07/06/2017

[0:00:00] now comments meeting to order um please stand honorable calgary would you lead us and pray by the pledge of allegiance led by alderman heavenly father lord we come to you today and lord we ask you for your wisdom lord uh we thank you that all good things come from you lord and we just pray that you would be in each and every decision that we make today in your name we pray amen i pledge allegiance to the flag 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 we'll get started today i'm not going to turn the mic on this mainly this meeting today is as i've mentioned is uh for a discussion between me and the board we will this will not replace a public budget hearing that will occur in august so just mainly instead of in the past you know we've done committee meetings state law has changed our least interpretation of state law has changed to where even if we have a committee meeting it's still posted as a public meeting so if we're going to go through all those steps we may all just get in the same room and talk about it so what i've prepared everyone is what i've been working on i let everyone know that that i started working on this immediately after may the second and started meeting with department heads asking for budget cuts and uh things to be the term i use creative we got to do some things differently you know that one thing was obviously the tourism tax is gone the part of that that was restaurant generated was about 1.6 million a year and that's gone okay so we're not going to let bad decisions by some of our legislators determine what we do in the city of south haven mississippi and we're going to move forward with things that are important for our quality of life

[0:02:03] and we've got to find a way to replace that money do not mistake what you've read in the media this meeting is not about penny for your parks this is a overall big picture city city vision meeting and uh just one component of it but it does it is a significant issue since it's 1.6 million dollars there's other things that that i'm recommending changes on and this is basically you know my four years of uh doing the day-to-day operations of the city these are things that i've noticed that are that can be done better and i'm recommending that we make a change and do them i want to commend a lot of these people were on the previous board i want to commend you for the task that we had in 2013 our biggest house was coming in and uh and proven again that the finances were right you know that's what the people of south hay were concerned about we were cautious you know we we moved slowly you know even though we accomplished many things we moved very deliberately just to make sure that we did things that you know that showed the people that the transparency and that the money is right we improved the fund balance drastically the fund balance was like 2.2 million in 2013 now after the last we don't have the official audit yet but we're right at 7 million now so we've we've done a tremendous job financially for the city and we will continue to do that but there's other things that we've got to address and like i said that i witnessed over the last four years that need to change and i'm going to start with that and um at any time board stop me if you have questions and then when i get done with this list i want to i want every one of you to speak and just talk for a minute about your goals and what you think about this and what what things that uh that you think are important for the city this meeting is not open to it's not open for public discussion for anyone in the audience there will be no one that speaks in the audience this is a discussion among the mayor board today so i'll start one of my number one priorities and one

[0:04:05] thing's one of the biggest things that i've seen in the last four years that again i'm not being critical i'm just stating the facts we're behind on our streets we've done a poor job in the past with maintaining our streets uh we've neglected that our streets are in horrendous condition we have a we've fought hard the last four years we've done more than ever in the history of the city it's still not enough in the 1990s and 2000s as everyone knows there was a tremendous amount of residential development that happened in south haven and there was no planning for how we're going to maintain those streets all those streaks now are due they need to be asphalt overlay and and they're all coming due at one time and it's a problem and i'm not crying i'm not here to crown your shoulder today i'm just telling you facts okay we allocated a million dollars a year uh three years ago we changed the very vague street ditch fund that i learned was the catch-all for everything if someone didn't have enough money they just went to straight ditch you know and that's not how a budget should be operated it should be specific it should be disciplined and so we changed that and made that we changed that into four line items drainage improvement drainage maintenance street maintenance and street improvement so uh for street improvement alone we've allocated a million dollars over the last three years and that's more than ever in the city's history but that's still not enough so my first recommendation is we've got to get our streets in better condition we've got to find a way to change uh that street improvement line from 1 million a year to at least 1.5 million a year mr dan cordell is in the audience if you have any questions he can answer questions i am going to turn this on he can answer questions but basically when we did the citywide payment management analysis we realize that our annual to stay on track to where we touch all 1100 streets every seven years in the city we need about a million and a half a year in that budget all right so we're already behind and then his recommendation to catch us up

[0:06:07] was to put for five years to put 2.4 million a year in a budget we can't do that we cannot find 2.4 million to do that but we can at least take a step in the right direction and go ahead and get the annual amount where it needs to be so my recommendation is to put the annual budget amount for streets up to 1.5 that's my number one thing all right the second thing and i want to say this loudly i do want everyone to hear this um i know when i got into public service that you know that you're going to hear all kinds of opinions you don't have to be to know anything about a topic to have an opinion i've learned and i've learned that there were some statements made recently that this board doesn't care anything about the pay of their employees and i just want everyone to know that's the most ridiculously false statement ever made in this city every year this board when we did the budget committee meetings y'all know that we talked about every year we reviewed pay scales to make sure our employees are paid fairly and so it's not something that we wake up one day after an election and say oh crap you know we gotta we gotta give people raised you know that's not how this happens every year we talk about this and we've tried and tried to to catch up on things that were neglected in the past we've come a long way in four years but every year we try you know to give raises to make sure that all our people are paid fairly and this year it's time to make an adjustment so my second goal is to give employee raises and also to look at some situations where uh the city of south haven was operated like a political government not like a business in 2013 when people ask me how are you going to run the city i said well i'm going to run it like a business i'm going to run what i know you know and what i know in a business is that you pay people fairly by what they do so if two people are doing basically the same thing managing the same number of people in two different departments and one's making 25 more than the other that's not how that doesn't work you've

[0:08:11] got to have you've got to have um comparable pay scales for all positions and it's not a big problem chris and i have gone through it it's it's a list of maybe you know four or five positions that we realize that we have some people that are underpaid i mean they're doing the same or more than someone else in another department and they're making significantly less money and that's not how business operates and i'm recommending that we fix that once and for all this budget year i'll get into that the details of that later so the two things infrastructure improvement street improvement employee pay raises the other thing is our quality of life and this message is for anyone including steve hopkins and ashley henley if you don't understand that your quality of life affects everything in your city it starts with that if people do not want to live in your city the rest of it does not matter and if you don't understand the economic value of adding parks and quality of life then you need to go find something else to do and we are going to continue with our quality of life we're going to develop our parks i am a pro parks guy i told everyone during both elections if you want to know who darren musselwhite is i am a pro parks guy and i will continue to be and we are not going to start to stop advancing our parks program because of ridiculous decisions by our own south haven legislators so i've got that out there now let's get on to some positive stuff how do we get there you know i told you that we lost about 1.6 million i'm asking you for another half a million dollars in street improvement how do we get there i had meetings with every department head i asked every department head to bring me at least a seven percent budget cut in their department uh i met with every department head all ten departments we went line by line we didn't talk in general terms we went line by line on every budget line item they did a fantastic job of coming in and having a realistic budget and making the cuts so

[0:10:15] you'll see on your page that we have one point one million six hundred and twenty one thousand seven hundred forty five dollars of budget cuts in each department total total yeah right and then if you look back up to the okay the other um when you get when you see the department heads on your sheet when you go above that you get into the things that the proposals that i'm making are things that will be that will remove line items so it'll save us money in our annual budget some of these will be funded by a bond that i'm going to get into in a minute but basically we've had we've been allocating 200 000 a year to modernize our intersections all of our intersections on highway 51 and state line they're the old span wire without pedestrian options we've been allocating 200 000 a year which gives us one intersection that's that's about what it costs so what i'm recommending is that we we have uh four left on highway 51. that's rasco brookhaven uh state line our main street in 51 and then door no we got dorchester already custer that's right so those four right there we've been allocating 200 000 a year what i'm recommending is that we move that out of the annual budget into a bond knock those out with the bond money that way it frees up 200 000 a year in our operating budget the other thing is to um we added a 275 000 beautification budget three years ago uh whitney cook and i looked at things we we talked about doing the decorative city entrance signs we want the big signs on interstate 55 when you come in on north and southbound lanes to show that you're in the greatest city in mississippi so we allocated 275 there was also talk

[0:12:18] about moving the farmers market down here to northwest drive we can get by with less money than that we can cut that we think a hundred thousand dollars will help us get the big signs on the interstate uh but some of the other stuff we can cut out for now so that's mine and whitney's way of saying we're gonna find 175 000 so we want to cut that beautification line from 275 to 100 that frees up 175 000. drainage maintenance looking at realistic numbers we can cut that these are 902 items for people that don't know 902 are items that affect the entire city they're not really department specific they're things that require my oversight daily so all these 902 items are the ones that i recommend cutting so if we cut drainage maintenance to 125 that saves us 75 000. yes what all does that cover though drainage maintenance is your stuff like uh drainage maintenance is not your new project you know things that mr cordell oversees those are major drainage projects drainage maintenance would be like you have a you know your city drainage system on your streets that collapses or it's not functioning properly or needs needs a bigger culvert under the street little things like that that are routine throughout the year so what do we have at 200 yeah we realize we can drop that to 125 but again drainage improvement are the big projects like you're having flooding problems where you've got to go in and do a major project drainage maintenance is your day-to-day stuff you know with your streets you know the drainage underneath your streets next thing on the list is street maintenance the thing the same thing the difference and that's a great question alderman hale the the difference in street maintenance and street improvement street maintenance is potholes it's things like that potholes you know cracks and sidewalks things like that street improvement is asphalt overlays resurfacing seal coating striping all things like that so those

[0:14:20] are the differences but we can cut the street maintenance down to 125 also and cut another 75 there the general right-of-way contract i know these guys that were here last year we certainly talked about this enough didn't we all of our you know cutting the grad this is cutting the grass on our roads and so we divided our contracts up three ways general right-of-way is just bush hawking those are your streets that are not your high-profile areas that's like you know just going down your long roads like church road where there's not a lot of residential around it's just bush hawk then we have what's called manicured right-of-ways are like get well like northwest drive things like that and that's what blc is manicuring for us they're they're cutting that once a week instead of once every two weeks um my recommendation is to leave the blc contract alone because they do other things they're doing you know landscaping all the flowers the mulching detailed things like that not touch that i'm talking about bringing back the general right-of-way cuts back in-house and doing that in in the city it is real new right now and again i believe we can do it better number one i'm going to be real honest you know we've had to stay on this company bradley's not here today but we've had to stay on them i'm tired of asking people to do their job i want to do the job i want to bring them back in-house we're going to need six employees and we're going to need some bush hog equipment to do it i can do it better i can make the city look better and that's what i want to do the other thing is is mdot and and before i say this don't misunderstand i'm not knocking them dot but who i am knocking is the budget decisions in jackson mississippi that do not fund mdot properly we cut there's m-dot right-of-ways in the city of southaven interstate 55 goodman road and highway 51 are all mdot right-of-ways they cut them twice a year

[0:16:22] list a minion they cut the grass twice a year whitney do we allow homes in south haven to cut their grass twice a year absolutely do we have any recourse with them could we sure they say we'll cut it well not besides that we don't you know find them like anybody else no we can't find a state agency you know any creative ways i don't think you want to find anything yeah and again i'm not trying to i'm not trying to get sideways with them because then it does a lot we can do that sideways but they you know the problem is if it was if it was in the reverse they'd have you know state agencies and they would have no problem tell us what to do we can look into that i just don't know i don't be fine and i was kind of you know said tongue-in-cheek my point is what recourse we have yeah i'll look into that but the bottom line is i'm tired of begging people to do their job and cutting the grounds twice a year is not acceptable so if we bring this back in house we can cut that they don't care if you cut it they just i mean if you if you complain about the grass they'll say well then cut it yeah do they give us a number that they'll refund twice a year no i mean if money-wise i doubt that i'm not confirmed that but i doubt that but again i don't want to pick a fight with mdot bottom line is i'm determined that south haven is going to be the best city in the state of mississippi and if we're going to be the best when you leave here go get on the interstate and just just pretend like you're from somewhere else all right pretend like you've never been here and ride up to shelby drive come down from tennessee and when you enter when you cross the line i want you just to look at the interstate and you tell me if that's what you want your city to be and it's not what i want my city to be so if we bring this back in house we can cut the interstates we can cut highway 51 we can cut goodman road as many times as we want to cut it and we can make it look like it should look so anyway that's um so that would save us 200 removing real knee autumn and brooks would save us 204 000 a year it would

[0:18:25] take us 275 with six additional labors to do that so i know it's a little bit more money but it gives us food i don't get initially yeah but it's well i mean annually it will be two because because it's constants two or four now but we're not getting the kind of service we want nor are we getting the mdot right aways cut crew second brothers have to go behind them because they're not doing their job well i'm gonna make a real long story short he's not the only one i've been going behind for four years and again i'm tired of asking people to do their job you're going to do your job in south america and get replaced it's that simple quick question do we know how much the equipment's going to cost and the yearly upkeep maintenance 450 000. and that's for an initial for the just and then we're going to have to budget and upkeep and replacement and correct and stuff like that right but initially that's uh and i'll get to that a little bit but that initial capital outlay is in the capital improvement plan that will go but from an annual operating budget uh it would replace 204 000 with 275. and that includes includes our purrs and the insurance and that's correct that's in that total bottom line okay and then moving down facilities management that's all of our city hall that's all of our fire stations our public works building all of our facilities now to maintain those we recommend cutting that budget the budget last year was 1 million 250 000 i believe that adding a maintenance technician will help us cut that we're paying i mean it's simple things like you know you have a problem with a toilet i mean just simple things like that we're hiring a plumber to come do that i mean if we have a maintenance person they can knock out a lot of small stuff and save us a lot of money so anyway we i believe we can cut that budget from 1 million 250 down to 1.1 a year so you're talking like a handyman basically there was light bulbs and instead of toilet and you can grow wholesaling paint paint packs a lot of the hvac

[0:20:27] stuff that's expensive you know but yeah anytime you make kind of service call there's going to be a there's going to be a flat fee that you start with so anytime they just come out there alone we're getting hit with a fee even if nothing you know it's a simple simple solution no doubt exactly so anyway we can cut that budget by hiring a maintenance person and if you look back at the top i took it i'm going to go through this and i'll go back to the top and show you what what's going to cost us in capital isla but just minor things obviously we don't need we have got new election equipment last year we're good there we don't need that anymore we cut that hold that thought on charitable contributions that's going to take us a little bit of time let me move back up to the top so the things i just told you on the 902 cuts we had to find these are things that we had to find funds for obviously the capital improvement debt service which i'll come i we'll come back to that also but adding the uh runaway maintenance personnel that's in there another thing is i mentioned to you dropping the budget for drainage maintenance we believe that uh we can save money by hiring two people as you all know now we're paying contractors to do all the drainage maintenance work so like we have to have i just visualize this like a common example if you have a gutter that's cracked they have to come in and reform that we're hiring that out to try firmer right now if you have we believe if you have two people on staff here we can knock out at least 10 percent of our drainage work ourselves without having to hire that out and save us money i told you about the maintenance technician we need another building inspector whitney we do as construction has started again heavily we're starting to see many more new

[0:22:28] homes built we have no one that does electrical we got to have an electrical inspector and then you all know that we applied for the grant to uh get six new police officers um we're gonna have paid 40 of that so that's where the 137 000 is but i'm recommending that we hire six new police officers with that grant and with that grant is that that grab what's the length it's four years three years and then we also accounted for you gotta expect in 2017 uh even though we've had a good loss ratio everybody not we've had a good loss ratio so far on health insurance but you got to expect some type of rate increase there so we went ahead and allocated about 53 000 expecting a health insurance increase but with doing all those things and then getting down with all these cuts and then if you look down at the bottom revenue increases let's talk about that for a minute our ambulance billing is up we made some decisions entering a contract with blue cross blue shield to help us collect bad debt on ambulance expense that is showing to improve revenues we expect that's estimated to be about 230 000 higher our property lien revenues are expected to be a little bit higher 50 000 as you all know we just added the tennis center that is absolutely rocking and rolling we expect a very very conservative profit of 200 000 for tennis property tax uh with assessment the most recent information indicates we have about 300 000 more we had last year and sales tax don't believe all the excuse my language the bull crap you heard during the campaign sales taxes are increasing in south dakota you know there's no doubt that boxes are closing you know with internet sales it's a fact throughout the country south haven is still thriving uh in my position we work on bottom line numbers

[0:24:29] bottom line numbers say sales tax revenue is increasing so tennis is going to make some money i mean who thought the building parks a nice facility and getting tournaments would actually bring the ring right now walderman brooks that's a great question i can i can answer that for you what that is it's people that um have the mentality that they want to crunch a dime and save a dime and while they're well they're so focused on that dime there's a dollar just passing on by and going to nashville going to atlanta you know going to oxford now all these things so if we're going to operate our city like a business you've got to understand opportunity cost you can't let a dollar go by when you're so focused on that dime like our tea party radicals are they're so focused on how you spend a dime in the city you spend a dime well yeah i spent a dime to make a dollar and i'll tell you one thing as long as i'm sitting in this chair we're gonna make it we're not worried about that dime as much as we are that dollar because every dollar we make puts a less burden on our taxpayers and improves our quality of life in this city so that's a great question alderman brooks thank you for asking that of course we believe that uh our state of that revenue is coming from outside the city as well that's another great point you know we've already been told by tennis experts that they currently play in mobile alabama they play in oxford uh they play in tupelo they plow throughout the state they they have looked at our courts and they say that they're as nice as any court they've ever been on they love everything about it and they expect much bigger things to happen so you can bet that 200 000 i'll be back to report to you i promise you i will be very very loud and obnoxious about tennis this year but you can bet that 200 000 is a very low estimate and again i didn't know when i took the job that i would be a business and economics professor but i realized that i am so i promised to do a good job of that this year so i've shown you where the revenue increases are i've showed you where the

[0:26:30] cuts so if you if you look at the cuts and the revenue increases this is not a final version obviously there's still a few more tweaks that have to be done fire and police holiday pay is not based on a the normal 40-hour week schedule so there's going to be a little bit of adjustment to that given the pay raises raise i will i mean let me get into that there's one other or let me okay i'll go ahead and let me go ahead and go into that okay back to the pay raises basically this 883 788 where that number comes from that's based on starting the raise on january 1. my recommendation is to give a fifteen hundred dollar raise to every person in the city that makes over seventy thousand dollars for any person that makes what those are it's 1500 a year for employees that make 70 000 a year and above my recommendation is to give a twenty two hundred dollar raise for every employee under seventy thousand a year and then none of this applies to the mayor to the board to the city administrator to court appointees and any new hires over 70k what that amounts to crunching the numbers in the city of south haven the highest paid employee besides the ones i just named it amounts to a 1.5 pay increase for that person the lowest paid person in the city it amounts to a 9.6 increase the average employee in the city of south haven that's a 4.7 percent increase and again that the 883 number also includes a few merit pay raises like i mentioned earlier

[0:28:33] some pay scales that have gotten skewed among departments that's 71 that includes 71 000 of adjustments and i'm not going to go into that just for not confidentiality but this is not the proper place to to name specific employees but we'll we'll do that in executive session or 101. it's not many it's just a handful of people some of these raises obvious obviously if we're given the raise it applies to fire and police also there was a huge myth going around during this past election year that the city doesn't care about our police department and fire department that we don't pay them fairly and i'm here to remind you again that that's very not only inaccurate that's a false statement and over 76 percent of positions in our southland police department they're the highest paid in the state of mississippi before this raise and i'll be the first to tell you that i want to pay them more and we have 10 departments obviously they're extremely important we've got an entire city operation to deal with i have 10 departments i've got to make sure run effectively but i'm always looking for any way to give our fire police more money but just to again dispel that false statement even before this raise our police department is the highest paid department in 76 of the positions statewide so with this raise it's going to even make them better and where i know you all support this i'm committed to making sure our firearm police are the highest paid so anyway enough said about that okay and then back back let's go back to the front page again um i did mention

[0:30:38] and alderman hale did a great job recently uh when we talked about parks when all the discussion was going on with penny pure parks there was another another myth another false statement that was going on that all the city cares about snow and grove park you know again that's your radical rights they're saying that that's a false statement but again i'll put my economics professor hat on again we're going to do the things you can't put snowden grove park on highway 51. number one there's no place to put it okay the land was donated to the city that's why it's where it is but simple real estate and economics will tell you that consumers go and businesses go where the consumers are and right now the get well corridor that's the area that's in most demand i don't determine that nobody on this board determines that i don't go out to a business and say yeah you can come to southampton but you have to be right here at goodman and be right here at government yeah well you know that's just not how business works okay the businesses are going to come where the customers are and simple economics tells you that snowden grove park has been a tremendous success when a dollar is made at snowden grove park that money as you all know goes back into the general fund that can be spent for every citizen in the city regardless of where you live that does not mean that we're not going to take care of our other parks because we do but snowden grove park subsidizes all of our other parks in the city that's a fact um but the reason i tell you all that is to say my ears rope alderman hail i know that your ears roping about the neighborhood parks i don't know exactly what some are saying but um the only thing i know like let's use brookhaven park for an example um it has enough room for a little walking there's a little walk-in trail right there but there's not a whole lot of real estate right there for the park i don't know exactly what when you say you want to improve the neighborhood park i don't know exactly what you're talking about putting there other than improving what's already there

[0:32:40] but we can improve the playground equipment we can make make sure it's the best and the safest playground equipment make sure it's well kept their trash cans there but anyway we're recommending adding 75 000 a year to our budget for a neighbor just specifically for neighborhood parks and that's to replace the playground equipment you know make sure that things that are in disrepair get corrected but do you know i mean what else what am i missing what else can i do with brookhaven let me just throw a few out there let's talk about brookhaven park let's talk about the park at um ross point let's talk about southern pines park let's talk about plum point alderman honor and paint uh we just put new playground equipment and everything new there two years ago at plum point and we can do that and that's what this budget line will do it'll make sure that all our neighborhood parks stay in great condition and we talked about the amounts uh wes brown's with us today we talked about how much we need we believe that now ross point may be a little bit different there is a long walking trail there that eventually will need to be repaved that may be something that is a little more than this but as far as like maintaining the playground equipment you know picnic tables things like that with 75 000 a year we can do that i just want to interject for one second and say that the citizens can help us too because at the ross point farm particularly we put a picnic table there somebody came out and burned it then we put a more than one then we put a concrete table well somebody came out and took a sledge hammer to it and destroyed that so we need some help from the citizens too when you see activity going on at these parks that that's not right please report it to them autumn gallery you're absolutely right one of the questions i was going to ask some of this money that you're allocating to parkside item i know we've had certain not everywhere but certain certain parks especially a lot of neighborhood parks get vandalized

[0:34:42] quite a bit do we have an estimate of how much we're spending out maybe wes can answer this question how much are we spending to have to go in and replace something within within a year of it being brand new i mean do we have kind of a loss uh estimate of what what we're having to replace and what we're having to do well i'll i'll let wes answer the details but i do want to tell you this first uh we are fighting that like you know we've had problems with cherry valley but obviously had the prop in green brook when they burned the main pavilion or the main office building at greenbrook um we're doing all we can i mean as far as cameras we're trying to stop that well that's what i was kind of getting to with it with at some point what are the possibilities of getting some sort of wi-fi or some kind of camera that we're kind of at least maybe not able to monitor all the parts all the time but if we know that something happens maybe we can go back and identify and make someone you know accountable for it certainly would you answer the details what sure uh right now it's probably 40 grand here and that's citywide and that's broken just a replacement broken windows for instance at soccer two or three times a year they broke the window so we spent seven grand in window shutters which line item have we been before of course so we've been handling that out of park maintenance so this is designed correct me if i'm not understand this is designed for the new maintenance of the neighborhood parks only yes okay so what your question we are we're already paying for that type out of park maintenance now unfortunately but but as far as cameras talk about cameras for a second west we have them at cherry valley right now around the grounds of the buildings that have internet access right there there are systems that you can film a light pole that they're motion detected but it requires someone going out there every day to download them right well i mean you wouldn't have to

[0:36:43] download it if there wasn't an event i mean something didn't happen all right mom let's be on the for a week or two like chair valley for one i mean we're only there for football every year parks don't get monitored every day if something were to happen i mean i had reported for three or four days by that the loop's already done and so by the time you went back and downloaded it it'd be three days old could it be someone's job just to kind of drive by i mean we have grassland crews or we have to run throughout the city the neighborhood farms they're supposed to inspect when they're there not only equipment but stuff like that right i mean you know and then when you add when you have the cameras you never have to sign the camera well i'll say this we've spent junior spend recently ten thousand dollars in camera upgrades we still got robbed he still took the picture still turning the police they didn't get they didn't get caught i mean they're a deterrent but again they're only a deterrent i'm sure they're sticking a dog out there every night if you're not going to get them out well it may it might be a difference when when you're a criminal and you're going in to steal items you know for monetary value versus just being able to i mean these people are criminals but the difference is these people are stealing something for the well they're doing it for just pure joy exactly so and i don't know to me that's worse i think it's a i think this 75 edition as we're looking at here for park maintenance is going to be a big step i mean what i see in my area and my ward is is more it's more bringing everything up to date and from trees to better fencing and we're constantly coming out landscaping we're not treating no tree trimming okay these these properties border

[0:38:45] someone's backyard and the brush and the trees along the fence lines in my opinion need to be cleaned off okay well that's maintenance those are maintenance things and then i see i see this working out long term because brookhaven the walking trail needs to be replaced or at least resurfaced but i think there's some better options that i was going to discuss with wes uh on some fencing let's get rid of that vinyl fence all they're doing is tearing it up is put something that's a little more durable looks better they make they make those two foot roughly two foot or three foot tall plastic coated wire fences they look better it would improve the looks of the parts as well as as the vandals too so things like that we can do and i know 75 is not going to cover that right now but over a period of a couple of years that should take care of some things what if we have that item you know maybe it maybe it is that we don't have to replace the playground equipment every year somewhere so you know we can we can still work you know a day-to-day basis and managing that money to try to get the optimal effect that's the that's the main thing that i hear is uh is updating the existing playground equipment okay not only the vandal part but some newer stuff more been asking a lot about some handicap swings things like that that are easy easy for us to do not complete equipment and then just making the overall place itself look better okay good deal and then we went over all the other items that were on there let's talk about for a second capital improvement and then this is uh we got to understand that you know with the loss of the tourism tax revenue a capital there is no park improvement or other anymore it's all the same until we possibly get that tourism tax revenue back um so let's flip over well let me start with my general summary page the capital improvement debt service

[0:40:47] that's 602 000 that's estimating that you did a 12-year bond for six million dollars our debt the city as you all know we've done a great job the last four years of reducing debt even with doing a six million dollar bond in 2021 our debt will be reduced 10 billion dollars and then after 2021 it's the debt is tremendously false off and um i didn't bring that i'll let you you know discuss that detail with uh with chris wilson i may ask chris to come up just a minute explain a few things about that but basically the way our structure is now especially what we've done the last four years our debt is reducing we've made tremendous strides there so even with adding a six million dollar bond you're still in four years gonna reduce your debt by ten million dollars um so this debt service also and again i'm gonna let chris explain these details but if we do the bond for six million then there's a way where the first payment doesn't start until next year or the following years we pay interest only the first year it's not shown in this analysis but my recommendation is if we don't have this payment this is worst case scenario this is factoring in the payment in fy 18. but if we only pay interest the first year that would only be 88 000 instead of 602 my recommendation is that you take the rest of that money and pump that back into the street improvement and that would get us close to 2 million on street improvement but let's get into that so that's doing a 6 million dollar bond and that's all all these things that i talked about the summary page that's all with a net a zero impact that's with no property tax rate increase that's doing all these things taking your increased revenue that's been generated and your cuts that we talked about and doing all these things with a zero budget impact no property tax rate increase needed nor any other increase for those out there that still want to call the

[0:42:48] sanitation via tax increase it was not a tax increase it was against the law for the city of south haven to pay for sanitation out of tax millage so we made the decision not to break state law it was not a tax increase it was a 12 a month sanitation fee that's below the state average of 13.59 so now so this is with no increases in taxes of any kind so now let's flip over to capital improvements again again i'm going to remind you that from now on without specific as you all know tourism tax revenue by law could only be used for parks recreation and tourism we don't have that anymore so if we want to improve our parks and recreation it's a capital improvement that competes with any capital improving the city whether it would be streets buildings or whatever so if you'll look a lot of these are the things obviously we've applied for some of these projects years ago we've gotten co-op funding from mpo on our resurfacing of some of our streets we've got some multi-use trails we've been waiting you know for three to five years to get done they are finally going to get done and we need the money for our co-op percentage now so what this is doing is rather than allocating these moneys in our operating budget taking these monies out of our operating budget so we can achieve the goals that we just got through talking about and all these things would be funded by the bond so we'll start at the top church road resurfacing if y'all know if you've been that way the church road condition between highway 51 interstate is horrendous i'm embarrassed when i write down it i'm embarrassed as the mayor of our city this street looks like that that's something that should have been planned for and done years ago so yes i am being critical

[0:44:50] but i accept it i own it it's my responsibility now church road is going to be overlaid this year before the end of the calendar year mr cordell updated me recently it looks like we're still going through processes with mdot we still feel like we can get these process started before the weather gets cold dan has anything changed with that that i need to know so by december 31st of 2017 church road will have brand new asphalt from 51 to interstate 55. our co-op part of that is 127.4 carriage hills pedestrian some of you may have noticed we've been talking about that for a long long time there are markers in church i mean in carriage hills where they're going to do the sidewalks so that's going to happen and that's important because it will allow the children you know to walk from the elementary school and the high school without walking in the street we're going to need 400 000 to pay our co-op part of that main street pedestrian again that's the one that adds sidewalks on uh state main street from uh highway 51 all the way to northwest drive and we'll go all the way up northwest drive to city hall and also add new mass storms at whitworth and state line is that correct still whitney yes okay so that will eliminate all the span water intersections in the city can we move sorry real quick uh the main street pedestrians that's on both the north and south side of main street is it on both sides on both north and south side it goes to the east side of northwest drive northwest good you know eventually connect to our christmas tree that blew down where's that one if i have to pull my paul bunyan axe out we're gonna get a christmas tree this year it's not acts but transport transplant service good question though snow and grow pedestrian that's sidewalks and snow you know we have concerts at the amphitheater you see the police doing a fantastic job trying to

[0:46:53] keep the people from getting hit in the street it's crazy we're gonna have sidewalks where people leave the amphitheater uh connect to the new tennis center and people can walk on the sidewalk without walking in the street that's gonna be a six-foot sidewalk too right and you're asking me all kinds of i don't know that's a so that'll be uh that's well needed um the central park snowden grove multi-use trail that's one that mdot approved long ago it's the longest one it was delayed for many many many many reasons i'm not going to get into all the ugly details but uh some of the funding problems that the city had in the past mdot withheld funds or put a hold on it for a while that delayed it then we had a property owner that refused to give us right away to connect the trail so we had to have it redesigned go back to mdot have the whole thing redesigned again so it's been a long long process but we're getting close to that and that will add that will add another excuse multi-use trail that will connect uh central park and snowden grove and uh the route of that is coming out of central park on to oklahoma it'll goes south on tula home across goodman continues south to central parkway that goes by the schools and then it will hit it'll go eastbound from there connect to get well go up get well to connect to snow but eventually that will tie into our bigger picture our green print 2040 because as you all know now we have bike lanes and path going through clarington from airways to central park so now this will connect that so this leg of it will go from airways near the hospital all the way to snowden grove and we'll continue working on that as well star landing anybody driving down star landing recently a lot of history with star landing just to be real trying to be brief star landing you know at one time there was a project that was applied for by the county for federal funds to make star landing a

[0:48:57] five-lane road have a boulevard in the middle all the way from highway 51 to get well there's been a lot of money spent on design for that now with all the funding thing issues going on with the state i can just tell you i don't count on that happening for a long time so we can't wait that long we can't wait on the count anymore we've got to overlay star landing road it's in horrific condition again i'm embarrassed to write down it i've talked to the county i'm going to ask the county for a co-op since the county took the lead on that project many years ago there was also a time where the city of south haven asked to get there was some earmark earmarked funding that came from the federal government city of south haven asked for that the county denied that said that they wanted to continue to manage the funding of star landing so i'm going to ask them to do that so i'm going to ask for their help we're going to ask for a 50 50 co-op civil link has already designed a cost on putting an overlay from 51 to get well it's 1.2 million i'm allocating or proposing allocating 600 000 for the city's part i'm going to ask the county for 600 000. intersection modernization already told you about that that will knock out the last four intersections that have spanned wire intersections 800 000 for that then we get into tennis pro shop talking about our parks you know we just finished the tennis center we have the old metal building there to have a bona fide tennis operation you obviously have to have an office we have a tennis pro that needs to be there uh we believe there needs to be a pro shop there where the concession's a shaded area where you have um you know a place for parents to stay while their children are getting lessons and when you have the tournaments you have a place where people can stay there there'll be a conse snacks and stuff like that let me go ahead and uh and show if i can figure this out chris so if you'll notice

[0:51:20] if you'll notice on this building the uh metal roof that's the that's the structure that's there now and we don't need that much space that's there so i will keep the main roof line but you can see the the interior area that uh has the uh the wood facing that would be the pro shop and uh in the offices and then you would have outdoor areas with picnic tables for people to stay where they have shade you may notice the gray brick fireplace when you get late in the year that'd be nice for people they can hang out there um and wait on their you know for tournaments and for their children so that's one view just scroll down with a little thing in the center of the mouse and this obviously is the front view that's utilizing the current building we have there now that's utilizing the current building that's there so they're going to take the walls off the current building correct keep the structure yeah the building it's it's the building is big now it's more footage than you would need but it's just you know that building was built in the early 70s just a metal building so this is keeping the same basic structure roofline just taking the metal walls out i like the seating areas that's there's your concession concession area we we thought you'd probably you know have a place maybe put grills in the back where you could serve hot dogs and hamburgers you know you'd have drink you know drinks there and then i'll rotate on this okay then this gives us a view of what

[0:53:40] the the layout on the inside you can see when you come in the front door you have a check in this is for your tournament players that come in that would check in at the front desk off of that to the left you have a pro shop you know where you can buy tennis gear clothing you know other tennis articles that you would need for the players and then our director would be in the back with the office you can see it had this been one of the biggest requests from tennis players is well first of all there were no bathrooms out there before so we've got the bathrooms now uh with the current design but this would also give locker rooms you know when you have tournaments you have a lot of people that they may be playing there in a match on late on sunday they've already checked out their hotel they'd like to take a shower before they get on the road to go home uh this gives them men and women's locker room right there with showers and then if you go to your right that's going to open up towards your outdoor seating area you've got your kitchen and snack bar in a little lounge area and then you see the door that would go to the outside you know where you would have your outdoor seating and your outdoor fireplace we haven't really discussed well we mentioned this but this also may be something to wear you know you may want to have that again just an idea you know wedding rehearsal dinner i don't know somebody may want to rent it from us to be it's a beautiful place you know outdoor with all the outdoor area you know we could you could have you know some small social functions there as well but the cost of this uh we had that estimated seven hundred thousand dollars i don't have a design for volleyball we're fortunate that we have the arena y'all know the arena again i told you i would share things with you that i've watched and learned over the last four years the arena isn't an incredible building it's an

[0:55:42] incredible building it's underused i mean y'all know we use it for trade shows and people love it for that but it was it was designed to be for rodeos and uh but obviously wasn't built right there's no stables and there's some other reasons that it never became functional for what it was built to do but again with my ears open i want to do everything throughout the city to maximize all the resources that we have we have a great facility you know in the western part of our city and wes and i talked about all the different things that we could bring there to make it more of a park facility and the biggest thing that's the least costly that again would bring more people back to the west end and is one of the um most special things that helps girls get scholarships to college is bring volleyball there you know and and all you got to do the only thing you got to change is the flooring you know we can buy flooring for 120 000 to put eight volleyball courts there would this be a temporary flooring that they can take up it can be removed it's not easy to take up and down you wouldn't want to do it frequently but it is a portable floor i want to make sure i would assume we would still do trade shows and gun shows and stuff like that because it's revenue right here some but i mean it would be my recommendation that volleyball take precedence you know and use it as a partnership i mean it's a city park facility right but we would still like you know we have the crystal ball in january uh would not be no problem having that or the other you know big social events that are there but it is my recommendation that volleyball would take precedence uh that was done years ago it was uh i was told a hundred thousand dollars years ago but um i i don't know that it's needed if you're doing volleyball you really haven't you have plenty of room without leveling the floor is that what you still believe was yes sir okay we could always cover the floor when we make a cover i'm sure if that second floor i think you can but um right um

[0:57:44] but a lot of the events i've talked to a few volleyball people and they say a lot of the events won't hurt the floor so there may be some that you don't you don't have to remove the floor but you want to add to that wes you know more about it than i do i think but it's a modular flooring for lack of a better analogy like legos and just pieces together in square tiles um what we would have to do is board the holes and the foundation for the poles and the nets hopefully that's all we end up taking up and down most of the time but there's a tremendous demand for volleyball there's a tremendous demand so wes and i believe that that's the most uh the biggest thing the biggest bang for the buck you can do at the arena you know to make it a park facility and uh and we don't have it now you know you know people are you know there's there's demand for it so and again it's uh it will bring people to our city it will have a good economic impact to our city that's not the main reason we're doing it we're doing it for quality of life and uh you know again you know if girls can get their college education paid for playing volleyball and uh and prepare them for their future i think that that's an important thing and it definitely would do that i didn't have a diagram of that because all it is is flooring it's eight quarts that you put down but that's 120 000 the next thing i do not have a picture of that either because it's not been designed yet but for years we've been talking about a greenbrook sophomore softball indoor training facility and again it would be something much smaller than that's at snowden but it would be a building where when the girls teams come to check in there would be an office there for our director there would also be indoor hitting cages and or pitching mounds for the girls and anyone that's ever played ball you know that it's if you're in between games you're not going to get in your car and drive all the way to snowden to take some bp you're gonna if there's a cage right

[0:59:47] there you can just easily take your team while they're waiting take them in there give them batting practice let them pitch in the winter time you know the pitchers need indoor area where they can pitch and hit and the hitters hit the girls don't have that you know and and uh years ago there was some many people that asked the question you know we have this nice facility for our boys at snowden but what about the girls you know and i know that there's some the girls can use snow to some but it would be nice uh to give the girls a facility there you know and that we estimate that it was initially estimated at 400 but just learning what i've learned the last four years i just took the liberty and bumped that up to about 750 because that's that's more realistic it's not been designed yet but i'd love to see the greenbrook indoor training facility i told you about the right-of-way maintenance maintenance equipment for us to cut the right-of-ways we have to buy the the bush hogs and all the equipment to do it we estimate that at 450 000. construction equipment that's to reduce the drainage maintenance budget line that's to buy the other equipment that we would need not to use our third-party term bid contractor but to do some of those repairs in-house we believe we can save money by doing it in-house then we talk about city hall renovation over the last four years when i come to work every day and i park i walk around the northern entrance and come in this door so i don't i don't come in the front entrance of the building every day but then occasionally you know we have an event like the swearing-in ceremony and we're in so shea park and i happen to just kind of make that path back to the front of the building i'm a sales guy i've been in sales for 25 years and one thing i know is image is everything people size you up in the first five seconds of meeting you that whether you believe it or like it or not

[1:01:49] they look at your shoes they look at your clothes they look at how you maintain yourself physically they form an opinion about you in five seconds that's a proven fact if we want to be the city that i want south haven to be we've got to put our best foot forward we've got when you come here i want people that come here that have never been here before that say i wanted to say well man this city hey man i've never been in mississippi before this city they they have pride themselves they care about themselves and how can we tell people that we that it's a priority for us that we revitalize the west end original business district of our city we go to them we ask them to put a new roof on their building we ask them to pave their parking lot to knock the weeds down that are going to their parking lot to show new life in our original business district how can we do that and not do it ourselves this is obviously not the first time all of us have discussed this we've had a lot of big challenges in the last four years that they took priority over this you know that we had we had to correct some problems um we need to do something about our own image you know we need to do something about our city hall and i'll just take my mayor had offered a second as a citizen of south haven if i drove up in this parking lot and walked in the front door and i look at both at the green roof that has is i don't know if there wouldn't it looks like wooden letters that like on a treehouse somebody nailed up there that spells southaven municipal building that's what it looks like to me it's got holes in it i don't know what kind of animals are going in and out of there it's got there's all kinds of nests up there it's it's um nasty it's nasty it i'm embarrassed as a city of south as a citizen of south haven to come look at this building on the outside so my recommendation is it's time it's time to do something about it

[1:03:53] there's been discussion about doing what other cities have done you know i think olive branch spent six to eight million dollars on a new city hall a few years back we don't need to spend that much money um i also believe in preserving the historic value of your city this building was built in 1962 it's one of the oldest commercial buildings if not the oldest commercial building in the city the people that have allied company the initial company that built this building is the company that put the first sewer lines in and the first utilities in made southaven they're the one that named it southaven because it was south of whitehaven back then which whitehaven in the early 60s was the finest area of memphis and so they named southhaven south haven because it was south of white haven but anyway the people that built this building it was the first building it has historic value so my recommendation is not to tear it down not to build a new building i like to i think the building has potential but let's go through this was designed by urban arc and basically the main thing the main priority is our first impression it's the exterior of the building and the first floor as anyone that can tell you that works on the first floor here this is where most of the people come in and out they come in the first floor um so we can start there and then there's a few minor things on the other floors that need to be done but the majority of it needs to be done on the exterior in the first floor but you can see on the outside it shows you what the building looks like now and then you can see just by doing cosmetic things to the outside removing the old nasty stone that's on the building replacing that with brick changing the coloring taking the taking the green roof off but anyway i think that looks good we talked about the area that you see is white i do have other designs we could make that more of a limestone color

[1:05:57] or maybe even more of a brownish color but you can see that it definitely changes the look of the building tremendously before i move on to the next part you see the front of it now you see where the roof is you know it has the animals living in it if you see that we rip that out and we make that a glass area that's the area that i propose making a tribute hall in the city you know y'all know that we receive many requests for people that you know have done great things in the city you know they want to name a building after them or whatever this would be a way we could have a formal tribute hall we could you know have a small ceremony for you know people that um have made great contributions to our city you can put you know trophy things in there where you can put you know a bronze facial thing with a description of what they did and their services to the city but i visualize that as being our tribute hall again if you look to the lower right well the upper right you see the the uh the porch removing the ports that that's what it would look like that's what the tribute hall looked like with glass windows front entrance then off of that now when you come in the current building and people are coming the board to come to board meeting you know we have that tiny little reception area this would open up where you'd have doors on the back wall that feed into the boardroom so when people come to the board meetings they have room to um you know to visit to talk outside and then before they come in the board meeting and just make it a little more receptive to our citizens and this this is the view from the interstate so again when you when you come here now you see the green roof and the white building um and you can see just by adding a little bit of brick removing the green roof changes the look um can't see it but there's a little city

[1:08:00] of south haven side we can put on the back of the building from the interstate you know just to show that that is that that is our city hall okay that's it for that um the estimations that we've been given to renovate the bottom floor which in addition to doing the exterior we would want to replace this marine carpet that's in here we want to take out the 1972 uh there's nothing wrong with moraine but we want to take out the 1972 wallpaper we want to improve the look make it more professional in here and then also again it would open up the back where you have doors in the back we moved the city clerk's office from where it is now into where the old chamber of commerce was most people that come into city hall that are going there they're walking all the way down the hall it would give a more grand entrance for most of the services that are addressed by the city clerk would be right when you walk in the door we would take the area where the clerk's office is now that would be planning and development and then our utilities would take the building department since it connects to their current utilities so that wing would be used for utilities and then the building department since whitney oversees the building department anyway that would be moved over to where the city clerk's office is now so when you had direct supervision over all that but the estimate's about 3 million next thing on the list we there's many things on here i stopped at 5.9 million but you can see that there's things on it this is a long-term plan the next thing on the list would be sunset loop and snowden lane need to be resurfaced uh the streets there are horrendous that's sunset loop is the road that goes through the ball field snug lane is the road obviously that goes north and south by the amphitheater about 200 000 for that other things that we've talked about previously is spring fest pavement um paving that area making that an amphitheater parking lot estimated to cost about a million we have a proposal

[1:10:03] for amphitheater seating expansion that was made by green machine okay can you send that for us a little bit make a little more okay i'll call this the master wish list this is everything this is not just doing extra seats but as you can see it's you know improving your concessions areas it's also improving the uh the box office it's like the master list of things so you got 3.4 million dollars there i did an analysis i did meet with green machine with the expanded seating they believe that they'll bring in um more entertainers many entertainers have a minimum amount of seating before they will come the name billy joel has been mentioned billy joel people like him will not come to south haven they have a minimum amount of seats but anyway it would allow green machine to bring in new acts i did crunch the numbers on the map on how many more seats it would provide and then the way we would eventually pay for that we would be adding a five dollar uh facility fee on that um with the additional seating and the facility fee it would produce uh it would produce an extra 436 000 a year for the city to do it so obviously in the long run it would definitely pay for itself the problem we have today is how do we pay for it i would love to see it happen but i don't know how we pay for it eventually we can get it done every year debt is rolling off and this is something that i think would be important eventually for the city if you if you just did the sitting

[1:12:05] expansion and took out all the other things it's about 2.2 million i think that's what i have on my list and then as far as what actually being done let's take a quick struggle um this is the box office again box office concession additions any additional i think there are bathroom additions on that this is the master design of the seating expansion as you all know at the top we have the grassy area this is adding the additional seats i think it's 2200 seeds and also would add more concession areas around the top bowl

[1:14:09] how much of the grass does it take i can taste all of it does it take off it takes it well maybe it doesn't let's say let me take a good chunk you're right let me see it's totally i have that data i thought it was like between seven and eight or a little more right i think it takes you there but i'll uh yeah i don't have i have that mom because i'll get that to you guys but obviously it's a good thing the issue as far as funding i mean it's a problem you know that would be another one that if we do get the tourism tax reinstated one good thing about it to all the stuff we went through with the state legislature this year those of you here in 2014 we spent a lot of time trying to explain to them where a three-year extension does not allow us enough revenue stream to do a bond we went over and over trying to explain that but the good thing is this year they said well y'all need more than three years you need to to do a bond you know so at least we did finally get that point across but but anyway if we get the revenue back it could be something that could be a game changer it would be easier for us to do this then i don't know how we pay for this now just being very straightforward if you ask me is this more important than uh the star landing road i would say no is this more important than church road no you know we have

[1:16:11] greater demands you know that in our city than this right now but i do i am an advocate for this i think it would be good for our city and i'd like to see it eventually happen and then talk about parks you know these are things that we can thank our state legislators for killing that have hurt us soccer is noted you know we want to bring snuck soccer to snowden seven new fields you know estimated about 3.5 million i'll just quickly go down the line i don't quite understand this but my ears are open some people want a dog park we can make that happen it's not a whole lot of money eventually the fencing is going to have to be replaced at snowden there is a black vinyl fencing that our competitors are using oxford tupelo they all have it looks beautiful eventually we'd like to change that at snowden um one part of the green print 2040 plant is a hornet creek greenway project which would actually take the unused land that runs along hornet creek from horn lake all the way near uh cherry valley crosses over 51 in the interstate comes down near rasco and go back up to clarington and eventually connect uh with our other bike lanes that connect our multi-use trail which further you know helps us complete our total big project for more green spaces and multi-use trails there is a possibility that we could get some corporate sponsors to do that in some other cities i understand that they paid a portion of the trail to have a sign up that they donated the money so that's something we'll experiment with too we eventually got to expand our court building as we grow their title in space that's not needed immediately needs to happen eventually fire department needs a maintenance shop and storage facility um then we have our other road projects state line road east is gradually falling apart uh we're gonna have to address that in the next couple years uh y'all know about the getwell south widening project that's going to take getwell to five lanes from church road

[1:18:14] south to star landing with a boulevard in between we've got to have fire station number five eventually again when we get down to 2020 2021 we have a lot more options we have debt rolling off we got a lot of flexibility in those years again we talked about softball fields and cherry valley performing arts center on northwest drive i believe that we could put a performing arts center here near the interstate making a mini orpheum i think it'd do great it'd be another way to bring life back to the west end of our city i'd love to see a performing arts center on northwest drive but again these are things that as debt rolls off you know when you get into 2020 2021 we have a lot of flexibility to do these things but right now my proposal is to go to where i've stopped in the bond funding column which equals 5.9 million and that is the end of my presentation sorry for being so long i got a quick question on the bond funding should we possibly look at maybe splitting that into two if if we go that route look at splitting that into two different vines since we have both park park projects in citywide projects in it that way if your park funding comes back next year maybe we can pay the parkside bond with well you could do that what you could do if that does happen well even if it comes back you're looking at two and a half years before we start collecting the revenue again because the legislature's going to approve it then there's gonna have to be another vote which will be in the fall so you're going to lose it for 18. uh you're going to lose it from most of 19 so you're going to lose two years of it anyway so let's think approve it in april say april if it does get rid free uh but for a referendum when we vote how soon can we vote well if it gets approved in the session in 2018 then the vote would be in the fall within nick that's that's what the legislation allowed for how soon could i mean how can we vote in may if they let's test their call that's yeah that's that's the latest i mean you

[1:20:17] just have to bring them in there and have the advertisements and everything but that'd be the legislators call as far as when the vote would be but i think previously i think what was voted on i think was in the fall so it would be pretty much impossible to get it reinstated by july 1st of 2018. yeah i don't know i think you now i'd be wrong but i think after you vote you didn't have to get it approved by the legislature right now okay because you have to think of the passive next year next year and then hey maybe you get something in there that allows for it to kick in immediately i i don't i don't know i don't know what the rules are i wasn't sure how it worked what would change between this year and next year that for the passing you'd get it that's the question of the day that's my point i mean you know it's yeah i mean there's a lot of burnt bridges down there there are but i will tell you this and again i don't want to be overly optimistic but i will say this that um when several the several business people including our realtors association i spent time down there i got to know some of the other house reps throughout the state and again i'm not i'm not i'm not trying to be malicious towards anyone i'm just telling you the truth and they all told me they said hey look we have nothing against the city of south haven and we hate for what this is going to do to you but but what happened what has happened down here with with hopkins and henley is not going to change unless they change and they say this is a message to them they come down here and voted against every other tourism tax in the state and that's why we're not going to vote for yours and if you go watch the video even one even said i've been in the state house of representatives for 32 years i've never voted no to tourism tax until today and so anyway that's what the issue is my hope and my optimism is that some of the relationships that we built while we're down there and explain to them that um that everyone in south haven does not

[1:22:21] share their opinion i think we did make some progress with that and i think that um jeff hale and david parker are our big allies they're very respected in jackson and um i think that some of the discussions could lead to uh possibly being a different result but make no mistake about it what happened recently was punishment against hopkins and henley that was a message to be sent back to them that's a fact so what could change i think that the relationships we built this past time and the other house wraps around the state learning you know that everyone here in south haven does not share their views i think that could go a long way in us getting it approved again george going back to what you said earlier about having an election in may it's that that was one of their one of their problems is that we had a special election the last time so i don't think they're going to allow us to have another special election they want to do it well i think that those i think it could easily easily be pointed out this time that voter turnout was so low during the general election i think the last special election was probably as much as this past journal that general election was so i mean i mean uh the point is points well the point is a suggestion that that people didn't know about it or didn't care to vote had nothing it was the same thing in the municipal elections again i mean you know and and so that's not a valid argument but uh but again if anything it helped publicizing more with the citizens of the city and i can tell you right now i the people that are in my ear yeah there's a couple people that don't understand parks and i again i try to explain to them it's not just about the park whether you use it it's about the financial health of your entire city but the same thing same argument can be said about the library the same argument can be said about uh garbage pickup or the police service or anything like that well i don't use it you know i don't ever go to the library i'll never call the police i don't do this well

[1:24:24] it affects everyone it's the entire city i mean no one's gonna come to the city if you don't have these certain elements within the city it's it's just like you've said it's it's quality of life you have to have these things this is what entices business this is when it brings uh you know people to come want to live in your city it also allows us to pull from that without having to increase proper taxes but the burden on the property tax plan yeah but of course that's just simple economics but back to the initial question it probably a couple of years before we got the revenue again could we do two bonds we could do two different cargo mount and do two but i don't know that that really you got you did two different issues and if you get the park revenue back then you could start on your other soccer you can start on you know soccer start on those things maybe perform an art center you know but what i try to do is to make the best use of the money like the smaller things like the tennis pro shop the grain brook facility um volleyball those are things that would make a big impact for a small amount of capital outlay i agree i mean i i agree with you and bonds looking at was one of the things i was i was interested in asking about while i've i've never been an advocate of spending bond money on on paving or repaving roads i mean it's like buying your groceries with a credit card it's something that you're just you're gonna be paying on by the time that you gotta do it again uh but maybe maybe we look at you know talk about we're way behind maybe we look at catching up well that's what this well some of this is stuff that we are behind on it's like star landing where we yielded to the county because we thought they were going to take care of it maybe not and it's not their fault but they've not been able to because the federal funding program changed but it's it's an emergency i mean it's almost getting to be emergency status so what we're looking at is not just being

[1:26:27] a repetitive thing we're looking at fixing a long-term problem and then by the next time it comes up for renewal you know we may have the expansion project going on the five lanes it and that kind of thing so i totally agree with you you never want to spend money on a recur one-time money on a recurring expense oh exactly yes well it's not anatomy it's not it's not a capital asset at that point you're spending i agree but like you know like you would talk about earlier uh dean cordell was mentioning it cost about 2.4 million a year to get caught up within so many years you know maybe we take 4 million and try to get caught up with the neighborhood streets that are in the greatest disrepair just so we can get caught up so that the 1.5 million that we're putting in now is just your normal maintenance right yeah i agree but if you did all that you would eliminate all the other things throughout i mean you don't want to put every you know everything because if we did that then you would do none of the other things would all be just about the streets and i believe that what my plan is even though it's not ideal is to gradually bump the annual amount like going 500 000 this year and then if we have the extra money if we just pay interest only the first year on the bond that's going to free up another four to possibly four to six hundred thousand dollars my suggestion is to put that in street improvement this year too and then eventually try to creep our budget up even more next year to maybe 1.7 and then the following year maybe 1.9 and eventually we get caught up that way it's not ideal but it's it's better than spending all your money just on the streets because if we do all that then it eliminates all these other things that we could be doing at the same time there is one thing that we didn't talk about and uh and then i'm going to shut up and open up the floor i did on the the ones of you that sent me goals i incorporated that into the our plan that i handed out i'm not going to go into that that's just for yours but uh there's the things that you've told me i've rolled that into that master plan but i continue to welcome ideas things that you want to hear and i mean that

[1:28:30] you want to see done we'll put that in there but we need to talk about the fundamental issue about the charitable contributions the city gives the library 350 000 a year the city gives 621 thousand dollars to charitable organizations all of them are great organizations i i i believe in every one of them um i'm just going to be real candid with you it's hard for me trying to set a budget when i'm having to tell our fire department know on other things that they feel that they have a need for our police department the other our emergency dispatchers things like that we're having to say no to a few requests that they want i i just can't i can't sleep with that that i'm saying no to them but yet i'm giving money away and i just don't i'm just going to say this it's not that i don't support the organizations i think they're all incredible organizations but i don't think it's government's role to give it's not our money to give i don't think it's government's role to give money to charity i don't and when we're giving 621 000 a year away and saying no to people in our own departments that need funding i think that needs to change and i don't want to hurt any organization because i know they're like us you know they can't they've been cut by the states they just cut a lot of these budgets it's already hurting them um but the other thing is sometimes the state cuts they're not cuts at all all they are is reshifting the burden down to the cities and it's it's not our role as the city of south haven to take up for the budget cuts in the state of mississippi and i don't think we should do that and i think that we need to start a plan to gradually on these charitable contributions to gradually start cutting them not not do the ridiculous thing that happened in mississippi where you have what they call sweeps we're not sweeping anything that's stupid but gradually start cutting it and i'm talking about 5-10 percent and just let

[1:30:34] them know hey look we're not going to be able to do this i mean we the city of south haven has been uh given some serious budget challenges and you know we we're gonna have we're gonna have to find some cuts but it's my recommendation that you cut the charitable contributions at least 10 percent this year floor is open alderman flores would you is there anything specifically that you'd like to share with us or um a couple of things um and it's already in our plan deal but we it is vital we have a new comprehensive city plan you mentioned it earlier in your presentation where we just didn't plan we a lot of growth happened and things weren't taken care of without a city plan i mean it's like steering a ship with no captain of course or flying the flaming dock without not a charge so that's that's vital i'm a big advocate of a lot of the improvements we've talked about here but i'm also a bigger advocate i think we need to leverage the assets that we have now and the biggest one we have now besides stone grove is the amphitheater and i think we need to figure out a way to get that done quickly that's just that's my wishlist there's a couple of things in specific neighborhoods that you're not going to talk about i'm offline whaley i'm with almond flores also on the amphitheater i mean it's a revenue generator uh it's quality of life it's i mean that's that's you know putting putting down an investment to make money in the future we got to figure out a way to do it regardless i think they do and uh the parks i'd like to see the improvements and they're going to be generators they're also probably alive and i follow everybody raise for the city observing uh she can't keep the city safe and without firing police to do their job we'll get best guys for the job

[1:32:43] uh i like the i like what you put together uh to be honest uh i'm going to respectfully disagree with you on the charities and i don't have any problems with cutting the budget for the charities some but just the way i am i i'm fine with 10 this year don't have any issues with that at all everything else i think you've done a great job you put a lot of time into this uh and i appreciate the time that you put into it but everything else looks like you've addressed uh the issues that i hear about most of the time so i appreciate you doing that thank you yeah i appreciate the capital approve the plan it's uh very very detailed the big thing for me is besides parks everybody knows how i feel about that the fire station number five i think it's very vital i know obviously we have it over here in 2020 that it's um we're growing the fact that we have run four four stations and you have i think all branch has about five five or six yeah i don't know i just think it's time that we grow i don't know if we have to run another engine out of section three or section four but it's just something i think that needs to be if possible and would you would you suggest borrowing more money i don't know i don't know that's the that's the that's the question i don't i don't know it's kind of thrown out thoughts the other thing what will we do with the soccer fields that are at state line now what will we what do you propose to do with that they can still be used the way i've consulted met with some soccer people brandon thomas

[1:34:45] that runs the soccer association desoto county i met with alderman hale and myself one day and we asked him the same question he basically indicated that people are not going to come to the soccer complex where they are now there's no hotels around there it's just this again it's backed economic so what he said they can still be functional as like a spillover location when you have a large tournament in town uh you have the main games at snowden soccer and then you can still use these for a spillover field and still use for practice between games things like that so it'd still be a functional as a soccer okay that answered my question thank you autumn pay oh thank you mayor uh this i agree with a lot of this obviously i think roads are still number one priority i would like to see somehow you know i know the money's not there but neighborhood roads you know that was one of the number one things that always you know i constantly hear especially in some of the older neighborhoods greenbrook you've got curbs that are just falling apart because of the way they were designed when they were built you know 30 years ago um but uh everything else i mean these are these are some great plans i'm glad that you know we've got a vision in front of us and we're gonna we're not gonna stop thank you honor and help well i've got one of it's not the oldest area in town so obviously my i'm kind of the alderman payne the roads are roads are horrendous over there in my area but they're not they're not so bad as per say we're going to have to do some major improvements our problem is you know we're four and five layers deep so anything we do over there is going to be extensive but my main roads are where the walk-in trails are the bike path you've got about a four foot section on each side that we could probably make those

[1:36:47] repairs and the rest of the road would last still for a while and i want to check into what the county was using at one time their sealcoat and which i think would help the majority of streets in the area i do have a few that are really due for complete replacement other than that i love the plan i love some ideas here i think there may be some shuffling we can do that we could talk about um but i've got i've got a few major things there we've got a lot of ditch work um you know i'm still i'm still a big fan of covering that ditch on staten island road bendale farms across the north creek i don't think anybody should have a 20-foot ditch in their front yard in terms of the north side of state like north side of state land yeah and i know it's it's been talked about before i want to see if we can incorporate maybe some indoor soccer as well with the volleyball flooring there at the iran which would help bring some more traffic to the west side of town i'm looking at i'm looking at my list that we went down um i was riding the neighborhood just looking around and it's just it's mostly cosmetic stuff i think that's that's the area people say are the west side looks bad and i don't necessarily agree with that statement i think there are some improvements that we can make that wouldn't be a lot a lot of money on the city budget and that's where i want to look i am of course a full-time fireman and i do believe our fire station is well behind where it needs to be for station number five and i know the chief would agree with me on that but i don't know that i'm comfortable having it set to 2020. that's that's a long way off well you know and just so everybody knows the reason that's listed i mean i wanted yesterday sure but the reason it's there is because financially our city it's a game changer in 2020. like all the snowden debt uh that started in 2099-2000 is gone um we have lots of flexibility

[1:38:52] moving from 2024. it's not like that it's taking out a bond build it's one thing not not to minimize taking out a bond it's a big deal that's it's not a big deal it's it's the mandate 900 000 a year that's the that's the problem that's the best the 12 the 12 new firemen will take chief yes sir there you go that's the that's the issue and again and you know i told all the departments when i met with them everything that every department has told me uh is is documented it's down and what i explain to them is everything that you tell me you need i'm gonna take that to the board and if we are not able to get it this year it'll come up again next year as you all know sometimes we can't get everything in one year you know i do think that it's important to give the raises you know we didn't give the raises we could do a lot a lot i mean what the raises are 900 000 there's your there's your fire station five but we we owe it to the people to give the raise so i think that's a prep you know in my priority list that's why i'd love to have both but but i get what you're saying i'd love to have it yesterday too my thoughts were even if and i don't have to get awful attention on this but even if we had to slowly add employees if we had to run another another engine out of one of the stations or something of course that's chief's call but we talk about and chief and i have talked about that a lot he's uh we'll continue those talks and we're trying to find the most efficient way to service our citizens but there's no doubt that fire state has got to happen eventually and i would be you know some of these things if y'all want to move them up the list and you know we'd have to get with chris and look at financing but you know you get into borrowing more money unless you want to raise taxes and again my goal i want to leave here without my goal is to leave here without raising property taxes that's my goal so for all the people that showed up today or that have been on social media and heard that this meeting was about raising taxes sorry to disappoint you it's not i do know the

[1:41:00] funding in the next few years are going to change what we are allowed to do drastically with the city because we're having debt fall off and bonds that are that are coming off so that's going to that's going to free us up to to do a lot more stuff that we want to do and the other thing we do have some pending economic developments that we're not at liberty to talk about that will change us from a sales tax thing as well so um but anyway we gotta we gotta deal with the issue at hand we don't have it right now but thank you all audrey uh thank you sir um i love the list i think it's great you know the the main things that i was wanting to do are covered in this as far as accessibility for the area you know ronnie and i to share the old part and so we want to make sure that it's walkable for a lot of our citizens and that was a huge request that i received during the election season was to get that done so for pedestrian options yes sir so i'm very happy with that i would like to see continued sidewalks throughout the rest of carriage hills if memory serves me right i think that was even in the initial charter for the city was to have that done but it just never was so i would like to see that which i know that's a huge deal hopefully we can get more grants to help out with it like we've done with these two i love that the pac is on there i'm a huge advocate for the arts i think that is the one thing in south haven that we are missing is just the arts facilities as far as you know music dance uh even having an artistic hall for people to show off the things that they do here in south america i would i think that would be a fantastic story a lot that that sounds good do you think that having that on the on the west end of the city would also bring more traffic more more customers back and help business back on main street again absolutely i think the having it right here on northwest drive would be a huge boom especially being that when this is built the sidewalks will be there some people can just walk to the local restaurants around here uh and hopefully we can get some more into the area but i think

[1:43:03] that's a perfect place for it to complement city y'all sure wouldn't it absolutely another outlet like you were discussing as far as college scholarships but you know just echoing again just more neighborhood uh road improvements around the area and we've got i've got one over in uh central park actually a newer part to where it's like writing motocross in there i mean a great practice for anyone getting into that you know just and i understand that you know the money is the biggest thing with this i love the plan thank you for putting it together okay you're welcome thank you i appreciate all the comments thank you and before we leave um chris would you speak for just a minute on what i was alluding to about that the bond situation talk about the debt picture for the city over the next four or five years right in essence the spawn if it's around the six million mark has been projected it's structured we can structure it to where it's interest only for the first two years so you're deferring the principal payment to a year when the majority of that 19 to 20 year where a lot of those are rolling off so this bond could be self-funded well it's self-funded as it's presented with the cuts but in essence what you're talking about is right now for fy 18 our total debt service go is a little over 5 million moving absorb this bond into it and you're talking about 2020 our debt service including this bond would be 4.9 so almost no difference just in in natural growth of our property tax values and what's rolling off will absorb this if we do the first two years of uh interest rates and then the total pni beginning in 2020 still puts our total geo debt at 4.8 which is still 200 000 less and that's another 200 000 so snowden bonds in 2020 start rolling off that we've talked about for these years so it can be funded at that and just keep in mind this is a 13 year issuance so the life expectancy of the capital projects that are being contemplated

[1:45:06] outlive the 12 years of the issuance so to your point alderman about the reoccurring expenses you don't normally reach your debt for recurring expenses and that's not what this does what's uh what's the interest rate that you're thinking we projected it at 2.5 um bond market for minis is coming back down a little bit and again that's assuming we maintain our credit rating also which you know it's a that's always a struggle in this in environment uh for governments but we've been successful um this would be you know i think the last one we did was 2013 which was the new money issuance that you use to really match the 80 money on get well in sweeney and rasco so this will be the next big issuance that this board's done what's the uh what's the interest that we project for the first year that you're talking about paying the interest on police uh the first amount will be due in the middle of 2018 at 88 000. and then 177 177 and then 682 after that but again that parts up with our 2021 year where you got more coverage of it any other questions for chris thanks chris um and then basically um like i said at the beginning of the meeting this is you know over the next uh you know six weeks before we have our we'll have our budget workshop where the department heads will come forward and they'll talk about what their priorities are in august and then in september you know we'll approve the budget so between now and then my main thing is i want to get a head start i don't want to be you know pressed for time in august i want everybody to you know kind of hear my ideas kind of kind of see what i think can happen to help us achieve all our goals even with the bad things that have happened to us and but just keep the floor open for discussion so please contact me individually if there's

[1:47:08] anything that uh you have questions about and um and then and chris and everybody's available too so we'll discuss that before we you know set the budget um in september but if anyone does anyone have anything else today thank you yeah yes sir um is there a motion to adjourn the meeting second we got a mushroom autumn in flores second ballroom and brooks uh all bears out all right all opposed say no eyes have it motion carries this meeting is adjourned

Captured 2026-07-26 · source: youtube.com/watch?v=zP7seKsrJGs