structure still bolts right to the side of it so it's not it's not an issue but if that's concerned this was previously a auto place and they had uh sandblaster and some paint stuff all that stuff's gone yeah yeah yeah we'll be in the same process since we can slow down and get it out there and so we want the city to be safe

[1:38:47] i think mr rowland does an excellent job on policing the city and so you know i don't want any fires and i don't think you have to if you left it just like this i don't think it'd be an issue you know i think he's got some other things done uh i don't know about the ada and all that but that's we're bringing all that code got a knox box on the front of it everything that requested except for the sprinklers we've done and and what mark johnson said we've done and so that's we're not trying to deny the responsibility we're just trying to live in a place that's kind of hard to rent and we just ask leniency toward that whatever you got in here yeah i appreciate that and um i was briefed on the issue and the important thing i'd like for tim rowland to come up and because i want to hear like what his thoughts on on your proposal we we certainly are sensitive i've already before you said it tonight i've said the same thing to my fire chief and our fire marshal that um we want to be conscientious of buildings that are vacant you know we don't want to make it a situation where it's difficult to fill buildings you know in our older part of our city our original business district that's important to us so i agree with you 100 what you said there um the other thing i do want to point out that that with the ordinance um you know it would be the board's decision to make any variance of the ordinance we have the ordinance there uh for two reasons really one reason but two parts it's for safety obviously obviously you know you're experiencing builder you know that building codes are changed for safety you know when you when you have knowledge of how you can save lives you can't go back and not know what you know you know and so if you know that a building is safer and you have statistics to back it up where it saves lives that's why codes are changed so we do that to save the people that with the employees the people that be frequenting the building as customers vendors whoever else would be in the building but also for our current that's

[1:40:50] something that a lot of times people don't think about we're asking our firemen when there is a fire they're going in i mean they are going in and so you're when you don't have a building sprinkler when it gets to a certain size it becomes a greater risk to our fire going and going in the building so that's why the ordinance is what it is and that's why size is an issue um but again i'm sensitive to what you're saying i certainly don't want to you know hurt any business owner that's trying to get an occupancy but uh tim if you will speak on what and if y'all can like share exactly what you're talking about about taking the footage down uh that will be helpful i'm assuming which timeline is it back to the 7 500 square foot that would put it back underneath the 8 000 square foot which is required by the ordinance but however when i was there as you all can see i believe in the pictures i don't think more than happy to um that one right there that was just part of the storage uh and this was on the day that they were moving in me and mr rowland actually conversed about this for since around may june july august september before i finally came to the conclusion

[1:42:53] on multiple occasions after that there was still storage as such they still had not put any kind of walk spaces in between it it was still stacked up in boxes you know menu had talked about maybe not going no more than too high they were still taking them all the way to the scene so my big thing was i kept showing up and they weren't even reducing it down like we had talked about and for that type of storage i didn't see any other means to go by button i haven't talked to mr papadopoulos but i thought he was going to be here tonight [Music] so that's something that we're going to need to discuss with him you know well specifically what you're talking about about talk to us about what you're talking about doing to get it under eight thousand feet and then i'd like to know is that a safe alternative well he has the take these two days let me put x on it i don't know sure what he's talking about is where the building right now is about 70 90. it's 50 by 150 you know 7 500 there yeah 7 500 and 2500. oh thank you for the leading two i think the link to is it ended up like 99 square feet what he's talking about is removing this part of the building which is about 2500 square feet and reducing the footprint for the whole building down to 7 500. so it would actually happen under the 8 000 square foot requirement we're talking about removing it from the

[1:44:55] bill not like boarding it off with the fire he's talking about removing it okay because from what i understand and all by the city ordinance and mr murphy you can attest to this better our requirement for a firewall is a basically a concrete foundation with a cinder block concrete field all the way through the roof which would probably be more expensive that's a four hour walk right you know no penetrations right but you can get a tent of separation by doing a six inch stud wall with two layers of five hundred we don't accept that though as a separation for this if you notice on the ordinance i don't have a copy of the ordinance but it's exceptional it's on the website right here for the purpose of this section only approved four-hour rated firewall separating buildings and occupancy specified in the above section which is a firewall and it even states here the definition but i thought he was that's what i'm asking are you talking about putting a firewall up or removing it of tense separation and what i do every day is i can go up with two layers and five eighths on both sides fire caulking at the top and that that is a fire separation wall not a firewall hospital and nobody's doubting that you do it i mean obviously that's where the terminology sometimes should spread the right that's what i say with everybody on the island this is the old

[1:46:57] what we do in firewall icc code says it does not right here it says in yours it says uh mercantile all buildings eight thousand feet and square it should be sprinkled but major renovated buildings this doesn't work the existing structure due to change doesn't work yes everything in there the whole thing that brought this about to start with is this building as you said while ago the last we had listed as was a business occupancy okay that was whenever the scale company was in there there's been one sense of scale the automotive uh repair garage that was in there never pulled a right i don't understand that license or anything with the city or they would have fallen under this s1 also the fact that it's changing from a b occupants to an s1 and if you read the ordinance right there it states i'm on the wrong page let me go back to corrupt but if we go back 7500 square feet that was the sum of the that's my question it goes to 700 does it matter that takes it out so for four months i mean we've talked about it yeah don't go there yet i've been working with you on this yes sir you have hi but whenever it finally comes down to i know i finally have to get you to get my people to go back and pull a permit again when they've already done it once so we could get this ball rolling so i could come meet with y'all that's where it all comes down to well we're just and again this board i'm not speaking for the board i'm just saying the ordinances are there for there's two things if if you want to talk to the board and say i don't agree with the ordinance that's another thing that they can do something about but

[1:48:59] today and what tim's job is as the fire marshal is to enforce the ordinance as it is on the books but i think that from what um you know from what uh gary's saying you know if you're removing that's what we're talking about you're bringing the building back where it qualifies for our ordinance to not be sprinkled is that not correct tim yes sir so i don't know what i mean if that's what you want to do i think we can make this pretty quick i'm i'm in the middle here i understand i still think there's a fire issue i still think tim i terry has to make those people give us clear lanes in the letter from marvin johnson that i'm going to have to give us clear lanes so they can fight a fire so they get those new exits right here yeah i'm not splitting hairs here i'm just trying to say i don't disagree he's got a big fire issue on his hand it'd be tough for them to fight and i think the developments in both of them and if we take the roof off we're under 8 000 feet there's still a fire issue so that's well we appreciate that i'm sure he as a as a property owner you know you have a liability too if it's not right about a fire occurs and there's loss of life or damage you know you have some liability there so i appreciate your interest in that too i think we got the same interest he need to do as far as getting his permanent challenges needs to work on getting the merchandise inside the building down and separated and all that same thing i've said from the get-go all right okay thank you appreciate it okay is there anyone else that would like to speak on the citizens agenda seeing none i will move on uh next on the gen is a personnel doctor mr mayor i know that we approve the personnel documents presented on this date second we have motion byron brooks second

[1:51:02] bottom of flores is there any discussion yes that motion carries next on the agenda is our city attorney's legal update mr nick mayweather again i'll be quick um first item is just off uh putting this in the minutes uh certificate uh thomas mastin for court or certificate of attendance for a court clerk's conference 121 23 12 if you're interrupting the minute so that will be entered for the minutes mr code 21 23 12 requires that no action just put in the minutes uh next is entering to the minute it's a contract for 385 state line road um as you know that's under contract for sale it's been previously approved it's been signed by the mayor so tonight that country will be officially entered into the minutes and reflected in the mid tonight's minutes and then finally we have uh the dip grant from mda application due by this friday or in lspn extension for the medline project tonight we have two out of two agreements for authorization for the mayor to sign one is the mou for the our memorandum agreement between medline and the city for the dip grant we're still working with uh medal i mean about this hotline this afternoon i'm at this juncture there's still some questions as far as the time length for time for medline to provide to provide how to provide deployment jobs uh between nba and medline they're working through that but tonight since we are up against the deadline i'll get authorization for the mayor decide to uh sign the uh agreement in substantially final form uh with any vital revisions that's been required by mda and approved by the mayor and city attorney so moved second you got a motion model from flora second model brooks any discussion hearing none roll call

[1:53:06] yes welcome to kelly yes yes yes that motion carries and then the next agreement is with medline two it's for the site inspection um uh visit the site inspection agreement and authorization for the mayor to sign that as well and that will be with medline they agreed to those terms as well also with under the same caveat if any corrections or substantially final form with any uh revisions as required by mda so thank you got a motion bottom of gallagher second my arm and hoots is there any discussion hearing none roll call yes yes that motion carries okay next on the agenda is our utility bill adjustment document mr ray remove we approve the utility utility bill adjustment dock and that's presented on the statement second we've got a motion balance painting second bottom and kelly is there any discussion hearing none we're all calling margaret yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda are two claims dockets is our motion to prove document one mr mayor i move we approve docket uh number one in the amount of two million one hundred and three thousand one hundred eighty four dollars and forty five cents including demand tax second that motion baller pain second bottom and hoots is there any discussion very nun roll call yes that motion carries doctor two mr mayor move we approved docket number two in the amount of three hundred and thirteen three hundred thirteen thousand six hundred forty three dollars and seventy is there any discussion on doctor 2

[1:55:11] hearing none roll call please yes yes yes yes that motion carries next on the agenda is uh to determine the need for executive session i'll make that move here we've got a motion monitor gallagher second modem in brooks all bears say i alright the opposed say no eyes have it motion carries a need this evening is potential claims and litigation against public works parks and police and then personnel discussions with parks and also a city-wide personnel discussion and then also an economic development discussion so is there now a motion to declare executive sessions we have a motion by alderman payne second ballerina kelly all in favor say aye aye all opposed say no pipes have it motion carries the mayor board will now enter executive session

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=v5VgcRQWtLQ