These people are talking about transition.

Yeah.

Well, I forgot.

Sorry.

So we have the next one.

No.

I'm sorry.

I pocket dialogue.

We are alive everybody.

Pam, you want to talk?

Did you sign up?

Yeah.

Nail.

Nail.

Nail.

Uh Pam wants to talk on the on the voucher deal.

How do we do that?

Or she could talk in citizen form.

Well, she'd talk in the citizen form.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Will you tell her that?

Next to Ramona Robert.

Good evening and welcome.

Good evening and welcome to the fourth Miss City Boards of Study session on this February tenth of twenty twenty-six.

Keep in mind these meetings are being recorded live for the benefit of our residents who cannot be with us in person this evening.

This time we will go right to the first item on the agenda.

Mr.

Dienlan, you recognize.

Thank you, Mayor.

The first item tonight is a discussion requested by the Board regarding funding for pet spay and new vouchers for 2026.

The city funded a program of spaying neuter vouchers in 2024 and 2025.

In both years, all funds appropriated for the program were spent, amounting to nearly $379,000 total.

For 2026 funds for the program are not included in the 2026 budget.

Already in 2026, the program has been missed by and a number of residents have reached out to city directors inquiring about its funding.

And with that introduction, I'll defer to the board's discussion on this item.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mayor.

And I'm just uh grateful to our colleagues for having the conversation tonight.

Um I think it's obviously an important uh topic.

We need to make sure that uh in my opinion at least some amount of funding gets restored for this very important effort.

Uh I know if I understood correctly and Josh maybe clarify if I'm off base.

I think it's based on up there uh that we appropriated around 150,000 last year uh that expired come September.

Of course, it started at the beginning of the year.

Um, but I would think potentially we could start the conversation around appropriating 150,000 for the balance of this year moving forward and see how far that uh gets us into the year.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Director Good.

Thank you, Mayor.

I concur with uh Vice Mayor Rigo.

You know, instead of just partial funding uh for the rest remaining of the year, I think we need to pick back up where we left off.

Um I'd like to take this opportunity to say publicly, you know, when we were talking about budget.

I know we wanted to present a balanced budget, but because we know how politics work and we know how the needs of the community are, we would be right back here, and here we are.

Director Christian Savage.

My understanding was that this was included in the budget.

And you know, we all got that sheet and it had a yes next to it or no.

And and Director Rigo asked, if it has a no by it, does that mean it's not getting cut?

And that's what Jeff confirmed.

And I understand maybe Jeff was confused, but that that's what my understanding was this was included in the budget.

Well, I'll say I mean Jeff wasn't confused.

I mean, I understand the the distinction here, but the the memo at the top of that were have a few items that were not included in the budget that were potential expenses, three or four of them that we could add back into the budget in that section.

Now now down below there were items that were proposed to be to be removed from the operating budget request.

And so there were two different I I understand what you are what what you are referring to, and I understand the confusion, but the way it was presented was was clear.

Thank you.

Well, Director Rio asked, if you go back and review the budget meeting, it's at the four-hour and fifty-five minute mark.

If it has a no by it, does that mean it's not getting cut?

And you said correct.

And so that's why my understanding was it was not getting cut.

But either way, we're here.

I think it we need to get it on the agenda for a vote.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Um Director Neil Morgan.

Okay.

So when we passed a budget that was operationally balanced, the the point was just that that it was operationally balanced.

So I think I mean ultimately this goes and and and it goes to the board uh for a vote.

You know, we'll we'll have that vote.

But you know, we have a number of things that were that were excluded from that budget.

A number of things.

And if we're gonna start, we're gonna start looking at it now.

We need to start looking at other things that are that were excluded from that budget and determine or we need to determine are those of a higher priority.

Um but I mean, if we if we keep adding things throughout the throughout the year, we're not gonna obviously our budget won't get balanced.

And and so I think there's I think we need to take a look at this.

I I think this has been a good program for us, but are is this our number one priority of all those things?

I mean, we talked about place fire, all those things.

What does that look like to all those policemen and firemen?

Um so I think we need to we need to be cautious about what we do and and really think that make sure that we're we're doing the right thing here, but we could we could keep doing this all year and get to a point where what we where we were operationally balanced, we're not anymore.

So that's my concern.

Okay.

Thank you.

Uh Director Joach Cassandra.

Jeff, where does this funding come out of?

What were what what account?

This funding would come out of the general fund.

We would program it into the animal services program of the police department.

Because that's where we we have an animal services program that's part of the police department because of the funds of the animal wardens and all of the operations of that would it be would it be funded the way that it's been funded in the years past?

Yes.

But what I'm saying.

We have plenty of money in the general fund.

So watch the decision shouldn't be an issue, really.

That is the general fund reserve, yes.

And when you're talking about capital expenditures, those are one-time expenses.

This is an operating expense, it's a little different.

Um we get to you have to consider operating expenses year over year.

I mean, I when we can I recognize we would consider them each year, but this would be an operating expense.

But in terms of where do we get the dollars if we appropriate those, we get them from that general fund reserve balance.

But you know, I think in the long run, this is gonna put is this is gonna save us money.

Uh don't you agree?

Don't you think?

It it certainly could be.

Yes.

Let's less dogs we've got to pay for the pound.

Yes, that is the long-term goal of the program.

Gave on how many spot neutres did y'all do on the with the vouchers last time.

Or somebody pay them.

Can I speak?

We did how many vouchers how many spirits did y'all do with the vouchers?

1331.

Actually, last year.

13,000?

1300.

I think um Josh, uh according to your records, how many did we So they had 22, 71, and 24, and I have 15, 235.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

No, I think I need to know the hour.

That you did.

Okay.

That includes all the office.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Uh good, Director Kemp.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um one, the board's gotten a lot of feedback on this issue.

Obviously, it's a concern of residents, and the ones that I've talked to or communicated to said that two years was not going to yield any results, that this was going to be a multiple year plan.

Um obviously we don't want to give up on it.

I was curious when I thought about it, and I've seen now that uh some of the colleagues have mentioned this, that 75,000 may not really accomplish something that you really want to do versus what 150,000 does.

Jeff, could you uh speak to when we went through the balancing of that budget?

If I'm recalling, it was what, 225,000 to the positive or 200.

Could you speak to when we balanced it, how much we went to the positive?

Well, when we ultimately approved the budget, it was uh 192 dollars to the positive.

So I mean that was that was after we had gone through and uh adjusted the uh adjusted it for um adding adding some programs back in and some expenses, but but the net result was 192 dollars.

But I'll say at the end of the dollar at the end of the 2025, uh we ended the year with about a million and a half-ish that was unspended unspent from the general fund.

Um and so uh uh and like I said, those were dollars that we anticipated that you know, even through the whole uh budget process, anticipated that those would be spent through uh 2025.

Um we've allocated some of those dollars.

Uh but there are dollars that are available here.

Uh if we wanted to fund this program, uh we still would be operationally balanced.

Okay.

The other question I you know that I had, and I think I've already I communicated with Josh this afternoon and Josh B.

Fink, and we're not seeing less police activity in this this topic because I think we're still early in the program of this.

In other words, it is not necessarily yielding less work for the police yet, but that is not a reason to uh from what I've been communicated with, even from the the ones that are uh very much for this, that it's just gonna take some time to see the results of it.

Um and then ultimately I guess you know it's obviously not the topic of this hand, but it may be administration to look at what are other things we can explore as well as a board to help in this and not just put all the weight of the success of this into this voucher program.

Is there other things that we should be uh that we can take action on that will help this cause as well?

And then I guess another one is I'm confused on is I've heard about euthanasia, but we're not putting animals down.

No.

Are we?

Okay.

Or I've heard that's I don't understand how to get to the answers of that, but I'd like the administration to answer that.

I'll say I mean this the city is not in charge of those policies in terms of how shelters operate, and I'll say that the city hasn't adopted a specific policy whether to uh enforce euthanasia uh rules or enforce um uh not not euthanasia or no kill shelter type and the city hasn't adopted that policy specifically.

That has been up to the shelter operators to adopt their own operational policies and the city hasn't weighed in on one side or the other.

Now, the when it gets to that point, I mean I understand that the shelter, at least uh the Fort Smith Animal Haven doesn't uh do euthanasia for space needs.

I under I mean I I'm that's my understanding.

I don't know if that's true or not or not, I believe, but I believe it is.

Um I think they do euthanasia on instances where it's medically necessary and those types of things, but um my understanding is that they don't uh do euthanasia for space needs.

I find myself that I'm for this cause, just that I also in the spirit of what Director Martin is speaking to.

I'm like Kim, you you go through the work of balancing a budget, and I hear you say that we can do this and still maintain a balanced operational structure, which is why I can say I'm for.

But what are those other things that we are that you all are feeling at an administrative level, and we need to have an honest study session about that.

Uh we need to talk about what are the tensions that our department heads are feeling so that we as a board can make good informed decisions because this number relatively to the scope of everything else is lower, and so it's easier to talk about, and there's great community passion for it.

Um but when we start talking about beyond this, uh if there's some sort of administrative consternation that's happening because of this.

I think we need to hear about it and hear the priority order so that we can make an informed decision.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Director Christian for Saddams.

Josh, I had um requested some information by zip code.

Were you able to get that?

Now, well, Josh is heading up here.

My thoughts on this are when the community is reaching out to us overwhelmingly in favor of this was uh highly utilized program.

Um I'm surprised it was something that was cut from the budget because it I think we have other programs that are less utilized that probably could have been cut.

This is something that we ran out of.

It was heavily utilized and something I think that the community has expressed they would like us to continue.

But were you able to get it?

Yeah, so uh about 34 percent of the people who received the voucher were from the 72901 zip code.

So and then it kind of breaks down from there 7 to uh 904 was second and 729200.

Well, 72901 is what what area of town would you say?

Typically the north side of town, north side.

Okay.

This is up there, Josh.

Yeah, those are that's from 25.

Um, but you know, you uh average them both out.

It's between 31 and 34 percent for 17 uh 72901 in particular director camp.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh on that note, while we're talking about this, um, and I think we've talked about this a little bit.

I think at the onset of this program, you and I talked about this, that there were a few non-Fort Smith residents that kind of got slid in through the through the storm of this getting picked up.

Yeah.

But that has ceased, correct?

Yeah, a lot of it was, you know, it was trial and error in the beginning, figuring out a good system that was going to work long term.

And I worked with uh specifically with Kiddies and Canines, 98% of the vouchers were ran through Kitties and Canines.

So I asked them, you know, what are some things that we can tighten up or make better?

And um one of those things was you know, figuring out income verification, one of those things was um figuring out how to make it all one form rather than multiple forms.

So we tightened it up over time.

And there were, you know, so like the first year there were somewhere between and to clarify, you have to put that you are from Fort Smith when you fill out the income verification.

So in all honesty, people were you know stretching the truth, saying they were from Fort Smith and not uh actually, because you would look at their zip code and like, oh, that's actually not a Fort Smith zip code, or that's actually not a Fort Smith address.

Um, but that actually that the first year we saw about 80 of those.

The second year we saw five.

So it went down tremendously.

Yeah, I was gonna say I want to make sure that we maintain that because I I don't want to see our residents not get the help that they can need, especially when we're saying, hey, this is what we're here for.

Right.

And then seeing that it's other people from other towns.

Right.

And and kiddies and canines, they would verify bills, a utilities bill or uh a driver's license, and they have to they have to select which thing they're verifying at the time of the appointment.

So thank you, Director Settle.

So Joshua brings me up a question uh since you brought it up.

Do we not verify the person's address against their water biller to make sure that that's a citizen at the same time?

That's a question for kiddies and canines.

That's that's the idea is that they select, yeah, the I picked utility bill, and I see this is you know Joe Smith and this is his address and it matches.

Okay.

Yeah.

Looks like they're they're saying they do.

We saw them.

Yeah.

We were telling people, give me your water bill, let me see your ID, which you'd be amazed at the number of people who don't have driver's license, but they have state-ide issued issued IDs.

Right.

And we look, we were like, let me see it.

Let me see it run out to your car, run out to your friend, run home, whatever you got.

And let's see this, or we cannot do this.

Yeah.

So we have right on top of that.

Yeah, and Madeline and I worked closely together on on a lot of those things too.

So I would just say anecdotally, I I receive fewer calls about stray animals.

Um I I see uh fewer stray animals, so I mean that's just what I'm noticing.

And then my other question, Jeff, is while Josh is doing a great job, he's the director of communications.

So my question is is really just a long-term solution to do animal vouchers.

That that is a good question.

Like I said, the the animal control services are are held are run through the program that's housing the police department.

Um I think potentially long certain long term we look to move the administration of this program to that program.

Okay, thank Director Regal.

Thank you, Mayor.

Real quick, I just want to mention, building on Jeff's uh comments about the finances at the end of the year.

You know, we did also receive an email from Andy uh on the 30th of January talking about the December uh sales tax report, and you know, one of the bullet points in there was that the last quarter of 2025 showed 1.7% growth uh in gross receipts over the prior year, and our sales tax revenues ended better than they started in 2025.

And then uh for us to bear in mind as well that this is a effort that if we invest in it appropriately on the front end, that level of investment uh is going to make a difference that means we do not have to have that level of investment moving forward.

So I don't think we're you know stepping off into a you know never-ending six-figure investment on Spay and Newter vouchers.

We're trying to um address a problem and and sort of reset um uh at a uh more sustainable uh level, I would say.

Thank you.

It appears that there's a sentiment to reinstate the program, so if there's a board member that would like to put it on the agenda.

I'll make a motion.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

This time we will go to item number two.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, item two is a discussion of a proposed ordinance establishing accountability, disclosure, and standards for third-party intermediaries and city transactions.

The draft ordinance included in your agenda packet was proposed by Director Christina Kitsavis and the board placed this item on this evening's study session for discussion.

Director Cat Savis, I'll yield to you for introduction.

Jeff, did did y'all run that what I proposed to you through legal before you put it out?

Because it was a little different than how I presented it.

We did.

I mean the I saw there was some question on there on page 15 about um service agreements with engineers.

Yeah, I think I think that we'll still will need to, you know, if the decision is to move forward with this, I think we still want to we'll want to vet the actual language of the ordinance through the uh city attorney to uh make sure that it's appropriate.

So what my intent was was I feel like I identified a deficiency in our process.

It's not typical or best practice for someone to material materially influence a major capital project without a written agreement, and that's what we saw with American resort management in regard to the slides.

Um I want to eliminate the conditions that have allowed this when third parties provide estimates and cost assumptions that we rely on to make decisions, and they're not required to stand behind the accuracy of that information.

We open the door to cost overruns and you know potentially corruption.

And so, you know, we have in the email from Rick Coleman to Carl Gefkin on July 1st where he says ARM is negotiated even a better deal.

We've got American resort management on the first page of the contract with Whitewater.

But yep, we had no written agreement with them to serve in that capacity.

And this isn't, you know, this is what brought this up for me.

This isn't specific to that.

It would it would, I think, keep us protected in other instances.

So with that, you know, if anyone has questions, I'm certainly open to amendments or altering the language any way we need to.

But I think, you know, when we look at types of agreements, there's professional service agreements, memorandum of understanding, consulting agreements.

We shouldn't be doing anything on a handshake agreement.

We should we should have documentation of everything.

Thank you.

Christina, can you give me an example of how this would be in the utilities department?

Is there an example that you can think about how this would work in the utilities department?

What do you mean?

Besides this one instance, is there another instance?

Is there a way that this is going to impact something in the utilities department?

I'm trying to come up with another issue.

It's because this is a a one issue, one time and and we're going to put tension ordinance in there for one issue.

Is this something that's a one-off, or is this something that you can see on an ongoing basis that's happened?

And that's what I'm trying to understand.

Is there is there something utilities part?

Because most of our work has been in consent decree, water, and utility.

So I'm trying to say, give can you give me an example of the other.

I mean, this wasn't a utility project.

But I want to ensure that this doesn't happen again.

Whether it's utilities, IT, anywhere.

Can you give me an example of another opportunity that this could occur at?

No, but I couldn't have envisioned this four years ago.

I'm not getting upset.

I'm asking a very simplistic question.

Because what I heard from you from Jeff is it could go back to engineering agreements and engineering.

If we have an agreement, then that's all the then the this is irrelevant.

All this says is that if we're doing business with someone, we have to have a written agreement.

No more backroom deals, no more handshake agreements.

It has to be a written agreement, whether it's utilities, whether it's water slides, whether it's anything else.

And that is not unreasonable.

It is shocking to me that we didn't have one.

I assumed, based on things like this, that American resort management was under some sort of contract to act as the capacity as a third-party broker.

Christina, I'm not getting upset.

I'm just asking if we're not going to be able to do it.

Well, I am getting upset.

I'm asking if we have a real world example of utilities.

I do not have a real world example of utilities.

The real world example I have is American resort management in relation to the slides.

I never could have envisioned that happening.

I don't know what could come up years down the road, but I want to make sure we're not in this situation again.

Because what they did is, let's see, they estimated shipping at 100,000.

Actuals were 229,000.

I still can't get all the information I need on that.

They negotiated pricing on our behalf or over several million dollars.

This is something we should want to ensure never happens again.

Jeff, based on the definition here in the agre in this proposed ordinance.

Would ARM have been classified as a third-party intermediary?

Maybe maybe what Director Cat Savage just shared with the the Parrot Island Expansion document answers that question, but would we would we classify them as a third-party intermediary?

I think that's the intention.

But um I'm just going back to that exact scenario.

Would they do they meet the qualifications?

I mean, was it was it the email that that triggered it for us or was there something else that triggered us to move forward with it?

From my recollection that the email that's that um itemized the different estimates for the different portions of the car of the project.

I think that's what we based our decision on.

I don't think there was any additional any additional information or verification to that.

We didn't do a due diligence on this.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Yes, Director George can see.

Do we have legal do we have legal counsel here tonight?

I don't believe so.

I don't think so.

Anybody lawyer?

We can't do it.

Jeff, what would so did anybody specifically give ARM the authority to Brooklyn or just deal with us?

No.

That you know of?

No.

Nothing in writing.

No, sir.

I think they brought it.

I think they learned of an opportunity that they brought to us.

I think that's how this started.

Well so technically we have no recourse against ARM for anything, do we?

Regardless of what they negotiated or what whatever.

I don't believe so.

But I but I think the intent of this is to put something in place where we would have to do that.

I think it makes sense to hold a company responsible for negotiating on our behalf.

If someone's negotiating on our behalf, we should know that what they're providing is accurate, and if they're not, we should have some sort of legal recourse.

Which is good business.

We have no we have no legal recourse.

If I'm doing business and someone says I'm going to broker a deal for you to do, you know, X, Y, and Z, I'm going to say I want that in writing.

I'm not going to hand over money without having something in writing.

I mean, that's just basic business 101.

And it it surprised me we didn't.

I assumed we had that.

I assumed by having American resort management on here that they were under some sort of contract to serve in that capacity.

Yeah.

Well, Jeff, I want to publicly and officially ask that we have IRM, the representatives come here and talk to us about this deal.

I think I think we deserve some answers and some questions to ask them.

Okay.

I mean I can have a lot of people.

How do we want to do it?

Do I need a second or do I need a what?

And that would be helpful, yes.

For you to contact them and say that that I don't know, you have to say the board or somebody on the board has requested y'all should you all come in person?

I imagine they're they're watching this telecast right now.

Yes.

Does our service agreement not allow for that?

Um certainly it does.

I mean, I think that's just a request that you can make.

I don't think that's something we have to vote on, is it?

I mean, for the service agreement.

Well, that's my request.

I think we all have questions to ask.

And I just want somebody that that was involved in this that has the answers to tell us what happened.

That's all.

We can certainly do that.

And I'll I'll just reiterate what happened was they provided us an estimate based on an email that that we took as a legitimate estimate.

Yeah, but Jeff, you know, uh uh you know these these shots these slides are shipped overseas from the uh correct?

No, they weren't.

Well they weren't they came from overseas.

They came from Turkey.

They came from Turkey is where they came from.

Okay.

What Kevin, you your knowledge what happened to the original buyers?

They backed out.

Why?

I do not know.

No, that's been taken care of.

We got new slides to offset that.

Okay.

So who would ARM contacted City about these slides?

The president of ARM, Rick Coleman, who signed the I mean the.

You've you've seen the email.

The that email is what started this.

You know, I've never seen something that's so simple as buying something and turn into a nuclear disaster.

I've just ever I've never I've never seen this.

Uh I'm done.

Okay.

Director Good.

Uh yield uh uh Director Kemp.

I'm sorry, I didn't see you.

Director Kemp, you recognize thank you.

Um I think the board is running the risk of overcorrecting here.

And I've just been trying to write notes to kind of run through this.

I mean this has become a hot issue because this board has allowed it to be a hot issue.

Um I would say furthermore, furthermore, does this trigger legal challenges for this board down the road?

Um estimates are inherently fluid.

So, Jeff, for example, were the structures going of the slides not projected to be built in a different space at first.

Initially they were, yes.

And then they were moved because of the soil and the way the soil tested.

Is that not true?

Well, that's part of it, but also for the proximity to the existing uh and the existing parks that wouldn't be so remote.

They were moved to save money on concrete.

Yes, right.

So the point is the the plans change and estimates are inherently fluid.

I think that this could discourage reputable firms from working for the city.

I know that no reputable firm would work without a written agreement to protect themselves.

Except this board did when it voted in 2024 to execute the deal.

And my point is that this is affecting how we are seen in the limelight.

And I think the point of the board needs to be to take action and move forward as a city.

This will impact us in other ways.

You know, we're looking for a city administrator search, and yet we keep doubling back on ourselves, trying to revisit this.

And it's like a year and a half late that we're now going to say in the 12th hour we need a ordinance about transparency when we've all voted for an ordinance already, 7-0, that says no $100,000 capital expense can be passed by the board unless it's been further reviewed.

Is that not our checkpoint to say, hey, who are we contracting for the work here?

How will they be held accountable?

The other thing is this increases insurance cost for vendors that are going to work with us.

Because now we're the group that if you do one thing wrong, we're saying we're going to get legal after you or chase down attorney generals.

Does it does it have slow down procurement timelines?

You know, we're trying to work on procurement.

Uh or is there procedural conflicts?

Is there anything within the state statutes?

And I think we have a whole bag of host of issues that if I am outvoted and this goes to a regular meeting, then let's get legal to answer them.

But I can think of a whole list of things, just in a few short minutes of thinking about why this is not an idea that I can get behind.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Director Christine Savage.

Director Kemp, you clearly don't understand how business works.

You never enter into an agreement with someone without something in writing ever.

That doesn't increase insurance.

What did increase insurance was buying the slides.

That increased insurance, and some of that insurance comes out of the general fund.

Did everybody know that?

The general liability comes out of the parks operating fund, but the property insurance, is that correct, Jeff?

That comes out of the nondepartmental property insurance is yes.

And that's what about $50,000 a year for the water park?

It has been, yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Actually, no, I'm not done.

I would like to make a motion to put this on the agenda to vote next week.

Without objection, Director Good was in the queue.

Oh, I'm Andre, I'm sorry.

Not a problem.

I just actually just spoke to what I was going to mention.

The emails that I saw stated that it was not a contract.

Oh, my apologies.

Yeah, actually Jeff just spoke to what I was going to mention was what I read in the email was that it was an estimate.

Uh and in my opinion, uh what should have happened was before it moved forward, administration, which would have been, and I'm not throwing anyone under the bus, but it would be administration.

Director um I mean it Carl Gefkin would have or should have gone into some kind of different type of contract instead of just the emails with the estimate.

And I think it was the city's responsibility to further communication.

But again, you know, things have been happening ever since we've gotten into these emails with ARM.

So again, you know, we agreed on an estimate, and we should have done our due diligence to move forward.

Um again, it was already stated we already have an ordinance in place where we have a minimum amount of money that can be spent before we have to get it approved before the board.

So I think we're just kind of you know doing the same thing twice.

But again, I think we do a pretty decent job.

I think we drop the ball uh on this one though.

I don't mean and I don't mean we as the board.

I think there's a there's a motion on the floor.

The motion to put it on the agenda.

Yeah, I agree with that.

That's fine.

Do I need four or do I just need one?

Just two.

Okay.

Okay.

I just uh just to speak to what Director Good was saying.

Uh I agree with you, it should have been put into a contract, and that's what that's all this ordinance is saying is that we put it in writing because I w when it was being discussed, I would have brought it up if I had realized that ARM wasn't contracted.

I didn't realize that until just a few meetings ago.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we even have a warranty with this?

Yeah.

Do we get any kind of warranty on the slides?

On the slides, I think there's a one-year warranty for con the efforts done for construction.

One hour?

A one-year warranty after the construction is finished.

After construction.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

With that, we will go to item number three.

Item three is a review of the 2025 carryover and carry forward requests submitted by city departments for incorporation into the FY2026 budget appropriations.

Carry forwards or encumbrances refer to funding that was encumbered through contract or purchase order in 2025 or earlier, but not yet completed.

So the balance of the encumbered funds needs to be carried over so the project purchase can be paid for upon the completion in 2026.

Carryovers are for purchases or projects funded but not completed in 2025 for various reasons.

Chief Financial Officer Andy Richards will further address this item and answer questions from the board.

Okay.

Thank you.

So Jeff, for the items in item A, attachment A.

Things that are under contract or have agreements that are active.

I guess you just further clarify the difference between attachment A and attachment B.

Well uh generally, yes, that's that's true.

The attachment A are the things that have been encumbered in our system as purchase orders.

So there's they're set up in the system.

Uh so typically category B would be uh the carryovers would be items that are like well, we've got unused funds.

We didn't get to these things in 25.

However, there are a few things in there that are under contract, but they they haven't been encumbered in our system and set up as a purchase order yet.

So there's a few of those things.

But I'll I'll say just to that very point.

I mean, Andy, I mean, even we recently has uh been working with several departments to make sure that they are doing those things by issuing purchase orders and getting the dollars encumbered so that we don't have that that element of carryover at the end of the year uh going forward, but that is a work in progress.

Right.

I mean, you know, our departments have the option of creating a what you know like a blanket PO for certain services or projects, or they may just create the PO as each pay app or each bill comes in.

So those that's typically the the differences there.

So we try to encourage them to set up the blanket PO so we get the funds encumbered in the system uh ahead of time.

But uh I want to this uh this new what's up on the screen and what I've passed out.

This is um this is my preliminary number as far as what where we ended up on fund balance at the end of 25.

We're still in the middle of our close.

There's still things coming in that we need to record, but uh I think these are a pretty good number.

Um if you look at the top, so that the first number, that's what the fund balance we projected.

If you look back at the budget that we passed, the projected 25 had 20.5 million for general fund, eight million for street, uh 25.6 for water sewer, 9.5.

So that's what we were so our projected 26 ending balances were based upon starting at that point.

The beginning 26 balances preliminary, 25.7 for general fund 8.3.

That is my tally right now.

What fund balances will end up being uh like I said, we're still closing, there's still things coming in, but I think from the most part we've got most of it.

Uh so based on that number, uh you know, we've got 10.3 million dollars in budget savings from 25, 5.2 of that is in the general fund, 4 million in the watered sewer fund, and then a little bit and street and solid waste.

So wanted to show you that.

You know, um rolling these uh 25 items into 26.

Obviously, want to see kind of where we actually ended in 25 where you make that decision.

So the carryovers are on the bottom.

Uh these totals tie back to the schedules, items that you got in the packet, the individual items that that were the departments requested to carry over or POs that we need to roll forward.

Um we've allocated them out how they impact will impact the funds individually and then create and then you know get back down to what we think um that actually says ending 25 fund balance, but that's actually the revised 26.

What we projected.

So the savings are greater than the amounts that we're asking you to carry over in the 26.

Um see the contingency percentages are still good.

I think we I think the budget we're projecting a 34 percent contingency percentage for the general fund.

Um that number is down to 32.

But that calculation is based upon the amount of expenditures that were that we have.

So you know, we're adding three and a half million dollars in there.

Uh we still have a healthy fund balances by doing this.

Um I wanted you all to see this before you you know make this decision to see, you know.

I think it looks like we you know came under budget in 25.

We're asking the rollover a few things into 26, and um we're still gonna have savings left over from the 25 budget after this, so um that's kind of where we end up.

Okay, thank you.

Mayor uh direct settle.

Director Rigo.

Andy, do we account for the uh money when we when it PO is issued or when we pay the PO?

It's well it's i it's when we incur the service or receive the goods.

So it's after that.

So there could be a PO out there.

We may be paying bills in 26 for stuff that was actually done in 25, we will count those in 25.

But if I were issued a PO for a job X in December for hundred dollars, and it gets done in the end of December, but it gets invoiced to you in January.

Is that in the 25 budget of the 27th?

25.

But would that be a carryover?

No.

Those are not on here.

Okay.

So if it's PO'd and then the work is done in 26.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

So if the so it's P25 of the work or the the good is received in 26, that goes to 26.

Uh-huh.

But we do Okay.

Yeah, I was just looking at counts receivable.

Some people actually when it's PO it goes against the budget, you can hold the money there, so it would be in the 25.

And I think that's what we used to do long time ago.

And I think before you, I think that's what we used to do is we when the year we PO'd it is when we counted it for.

Now we're actually when the services are rendered or when the receipts are good is when you're counting against the cash.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Director Rego and then Director Neil Martin.

I just want to say quickly, when we move forward, Andy, if as we consider these um at you know, when we vote on these, uh, could we have prior to that vote a breakdown that indicates very clearly which of these do we have like active obligations with as far as purchase orders, contracts maybe sorted in that way, and then we could see also separated out the ones that maybe don't have any um uh hard obligations uh with them yet.

Certainly.

Thank you.

And and just just to make sure that I'm clear, these these dollars are going to be coming out of $25.

Year $25, not $26.

Not what we passed from a budget perspective.

It's all coming out of budget for $25.

So we plan to spend that money out of our 25 budget, right?

Right.

These these items that are in there.

So at the end of the year, your the appropriations that you made for us to spend that money, those things end.

So if this is allowed to do that, stuff and so if if if things get delayed, it's just a matter of timing.

So if the stuff happens in January instead of December, there's no budget for that.

You gotta, or you gotta use your twenty-six budget dollars that you didn't intend.

Right.

So this is a matter of putting these dollars in the twenty-six budget, reappropriating those things so that we can pay for those.

Okay.

That makes sense.

So I mean, obviously healthy fund balances across the board.

Um that water and sewer I'm I'm interested in as it relates to our next discussion or the discussion that we'll have here in just a little bit.

But um, you know, I I still think this this shows healthy.

I see a lot of times online people say we're broke.

This doesn't look like we're broke, does it?

I think we made the right moves at the right time.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Director George to say.

And the the the turn back money from the police department every year.

They turn back.

Danny, how much y'all turn back last year?

I don't have total now.

Millions, isn't it?

Sizeable amount, yes.

Okay.

Where does it go?

It just goes back into the general fund reserve.

You're talking about the budgetary savings, uh-huh, what they got appropriate and what they spent.

Yeah, but that also turned back at the end of the year.

It doesn't turn back, it just it it ends.

I mean you the you do you budget for 25 and 25 ends and that goes away and you reappropriate for 26.

What are whatever was whatever savings is whatever was left in any of the police department programs that was unspent at the end of 2025 is part of that 5.2 million dollar number that Andy's got on this schedule.

That's where the money goes.

Yep.

Goes back into the general fund.

And to the general fund.

Okay.

And then does that?

Never mind.

Go ahead.

I'm done.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Any other questions for the first time?

Or Director Good.

Thanks, Mayor.

Andy, just because I'm I want to be certain of what Director Rio was asking for.

So next week you're going to provide us with a list.

And it will have on that list those funds that were that are going to be rolled over and for who and for how much.

The reason I'm asking is is I had a conversation before the meeting started about Ms.

Lauros.

And I know they had requested funds.

The board had spoke on it, but I don't know if how much of that we are going we're talking about funding.

If there's any amount that was encumbered that we're not going to fund or we are going to fund.

So I just want to make sure that that's broken down in such a way that we'll see that the organization or the agency or the group and the amount of money that we're proposing.

I mean, those it was in the study session packet, that list.

There's two lists, attachment A and attachment B, and that's everything is listed now.

I thought there was it is.

I thought there was money for Ms.

Lores in there.

It's included on attachment B.

Is it like 333,000?

299,000.

Okay, I'm looking at that.

So I'm not certain.

There was personnel and operating This is just capital, these are just capital numbers.

I can fourth one down on page 21.

I see it.

So this I mean this I think goes to the question that I had was the is the difference between attachment A and attachment B, the attachment A are things that have actual active either contracts, pay orders, et cetera, and attachment B is attachment B a representation of things that um have been talked about and planned for by department heads or departments but don't have a firm contract or PO or work order or things like that.

They're not they're not quite far enough along.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think uh I think attachment B has a mix of those things.

Okay, that's okay.

So that's what I thought you had said earlier.

Right.

So I wanted a bit more clarity on attachment B prior to the vote on this.

Yeah.

So I mean I can you can kind of tell by looking.

Well, if you could just break it out for us, that would be good.

Thank you.

I will do that.

Any uh any other questions for Andy?

Okay.

You have not, thank you.

I make a motion to place the carry-over and carry forward requests uh on the next regular meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

John will go to item number four.

Item four is the annual review of the city's auto and property insurance renewals for the last several years.

The staff has presented the study session review of the auto and property insurance program so that the program renewal can be approved by the board in advance of the March 1 renewal date.

The Finance Department staff and our advisors, Philip Mary and Denise Engel have been working through this renewal and are prepared to present the details of it to the board this evening.

Uh Mr.

Richards, along with Ms.

Engel and Mr.

Mary are uh here to lead this discussion.

Okay.

I'm going to pass it over to to uh Denise and Philip to present the thank you.

Phil on December 24th.

Um we had a bad accident in my family involving my wife.

And so uh for the last two months I've done the best I could to dig in deep for you all.

But uh we're getting closer to getting Lee Mary back on track.

It's a very uh serious situation.

I say this to say I've relied very heavily on the nice lady to my hard right, Denise Ingle.

And I am very grateful for her partnership, and I'm gonna let her go first.

Thank you.

Administrator, mayor, and directors, thank you for your time tonight, and thank you for allowing us to present this item.

Um I'm Denise Ingall.

I am with the public entity practice of Arthur J.

Gallagher, which is uh third largest broker in the world.

Uh just to kind of give you a quick uh summary.

We have reviewed the renewal opportunity with the Arkansas Municipal League Municipal Property and Vehicle Program, and it's our recommendation that that move forward to the next meeting for a vote.

I'll give you a very high level view of it just to kind of I'm sure you don't want to uh too technical in the weeds uh resources on this.

We could uh get into that in great detail later, but we did put a few things in your packet for you to review.

One thing I wanted to note very quickly is that in this program, and one of the reasons we're recommending it is that uh you have actually come out in a situation where your losses have exceeded the participation, their dollar participation in this program by a significant amount.

Um as you're sitting right now, you're at a basically two to two to one on the property, two dollars paid out on your behalf for every dollar you've paid into the program.

The program is making some adjustments and trying to true up uh some areas, and we'll get into that in a little bit, but I just wanted to let you know that last year you were at 31 cents per hundred dollars of property value, and this year with your rate increase that was a total rate increase through the whole program was two cents, and then there's a three cent surcharge on top of that.

So you'll be sitting at a total of 36 cents per hundred dollars of property value cost for that program on the property side.

We'll leave the vehicles separate to that.

Um but that is uh a very modest increase for the for the amount of difference you have between the two to one situation.

Um but there's a really important factor that I want you to be aware of.

They have the lowest deductible program available for you out there.

So you're really in a situation where your ten thousand dollars per building or ten thousand per occurrence, depending on this situation, and the difference of that versus the property market, and I place multi-million and billions of dollars worth of uh property placements all over the region, and I can assure you that you could not hit that without at least uh a 5% wind hail deductible and a million dollars per occurrence out the door.

Uh then on top of that you would have to pay premiums, which would probably range just basically on the estimates that I'm getting in my markets now.

This is with a very high loss ratio like that.

Uh you'd be looking at probably close to a million and a half in premiums.

So that would be a lot of money out the door, and it would have a significant impact on your budget.

Therefore, it's our recommendation that you stay in the Arkansas Municipal League property program on the vehicle side, you're basically a dollar and a half to one dollar in participation dollars over the last five years.

So you're in a similar situation.

And on that, uh those are $1,000 per vehicle deductible.

Um if we were to go in the standard market, we could probably get less uh premium out the door in your total pay, but your deductible would be significant.

Uh the the challenge that you run into is that many cities, especially your size and larger self-insure these things, but they have to set up the funds ahead of time.

They have to have all the resources in place to manage the losses and to push that number lower so that you're not having that kind of outflow, as well as making sure that it doesn't have an adverse budget effect.

Uh so when you look at larger cities, they're already setting aside millions of dollars to pay, and it has a sinking fund, and you're not in that position at this point.

So we are trying to make sure that you're gonna stay as whole as possible through this.

Um just to give you a quick summary.

Um each of you received a memorandum from uh administrator Dingman, uh, and that has on there the premiums paid, the auto equipment uh and the property, and then the total on there.

Um just to give you a quick summary um each of you received a memorandum from uh Administrator Dingman uh and that has on there the premiums paid the auto equipment uh and the property and then the total on there uh we want to make uh make you aware that that is the invoice that was received a few weeks ago from AML uh for the property was one point eight three three million dollars however that is your starting point there are that was at the property that was on the schedule at the time at the values that they were at that time uh there was uh an appraisal done by an outside service at the behest of AML to ensure that your properties are valued appropriately so that if God forbid you had a terrible you know class four or five tornado come through here and level things you'd be able to replace them not just you know depreciate them and so they wanted to make sure that your values were accurate and they sent that appraisal document to your staff here at the city roughly a week ago.

Uh the document is over 350 pages.

So we are coming through that diligently and uh Andy has supplied us with uh many rundowns they've had a lot of analysis that's gone through it with his staff and they're estimating that that's gonna be another 75 to 100,000 once you put that in they've also requested that we put in the um that we separate line item the generators for the city which is a critical infrastructure item and uh is required under many uh many grants and many uh laws.

So we want to make sure that that's accurate but we do believe that that will come in in the range of a hundred thousand additional uh to the one point eight three three million uh but that's not been invoiced yet so that's a process they the staff here actually have to input each and every item into the system and then the um and then the uh AML system will produce an invoice to true that up uh as we go forward yes sir I'd like to interject that your property values are well over half a billion in property values and we were I'm so excited it's only seventy five thousand dollars they could they they had carte blanche they whatever they say goes and if you don't agree to it then they won't give you replacement cost so I'm very proud that they hung in they kept it very realistic and in my view very fair at only 75K so it's our recommendation that you move forward with this and then also on the auto equipment uh they review that the staff is reviewing that and making sure that vehicles are uh admitted and deleted uh as have been made over the last few weeks to make sure that number is accurate but right now you have an invoice uh of eight hundred and twenty thousand we do anticipate that'll probably increase a little bit just from vehicles that were you know gotten rid of and then others that were added in but that would be a a relatively smaller number so any questions okay thank you very much are there any questions do you want to share the water park no they do they the separate ARM contract covers that well they are they have the liability policy but I believe the cities the city's property coverage covers the liability in case people get hurt correct who has a liability the operator is required to carry liability the liability for slip and fall product bad bad hot dog that kind of thing uh were on the property and we can get you that exact number if you'd like yeah I would thank you.

I think it's about 49,000 dollars.

Is that right Jeff?

That's all right that's correct.

About 49,000 dollars for the year.

That will that's very possible that it may increase later in the year the appraiser did indicate he wanted to come back when the park was operational to double check some figures there.

So there'll probably be a small factor uh that would be added to the addition of more equipment it's gonna be a bigger more premium correct.

Yes that's that's a given yes.

Okay.

So you're looking at 36 cents per hundred dollars of value is the that's the blended rate that currently is uh is assigned to City of Fort Smith.

Do they have a value on the water park?

Do they all have a value of the total value?

I mean I'm gonna get you an email tomorrow to me and limit and force of that facility and the premium being standing forty nine.

Thank you.

Well, I was having a hard time following it when I looked in the budget because it's been moved from several different lines.

So it appeared to me it had gone up by 46,000.

But I I couldn't determine because things had been moved around in our budget.

Whether values before the increase appraisal, there's going to be a value rate last year, rate this year, then rate this year with surcharge because of the 200 percent loss ratio.

It has been moving around.

I we're nearing the end, but we're not there yet.

Uh oh, I'm not specific to the water part.

Right.

That's what I'm talking about.

Okay.

Thank you.

And I want to make sure I spoke clearly again.

Thank you, Jeff.

Uh liability, slip and fall, bad hot dog, that kind of thing.

That's through the resort management team.

Property is here with with your property in the non-departmental.

Thank you.

You get a real detailed item tomorrow on that.

Director Camp.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um Jeff, can you weigh in on what this costs?

Because I I see the report, I agree, and I appreciate y'all's work, especially when you talk about combing through long documents, making sure you're doing that, and I really thank you for what you are doing.

Does this impact the budget conversation of what we projected and uh what we've allotted in our fiscal uh 26 and how we thought insurance costs was going to come at us?

It will.

I mean, we already we did project a little bit of an increase in the numbers that we included in the budget, anticipating you know approximately this 1.83.

Um, the additional amount that uh the folks spoke about that we might see later in the year about for relative to increased valuations that wasn't included in our budget discussions.

But as Mr.

Mary and Ms.

Engel have said, you were looking at about 75-ish thousand based on calculations of what we think it will be.

But that'll be across all funds, and so a good portion of that will be utility funds, some portion to general funds.

You know, it'll be spread across the funds appropriately.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions for our guests?

We mentioned a minute ago about generators.

Generators are typically very big large items.

Most of the time might even be bolted down and affixed to the building.

When that occurs, that becomes part of the building, and so the building value includes the generator.

AML's underwriting team feels it more appropriate that generators, whether they're belted down or are free loose, separate and movable, that they should be described separately and uh and and added accordingly, like you would rings on a homeowners or something.

Separate annotation declaration of each item, serial number, make model value, uh, and limit.

And so we're undergoing that as well.

Okay.

Thank you.

Uh we need to put this on the agenda.

Yes, please.

So moved.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll go to item five.

Thank you, Mayor.

Item five tonight is a discussion of the city's comprehensive plan to address water infrastructure needs.

This discussion stems from recent comments from the board that it would like to review any master planning that has been done on the city's water infrastructure.

The city has planned for the future development of the water system by working with Hawkins Weir Engineers represented here the next evening to develop a water system master plan, which is last updated in December of 2022.

The plan addresses infrastructure needs for water supply, water demand and usage, recommended distribution system improvements and improvement to water treatment and water transmission facilities.

And I'll say that one of the benefits of Mr.

Mitke being new to his position is he's offered a fresh set of eyes to what we're showing here tonight and offers a fairly independent perspective at this point.

Uh but I'll I'll turn it over to Mr.

Mitke after he's done distributing his goods here.

Todd, welcome.

Thank you, Mr.

Dingman.

Thank you for having me tonight.

I come to you before you today to discuss the city's comprehensive plan for our water system as we move forward.

I came to the city approximately a month ago and have been digging into our water, sewer, streets, and stormwater systems as much as I can.

My goal is to bring a fresh and unbiased view to the city as we look to future projects.

In my view, the city has a water system that many would envy.

Excellent past planning practices in previous generations have secured two large-scale water reservoirs to serve us and surrounding customers.

Our system delivers good water to between 150,000 and 200,000 people in the Arkansas River Valley, and it also includes two counties in Oklahoma.

City management has a sincere desire to keep the system in robust working order, and the users have a very justifiable, high expectation of service.

Operationally, the public works and water resources departments have crews ready to work 24 hours a day to keep the system working, and city employees take pride in ownership in the job that they do.

As infrastructure ages, every city must continue to plan for the future and maintain what they have.

Fort Smith does this, and as the new director director of engineering, I'm very encouraged by that.

As we look to any comprehensive plan for a city, we should look to our working culture to expect excellence in our daily work.

Providing the best possible services to the citizens of Fort Smith and many and our many other customers.

As we look to our operational main operational maintenance and capital projects, the future of our system, I see that we already have an excellent working culture with the staff here at Fort Smith.

That should not be taken lightly because some public agencies do not have that.

I will now go over some details in our comprehensive plan.

This water master plan was developed by Hawkins Weir in 2022 and still applies today.

I'm gonna summarize our system a little bit, because it's important for everybody to know how big our system is and how much we have invested in it.

So we have approximately seven seven hundred and nineteen miles of water line in our city, ranging between between three quarters of an inch and sixty inch diameter pipes.

That's a lot.

Imagine 719 miles.

The Fort Smith water system is supplied by water impoundments at Lake Fort Smith and Lee Creek Reservoirs, both in Crawford County, Arkansas.

Lake Fort Smith is located near Mountainburg, and it's our primary water water source.

In 2006, construction was completed on the enlarged dam that combined the older Lake Fort Smith and the Lake Shepherd Springs into an expanded combined impoundment of 84,000 acre feet of water.

That's one foot deep, 84,000 acres equivalent for the full depth of the reservoir.

The Lee Creek Reservoir is located near Van Buren and is a secondary water source.

When it was completed in 1992, the impoundment had 7100 acre feet of water storage.

We have two treatment plants supplying potable water to the city and its retail customers.

Lake Fort Smith water treatment plant is located immediately downstream of our large dam structure, and it was originally constructed in 1935, and as I said earlier, completed in 2006 with the expansion.

Its capacity is approximately 40 million gallons per day.

The future expansions at Lake Fort Smith water treatment plants, most of which are shown in this 10-year CIP, which is item six on the agenda tonight, is intended to increase the treatment capacity from 40 million gallons per day to 70 million gallons per day.

The Lee Creek treatment plant has a capacity of approximately 10 million gallons per day, and we do use that regularly.

They are two different water sources, so we blend them throughout the city, and that does have some issues as we have an extremely cold water coming from Lake Fort Smith and slightly warmer at Lee Creek.

So that is what I've learned, some of the reason for our tanks having excessive condensation in the summertime, and we get the bad look to them from that.

So having cold water is not a bad thing.

I like ice-cold water coming out of my tap too, but it causes some complications when uh that condensation occurs.

As you are very well aware, our transmission line improvement project is through five phases.

Luckily, the first phase is done, but it was only six miles.

So the new transmission line total is about 35 miles, and we got a lot more work to do and not enough funds to do it, as I'll uh come up with later.

In our infrastructure, we have uh 16 pump stations throughout the city.

We have 13 water storage tanks and four clear wells.

Clear wells are large storages up at the reservoirs themselves within the water treatment plant boundaries.

But the water storage is including the ground tanks and elevated storage tanks you see throughout the city.

As any system has, we have limitations on our water delivery through leaks.

We have non-revenue water and revenue water.

Everybody wants everything to be revenue water, but no system has it.

I've not seen a single system in the United States that has less than 2% of uh non-revenue water.

Uh usually it's much more than that.

According to the master plan that I'm reviewing is our approximate percentage in 2022 was 25 percent.

It may be a little bit higher now, maybe a little bit lower.

One thing I want to highlight is our excellent public works department and water resources department have fixed 90 percent of the leaks since this was first presented in September of 2025.

So 90 percent is huge from 600 and some leaks down to 60 some leaks.

So I'd like to apply that.

Is that correct?

Yes, that's right.

So there could still be potential leaks that we don't even know about.

There could be.

There always could be.

One of the dangers I have seen both in sewer and water throughout where I've worked in the country is when you have a water main down by a creek somewhere, you're never going to find that unless there's other avenues, and I'd like to talk a little bit about that from one of your ideas.

For a system our size and our age, what is typical water loss?

Is it about 20 percent?

Are we a little over where we should be, or are we right on target for our our size and our age?

In my opinion, 15 to 20 percent would be 15 to 20.

Optimal.

Zero would be best, but 15 to 20 percent would be the average.

Okay.

So we are a little bit high.

Okay, thank you.

Absolutely.

So where does that non-revenue water go?

Like I said, leaks is one of them.

Another one is we exercise our fire hydrants hydrants regularly.

We don't pay for that water, but we need that water to circulate and keep that water fresh in the fire hydrants.

Our fire department does an excellent job of that, but that's non-revenue water, and that's everybody, everybody does that.

Um revenue water is is sold to over a dozen customers, and I don't want to list them all because I miss one, but throughout the river valley, throughout the Sebastian Crawford County area, some outlying counties and to in La Flore and Sequoia County and Arkansas in Oklahoma.

So we are lucky to partner with with them, and it is a privilege to serve them, but we also owe it to our customers to preserve the resources and have everyone pay for what they use.

Um in September of 2025, Director Kotsavis brought up an idea of a satellite satellite-based leak protection.

I did a little bit of research on that.

There's two main companies that I have found that that perform that, Astera and Paradigm.

And basically it's exactly what you would think.

A satellite flies over the city as they often do, and we pay for some of their time to to do some special scans and as they call it, find underground moisture and temperature and anomalies that indicate likely leak points.

So Arlington, Texas, and Midland, Texas both performed that with Astera and Paradigm.

And it matters because satellite scans can cover large areas with a single pass.

In Paris, I did something similar to this that I'd like to institute similar project except it was from an airplane to get survey points for better contours for our local surveyors and our local design projects.

This is along the same lines but from the 50 mile scale instead of the half a mile scale.

But it's the same general idea of laser shots on the ground and infrared and other ways to find moisture anomalies.

So do you have um data on what they what the reductions were with the with the leaks they found?

Because some of the numbers I saw, if we're looking at, I think we're producing what 29 million gallons a day, a three to five percent reduction in loss could be up to a million and a half gallons per day, which I think may be equivalent to what that new transmission line is gonna bring in.

I do not have specific on what our system would be because they really need to run the system first, and we don't see a lot of water loss on our transmission line.

It's mostly through smaller leaks throughout the city.

Right.

Well, well, my thinking was that we've been talking about this transmission line.

It's you know, I think over 500 million dollars should we be pursuing other lower cost options to recover some of our water.

In my opinion, we should.

We should look at every option.

But it will, in my also my opinion, it would not remove the need for that transmission line improvement down to Fort Chaffee.

But it might buy us a little more time where we can make it a little more financially feasible.

It definitely wouldn't hurt.

Thank you.

And I'm up with every option.

This is I you can maybe sense my excitement with what we have here because we don't a lot of cities don't have what we have.

And I want to build on our success.

But using an option like this satellite leak protection or leak detection is could gonna cost between 60,000 and 150,000.

It's non-programmed money, but you could see things that we would never find without eyes on the ground.

Our our public works crews notice things all the time.

Generally, I know we're no different here, Matt, please correct me.

But as soon as we find something, we're on it.

But if we can't see it in the trees or in a near creek somewhere, it could be years.

And yeah, if if we get into even 200,000 gallons a day, we're talking about real money with that.

So I'm all for it.

We'd need to program that probably in a budget amendment or the 2027 budget, in my opinion, but it's worth pursuing, and I'll get more data if the board would like me to.

Just let me know.

Um I have asked Hawkins Weir to update something they presented to the board approximately two years ago, but still applies today.

And Wes, uh, would you mind coming forward?

I'm gonna share the microphone with him.

Um he's provided a PowerPoint presentation to to help communicate this, but our Fort Chaffee area is growing very fast.

And the way we would get water there is circumspect in different areas of our our transmission lines.

And so the importance of getting our main transmission lines from Lake Fort Smith down to Chaffee Crossing area is critical in the future, and Wes will be here to present this.

Absolutely.

Thanks, Todd.

So this presentation may look familiar to a lot of you.

I think Director Kemp, you weren't here at the time, but we presented this initially in February of 24 to the board.

Um we've revised that today.

Um we've abbreviated a few of the slides because the biggest updates we wanted to make were the demand projections, because that's kind of the biggest focus of this area.

Um today's agenda, we're going to go through the demand projections, provide a flow diagram, kind of your Chaffee crossing area.

Um, look at some deficiencies in and around the area and some improvements that help resolve some of those deficiencies as well as review water storage, and then we'll get into kind of a summary with questions at the end.

Um so as Todd mentioned, I'll start with the legend over here on the right.

Uh we've got several um terms that I wanted to define before we get started.

So ADD would be your average daily demand, MDD, maximum daily demand, MGD million gallons per day, and MG will be million gallons.

So starting at the top of this diagram, uh Todd mentioned you have two treatment plants, Lee Creek, which has a capacity of 10 million gallons, and your Lake Fort Smith water treatment plant, which has a capacity of 40 million gallons.

Um the initial uh presentation to the board was based on 2024 projections.

Uh we have since updated that.

Um initially we developed the master plan in 2022.

Uh in late 2023, early 2024, we were notified of some approved developments that were going to go in in the Chaffee Crossing area that were pretty significant demands that were not accounted for in the initial master plan development.

So we updated demand projections.

At the time, it was anticipated that you would be at 49.9 MGD for your 2024 maximum daily demand.

Well, we've got more recent data provided by Fort Smith for this update, and it looks like that projection has slid, so now maybe some of those developments didn't quite progress the way they thought they would.

More recent projections are the max day demand will not exceed 50 MGD, which is your treatment and transmission capacity, until 2027 going into 2028.

Um to the bottom portion of this slide, you have north half of your system, south half of your system.

Uh our presentation today is going to focus on Chaffee Crossing area, which is located in the southern part of your system.

And so that includes your our presentation.

We'll talk about your loose and wildcat tank service area, Chaffee Crossing tank service area, Jack Freeze, and your Howard Hill tank service area.

All those located in and around the Chaffee Crossing area.

Um this is one of the main focal points today is the demand projection.

So initially, after the the updated uh developments, we were anticipating you were going to exceed 50 MGD, which is the red line you see here.

That's your total treatment transmission capacity for both treatment plants in 2024.

You can see kind of at the start, the the jagged lines here at the beginning of the graph.

That's real world data that we were provided from the utility to update this this graphic.

So in 2023 you saw around 45 MgD for maximum daily demand, which is your green line.

2024, your maximum daily demand was 47.7 MGD, and then in 2025 we saw a slight reduction again around 45 and a half to 46 MGD.

So for our projections, that's your max number, right?

Yes, sir.

That's the most daily number.

No, so the blue line you see here on the the bottom half is your average daily demand, which you're not anticipating exceeding fifty MGD until 2043 to the right.

I get that, but when you say this, people perceive it that that's what we're doing daily.

This is a max hot summer, 110 degree number you're projecting.

Yep.

A one or two day a year, not a daily number.

Yeah.

Well we we reviewed those, there was around because that was a question last time we presented on how many maximum daily demands there were.

Maximum daily demand is just that.

It's the the max for the year.

But there were um over 20 days within 10 percent of the maximum daily demand.

I understand that.

Just trying to get that number.

So we're averaging about 30 three million gallons a day.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

And and this takes into account the rate increases that were just implemented a couple years ago that has dropped demand.

Yes, sir.

And that's that's why we so we based it off the twenty twenty twenty-four data, which is 47.7 and we projected at the 1.5 percent growth rate that was outlined in the master plan.

There was uh a dip in 2025.

It was a drier year, and there's potential rate sensitivity to the more recent rate increases that could have contributed to that.

Um but we have based the projections here today off the 2024, 47.7 projected forward at 1.5 percent.

Okay, so it's technically not taking into account the the drop in the the rate increase.

If you look at 24.

If you project directly from 2025, it does not there could be a a slight dip in that is if that was to continue in 2026 and I have a question about the projections, because there was uh something I was reading, it said in like 20 years ago we were at about 29 million gallons a day.

Like we hadn't increased that much in nearly 20 years.

So why are we suddenly seeing this huge increase in demand?

So that may have been the average day demand that you were looking at.

So our average day demand is as you can see the blue line, it's around 35 MGD.

The maximum daily demand is significantly higher in those summer months where you'll see that that spike in demand that gets you closer to your treatment transmission capacity.

But if you look at you know, over 20 years, just your average daily demand, I mean it's it's increasing what about 15 years.

Whereas over the past 20 years it's been relatively stable.

Yeah.

And we we kind of detail how we um projected the growth in the master plan.

We looked at several factors, including population projections, y'all's water production data um and usage from just your wholesale users alone to come up with uh a roundabout um projection.

Um it was around one percent for population projections, point eight point.86 percent for your um wholesale users and uh don't recall what the number was for the total water production, but um we met with utility staff and it was kind of agreed on that 1.5 percent was probably the best growth rate to move forward with.

Can we have the same chart from 2010 to to today?

So go from 2010 to 2050.

Actual usage to 24 and your projections.

We can.

Um I I don't have that here today, but absolutely.

Thank you.

If I could, I'll slide in on this one.

On the days, you said there were 20 days in 25 that we were within 10 percent?

2024.

2024.

Yeah.

How many days did they uh did it actually happen that we are at demand or beyond demand?

So you you never exceeded 50 MgD in 2024.

You're the green line here is the peaks.

So it just came within 10 percent, is what you're saying?

Yeah.

So we we were at 47.7 in 2024, so 2.3 MgD shy of your treatment transmission companies.

And then if the city Do we have a policy that if we're we know when those days are coming, I mean, can that be implemented a policy that allows alternate water days for just that one?

I mean, are we talking about a week here, or are we talking about the summer season?

It all depends on the weather, honestly, and how much people water.

So we have from what I've been told, we have uh irrigation rate.

Well, I know this, but we we base our water water demand uh payments from everybody from all the ratepayers based on their their winter average.

And so when that goes over winter average, you have an irrigation rate in the summer.

And I know that our public information officer does their best to get social media blitzes out saying, hey, it's getting dry, uh please pres conserve water and and everything, but folks don't have to do that.

It's all reflected in their water rates.

The more they use, the more they pay.

But when they we don't have a way to curb that and uh throttle anybody with with the Sure, no, and I'm not advocating for that.

I was just more like when that happens, do we find that that helps?

I mean, does it actually bring that demand down?

I mean, do is it get us through that patch?

That's something I'll have to find, Jimmy.

Do you know offhand if that helps those warnings?

Um historically helped a lot.

So for example, last year when we had a uh main water line break, we put an issues out and we hardly see any variation in our water usage over two week period.

Well I'll say we do have the those water conservation measures is what Jimmy is referring to that we implemented during that program.

And when we have you know sustained period when we're hitting up against these these maximum um maximum usage, we can elect to implement water conservation measures for for that reason.

Um that'll I mean we are going to have a topical discussion on on that process and what that means, but that is something that is applic uh applicable to our retail users in the city, and it's also applicable to our wholesale users.

With that, we'll move on.

Um this is a flow diagram in and around the Chaffee Crossing area.

Uh as I discussed earlier, this is not your entire distribution system, it's just that southern part that we focused on for this presentation.

So uh it starts with your loose and wildcat ground storage tanks, um kind of on the the northern portion of your southern southern system.

Um those two tanks are connected, they're your primary sources of storage for your southern part of the system.

Uh they both loose um provide supply pressure to the Brook Stephen pump station, which fills your uh Jack Freeze tank.

Your Jack Freeze tank provides supply pressure to the Rye Hill pump station, which then fills your Howard Hill tank.

Uh moving back to the top on the right side, your uh Chaffee Crossing pump station is also supplied by your loose and wildcat ground storage tanks, and then Chappie Crossing Pump Station fills your Chaffee Crossing water storage tank, which provides supply pressure to the woods pump station, um which fills your woods tank.

The the blue lines you see here, existing transmission lines, the the green lines represent um proposed improvements.

So start on the bottom right, the one between the Howard Hill elevated tank and your Chaffee Crossing ground storage tank.

Um that's an interconnection to help between those pressure planes to help resolve uh minimum pressure deficiencies in that area, which are uh there's currently low pressures in that area already.

And then the green line on the left side of your screen that represents the highway 45 transmission line, which that project is currently under construction right now with uh estimated completion date of 2027.

And then moving back to the top right of your screen, there's a graphic again representing the Lake Fort Smith water treatment plant, and the the red line is the proposed 48-inch transmission line and just kind of a general uh diagram of where it would connect into the Chaffee Crossing area.

Um these next three graphics show some of the deficiencies in and around the Shaffee Crossing area.

Um the the red icons represent where we're seeing residual pressures less than 20 PSI, yellow or between 20 and 35 PSI for residual pressures.

And I should note that all of these are based on the 2027 maximum daily demand of 49.8 MgD.

Um daily average?

Uh we do not have the average daily here.

No.

Can you overlay that?

So we can.

And I can speak to that.

There's there's not going to be another one to do.

It's gonna change, it's gonna go up because you have less demand.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yes, your pressure will be much better.

Green that says 35 and above, and then you're gonna see it's supposed to be green.

Yes, sir.

Um so I'll start down here.

The purple area, purple arrow on the bottom of your screen is the kind of your rye hill area.

The blue arrow is just north of Ben Garren Park.

Uh orange arrow is zero street just below the the Moody Road pressure zone, which is kind of your skyline drive area, and then the green uh arrow is that's a dedicated line going to your Mazard water treatment plant just north of Rogers Avenue.

Um I hate to interrupt here, but that chart does not say maximum pressure.

So that's the that's the misleading part of this.

It doesn't say based on maximum daily usage anymore.

Yes.

And that's why I wanted to clarify.

It is based off your maximum daily demand, but it's so when you put that up there, people will see that and think that's a problem based on average use instead of maximum usage.

Gotcha.

We'll get that revised if we present again.

Um with that, I'll I just wanted to kind of show what the potential impacts were, and I apologize.

This is this is existing demands.

This is with the 2027 maximum daily demands.

So as you can see, there's already deficiencies in the right hill area.

When you project a 2027 demands, you see some additional deficiencies in a few of these other areas with exacerbated deficiencies up around your green arrow with your the supply line to the Mazard water treatment plant.

Um this final graphic shows if the highway 45 and the Chad Collie, the two transmission lines in town that we talked about were uh installed.

Um this would be the impacts that you'd see.

Your deficiencies in the Rye Hill area would go away.

Um but we wanted to illustrate the importance of the transmission line and water treatment plant because as you can see, the green arrow, for example, or I'm sorry, the orange arrow, for example.

Um, this is without those transmission lines, this is with those transmission lines, and the reason for that is you're resolving it you're limited on the amount of flow that you can pull into the system.

So you're resolving deficiencies one area in in one area, but you're pulling flow from other areas to help resolve those deficiencies.

What is normal pressure for a household?

Uh for a household you'd like to maintain over 35 PSI.

If you have less than 35 for two-story residences or ones that climb an elevation from their meter to the house, you can start seeing some pressure issues within the residents.

Can you um just clarify one thing?

Because I'm having trouble reconciling the growth projections.

Um the 19 year in annual growth from 2000 to 2019 was 0.04.

Now we're anticipating 1.5% a year.

Yes.

So again, where's all this growth coming from?

That's what I'm having a hard time reconciling.

So we had, as I mentioned earlier, we had several projections we looked at.

We looked at population projections, we looked at both the 19 year annual growth and the more recent nine year growth.

So 19 year was 0.04%, nine year annual growth was 1.14% when you're looking at water usage.

Um, and then your wholesale users was around 0.8% growth, uh 0.86% growth.

What page you referencing on the that's this is what's in our packet, right?

Yes, this is page.

I've seen these.

I just there's a bunch of different growth.

Yeah.

Okay.

57.

Uh 54 for uh the revenue water.

Yeah, and I'm gonna get there.

Page 55 in the packet for the demand projections.

Yes.

Um, I'm starting to get into populations.

Yeah, I don't think we're matching up whatever you've got.

Is that the 22 plan?

This is the 22 plan, yes.

Um I'm on page it's actually page 21 of the master plan, but I don't know how that's here today.

Yes, sir.

I got it.

Is that uh 19 year growth of 0.04 and nine year 1.14?

Yes, sir.

Okay, yeah, I'm with you.

Uh I'm just um I'm worried we may be overestimating the growth.

It's um and something it could be adjusted.

Yeah.

We could look at that.

It absolutely could.

And this section of the report, this 5.3 starting on page 21, kind of talks about the justification of why we went with 1.5 percent.

Um there were several factors that we considered.

Um we tried to look at all avenues of potential growth.

Um I know there was some potential um areas at the Chaffee with Fort Chaffee, they were looking at certain um uh pretty substantial amount of growth there, which is explained in this report, I believe, and then um just with the 1.14 percent, we we hate to estimate on the wrong side of growth.

So we we aired on the side of caution there with after discussions with utility staff, and that's why we settled on 1.5.

But it can certainly be reconsidered and look at an alternative growth rate.

Um next graphic here, this is talks about the water storage in and around the Chaffee Crossing area.

Um the initial presentation included all six tanks.

It was a pretty busy graph, so we've simplified it here today with just one graphic that shows the total volume of storage.

This includes your your loose, your wildcat, your Jack Freeze, Chaffee Crossing, Howard Hill, and your Woods tank, all in basically in one graphic.

Um your total storage volume of those five tanks is 27.5 million gallons.

Um and for the purposes of our hydraulic model, the initial volume at the 20 we did a 24 hour simulation was 22 and a half million gallons.

And at the end of a 24 hour simulation for the 2027 max day demand, you saw around five million gallons of storage um depleted, so you're down to 17.5 at the end of the day.

Uh it's just important to note that if you were to see sustained maximum daily demand, you would consent continue to see a depletion of storage in that area.

And then finally we'll get to a summary.

Um noted that the green lines are the two improvements that we talked about within the distribution system in this area, the highway 45 utility relocation project and the the Chad Collie extension, that helps to resolve some deficiencies in and around the area.

But ultimately the bigger priority in this area is the the treatment plan and transmission line upgrades because your treatment transmission capacity is your is your limiting factor in this area.

And with that, I'll open to any questions that shall have.

So I'm sorry, Mayor.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

What is it gonna be the total cost of this?

Is that we're gonna get to the cost of the 10 year plan here in the next agenda item, but overall the cost is considerable to get the um transmission line.

Just what we show here to get transmission line uh the rest of it done is around 200 million dollars.

Down through the river.

Yeah, from from the end of phase one into Chaffee Crossing.

But that's with today's dollars and these are baseline estimates, they're not engineers' estimates, so more effort needs to be put into those, but it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been reported before.

How are we gonna pay for that?

We need new money.

I don't know how we can do it.

I have s some recommendations, but there I'm going after any grant I can find.

There's uh the the topic at the board meeting last week of getting a mile of free boring uh to be paid for, which is approximately 15 million dollars in value.

I'm going after things like that.

Anything our grant coordinator, Chris Hoover, has we got fifteen million dollars worth of federal appropriations in this that I don't want to lose, so that's what I'm gonna get in the next agenda item.

But we got to look at all the options.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Did you record Rico?

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Uh may you please uh thank you for your presentation.

May you please send us um this revised version reflecting the the questions and the additional changes um when you get it completed, because I know it wasn't in the packets.

We just had it up here, so would you mind sending it to us?

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And we're gonna ask for a 1.14% growth instead of 1.5.

And that's exactly what the trend was for the average annual in the previous 10 years to this report.

So it'll show exactly what was grown.

One one thing I want to plan for is we know Arkansas is growing.

NWA is getting it right now.

I think it's coming down here.

Um I want to be ready for it.

Doesn't mean we should keep it from investing.

I think we shouldn't continue investing.

But my recommendation is for us to look at what our kids and grandkids are going to need.

And personally, as a city engineer, the way I make decisions is what the city engineer in 50 years, 100 years is going to wish I did, and what the public in 50 and 100 years is gonna wish I did.

And that's why I'm glad that we have these sorts of discussions, and I'm open to any ideas y'all have any time.

So i if we do nothing.

What year will we be water neutral?

I mean, will we can't no more water supply?

Uh, we wouldn't say like it is now.

How many how many more years could we make it?

Could we go back to slide number five, please?

I mean, considering the same amount of growth.

Let's try this one here.

So on our average daily demand, if we do nothing, we would be around 2041.

We would be hitting our plant demand that we can do now.

And we wouldn't have water available beyond that.

But that's only on our average day, our maximum day, let's our summer days.

We would start seeing more days where you turn on the the sprinkler to water the yard and not and a trickle comes out, not enough pressure.

You'd run into the second story on a new house in Chaffee Crossing.

So these are the types of things we're trying to plan for so that never happens.

Can we still grab we flow three 30 million gallons a day?

We I don't know the specifics on how many gallons, but we can still gravity flow a lot.

But one of the good things about the trent new transmission line, once we're all the way done with with phase five, we can gravity flow our average daily demand without any problems.

And Jimmy please re please correct me if I'm wrong but we'd be closer to our maximum if we have power outages if the generators go out we could handle it with or even to save money we could turn them off turn off the pumps and run gravity.

That's what I was saying.

Okay.

Thank you.

Director Neil Martin and then uh Director Christian Savannah so what did you say our cost was for the transmission line?

What did we Yeah what we had a presentation before you got here um of transmission line and I'm looking for the board is that for the complete project 200 million because we were told it was either 530 80 it was a whole nother consent degree.

Yeah that's what I'm trying to get at is that is that is for that is for both the water treatment plan upgrades.

That's the treatment plan upgrade for all the way to 70 70 million.

Okay.

So that's where that that's that approximate cost is around 130 to 170 million alone.

Still the math doesn't hit get there.

I think in I need more effort to be done in these numbers in future years to to show because I think these numbers are still a little bit low.

So you you said 200 for the transmission line, 1770, so 370 just so we could we'd have a bigger transmission line and then we could treat that additional demand.

Exactly.

That doesn't take into account distribution system, pumping anything like that.

I'd need a check but I think that included a lot of the especially the Chaffee crossing CIP projects at the end because a lot of in a lot of ways once we get the water into Chaffee crossing we still have millions needed for um improvements.

I mean you would have to do more you are correct that that when we looked at those numbers that was another consent decree in in effect and and not another consent decree but it's it's another dollar amount similar to what we've got left on the on the consent decree on the sewers.

Exactly and one of the problems I see is if we do nothing then I'm afraid we're at risk for a true consent decree from the State of Arkansas the EPA and the Justice Department because they don't like it when people turn on their faucets and there's no m no water.

So they would they would enter a consent decree for that?

Yes.

They have in the past, yeah in other areas of country.

I'm not saying that's where we want to go but I I thought the consent decrees were if you were in violation of some order or some law or something.

Okay.

That's a that is true in our case with the the sewer it is for those reasons but they have a litany of reasons they can use to put folks under consent degree.

Part of it in my research with the consent decree is we are not in a lonely group of consent decree for sewer.

This is not this is off topic but there's hundreds of city feels like it it feels like it but there's hundreds and hundreds of cities throughout the country including a city in my home state of Seattle that is under consent decree, Houston, Texas consent.

I mean you've got the big New York City and consent decrease in some areas.

So I I think this gets back to how do we fund it.

So I go back to this our projected fund balance and and and you know we we had a water rate increase a couple years ago that allowed us to be able to comply with our bondholders or our bond uh issuers and you know we were able to stave that off but you know in terms of funding we've got a 41 percent fund balance um that's healthy um that comes in I think we've got a budget savings there but we've got to figure out is that possible for us to be able to use to be able to fund some of these things uh in order to be able because I mean we've got massive sewer the when somebody gets their water sewer and sanitation that sewer is massive and basically what I what I'm hearing here is we've got to be able to fund the water side if we if that has to get passed on by rates folks are going to get hit doubly hard on top of the rates that were already implemented just to satisfy bondholders.

So you know we've got to we've got to be creative about it but this is this is I think concerning should be concerning to everybody in this room and everybody watching online that this is this is pretty significant challenge here.

If I might add, I mean to satisfy the bondholders, yes, but we also needed to we needed that uh rate increase that we did in July, August of 2024 to help with operating uh operating expenses and just maintaining the system operations.

Now, if you will remember, we also contemplated prior in the earlier part of 24, potentially doing two, you know, incremental increases.

One necess one the one that we did essentially for operations and you know bond covenant issues and such, but we also contemplated if we needed to uh put as essentially a second one, a second round of rate increase to uh specifically address these capital project needs that we knew are coming are coming to us and whether that I mean yes, there is a there is a fund balance in the op in for the water and sewer fund.

But I I mean that forty million dollars is something that we that will help sustain the operations of that fund, but it's not going to sustain this program.

I mean those those dollars are not going to accomplish these projects that we need to accomplish.

I mean, this this says there are zero dollars available for any of these projects.

That is absolutely true.

Zero dollars.

Yes, sir.

Nothing.

Yes, sir.

In 2027, yes.

This tells me all the way to 2035 is starting in twenty twenty things.

Zero expected revenue.

Yes.

And we're using what fund balances we have for the twenty twenty-six projects, the most critical of the critical.

And that's what I'll get to in the next agenda item is showing you what those are, ranked one through nine.

Yes.

Uh Director Christian Savage.

Well, you you mentioned being creative, and that's where I've been advocating for the the satellite or drone-assisted um leak detection.

Because if we can get a million million and a half, two million gallons a day, that significantly stretches out uh our need.

So um, you know, I'd I'd you think that costs about 150,000?

That's my my initial estimate.

We have around 200 square miles that would cover.

So I'm gonna get with our public works department and our GIS department and see what that would be.

I also like to, you know, we we have to run the transmission line too, because as you mentioned in the September meeting, if we have a leak in that transmission line, that that's some serious serious dollars.

But fortunately with with our meters ahead of what is coming out of the Lake Fort Smith and Lee Creek plants and what we have coming into the city, we don't see a lot of loss.

We do see a little bit in this satellite, all they'd have to do is run a little strip along the transmission line of of data gathering for the moisture sensitivity, and they'd be able to see those.

So we could get right on those.

We we could wrap those pipes short term, and I think it's a great idea.

Sir, are we already able to determine how much we're producing but not delivering, or that's really what we need this for?

Uh in my opinion, we would need the satellite for cutting down on that non-revenue water because we know what we make and we know what we charge, and it's elusive where the rest goes.

We know we we exercise a lot of fire hydrants, that's one of them.

We know we just fixed 90 percent of the leaks that were identified as of September, but we don't know where some of those other leaks may be that we haven't been reported.

So I think it's a slim dunk.

If we're spending a hundred thousand or a hundred and fifty thousand and it's buying us several years, I think that's worth looking into the Director Kemp and then Director Rigo.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um thank you both for your presentation.

Uh are we do we have an update?

Are we still testing three-inch water lines or greater?

Are is the city still going to pursue that effort as well of existing customers?

Yeah, testing water meters.

Yes.

Yeah, yes.

And then is there is that still underway or is it going to be underway or is there a timeline of when that starts?

I'll defer to Matt Maker uh operating that program.

While he's coming, uh Mr.

Meekers come in.

I you know, we talk about water leaks, but unaccounted water also includes a faulty meter, correct?

Yeah, absolutely.

And I know just for example, I had a a landlord talk to me this past week and uh the one of their people that they have to pay their water usage.

Um it was reviewed and found out that there was a faulty water meter, and they went from a minimum water bill to an $8,000 a month water bill.

So, you know, it's stuff like that that when we when we catch those things.

This is why I think we should be testing three-inch lines or greater.

And I was just gonna ask uh Mr.

Meeker, is there a timeline of when you would begin looking at that?

Well, it's gonna have to we're waiting on our our uh our equipment to come back.

Uh it's been uh being calibrated currently, and so as soon as that gets back for those larger meters, we're gonna start working on that.

So it's probably a pretty uh is that like a unique thing, like does it take a while to probably get your stuff back for the just uh take yeah, just it it should be back fairly quickly.

I expect it back fairly quickly, it just takes a little bit.

So that's a probably a pretty involved process, isn't it?

I mean, to go through and test the larger lines, does that take a while?

Uh it will.

I mean, we'll just have to dedicate some personnel to it, probably uh two or three individuals at least to it.

So if we if we think if we were at 30 percent water loss, just for easy numbers, 10 percent in leaks, and we're still at 20, but then we find you know, water meters that are not inefficient or inefficient in their registering or inaccurate, really is a better term for it in their readings, and we're able to draw that down to 10 percent, and we only had 10 percent uh unaccounted for water loss.

I wonder what that does to the revenue picture for the utilities department.

That's just a question of mine.

And then we look at, you know.

Because that open up any discussion of revenue bonds so that we are able to now realize we're charging for more water because we know where it's going and how it's how it's coming out.

And then the other one that on this discussion of this that I had to bring to you uh, I remember uh Mr.

Jimmy was talking about at times that there were parts of the city that had too much pressure.

And there was a discussion about installing pressure regular regulation so that we could draw that back.

And I wondered how if we were to pursue something like that, does that help this pressure system that we're talking about?

I know we talked about creating a loop and things of that nature, but if there's over pressurization in one part, and you could regulate that down, not only is that helping with water leaks, but does that help the picture of where the system is struggling?

I would say probably not.

But I would have to defer to the other.

So it's mainly just a water.

I'd have to defer to engineering on that.

So Mr.

Todd, do you have a thought on that?

I do.

From operational, I don't disagree with Mr.

Meeker one bit, but for the long-term water main usage.

Let's say downtown we have a pressure, a high pressure problem for the types of pipes we have.

They're really old, they're cast iron in most cases.

And uh we have some in our 10-year CIP, we have a pressure reducing a couple pressure reducing stations to regulate that.

And we'll talk about this in the next item or now, but uh Jimmy has uh gone through some training and find a dyn dynamic pressure control system that could be a fraction of that cost of what would be a million and a half dollars we could get for a couple hundred thousand to be basically an electronic screwdriver to adjust in our pressure using stations uh that we can equalize the pressure during the day to make that happen at night too.

Because what's happening is during the daytime usage downtown, we have high water usage, it gets down to normal pressures, what is normal for those pipes at night when nobody is using water, it that pressures skyrockets and that uh for lack of a better term, ages the pipes prematurely.

It's like the uh propane tank, like their pressure vessel, and that it's it's bad for the pipes to have that expansion contraction, so to speak, for the pressures.

So I see the pressure using stations and other innovative ideas to help prolong the infrastructure that we have.

But the pre for one thing, uh as Matt mentioned, we have the pressure doesn't equal water usage.

So when you have pressure coming out of a faucet a lot faster, um they it's hard to explain, but we have minimum water wasting that way, but it's the problems when it it's just the pipes too quickly.

I think I I can appreciate your answer, and I thank you for that for the part that I understand.

I'm definitely not an engineer.

Uh on the remaining leaks, I know from when we've drawn down that big number to this where we are.

My understanding is that these leaks are gonna be more involved to get fixed.

Do you does your department have what it needs to continue to address the more nuanced leaks that are that remain?

Yes, we do.

It's just we're we're hanging kind of around 65 right now for for a couple of reasons.

It's like you said.

So basically all the low-hanging fruit, we've taken care of that.

And so basically what we're left with now are the new leaks that have come out, and then the more difficult leaks, the ones that are more difficult to resolve, that requires schedule shutdowns and and those those things.

The issue with it being on the ground was a problem because uh we couldn't get uh new util uh till he locates during that time, and then uh those that we areas we already had located uh basically got washed away essentially or or uh wiped away by the snow and everything.

Uh so that has slowed us down here in the first here at the first of February.

So uh like I said, we're still hovering around the the 65 leak mark and stuff and and haven't knocked out as many as we'd like to leaks as we'd like to see so far this month.

Uh but um we're we expect to pick back up to the last half to two-thirds of the month.

Appreciate the hard work, guys.

Okay, uh Director Rigo and then direct settle.

And then we're gonna take a 10-minute recess.

Okay, thank you.

I know uh maybe this is stepping on item six a little bit, but items five and six have kind of blended together uh somewhat.

I mean, and and this uh CIP that was defeated back in December, uh, and I believe I was the determining vote to defeat this back in December, uh, the quicker that we move on from uh this structure and this uh unachievable structure, I think the better.

I mean there's no uh there's no easily achievable way uh that you're gonna generate, you know, I mean uh 20 to 29, 106 million dollars are needed, 2030, 139 million, 194 million.

I mean, these are these are not numbers that are uh gettable, I would say, in a structure in this way.

And so I think we should really uh consider maybe uh breaking this down a little bit, um, looking at you know all options on the table as you have spoken to and looking at it in more two or three year chunks, even maybe deciding amongst ourselves what is the maximum that we're able to spend uh in a given year, and then working back from uh a number or a structure like that, then we lean on the expertise of uh the engineers that we have on staff to say this is where we think uh how we can make the most positive difference um per the year and per the number that's been set aside.

I mean, that's just one thought that crossed my mind.

But I mean that this here is just so wildly misaligned with the lived-in reality that we have uh every day.

I mean, we we can't I know you have to have something and we have to do things in a uh planned, structured way for a variety of reasons, but uh this here, this 10 years as it's proposed, I mean, is not startable, I don't think, from my perspective.

So uh thank you.

Okay.

Director Settle.

Uh thank you.

Uh good words, Chair.

My my only ask is we are a regional water supplier.

Forty-two percent of all water goes to outside the city of Fort Smith.

Yes.

So I think our CIP should reflect that.

I think you need to bring the CIP should be what is shared by everybody versus what is only the City of Fort Smith.

Because I think that paints a different picture.

Because if you think about it, it's called 50-50, 50 percent of all water infrastructure, transmission lines and treatment plants should be paid for by everybody outside the city.

It shouldn't be be the bear of the city of Fort Smith.

The City of Fort Smith passed the sales tax to get Lake Fort Smith built.

Uh they built it.

They beared they have buried more than their fair share over the last 30 or 40 years.

So everybody outside the city has actually gained uh this.

So it's so if anything comes to us, anything at all, it should be based on a 50-50 cost share.

And it should be based off of uh the areas that fact impact all everybody together, and then everybody everything inside the city are water tower.

Now, if a water tower is going to feed Franklin County from the City of Fort Smith, then that should be factored into the Franklin County discussion.

If a water tower is going to impact uh our coma, then that should be part of that also.

So it's not pretty much cut and dry.

Everything should be factored in those discussions.

Because I think we have the city of citizens of Fort Smith have actually done their fair share over and over.

And so when this comes back to us in any any capacity, it should be broken into those two factors.

That point is well taken.

Thank you.

And I believe there's an item in the next one.

Well, I'm talking about I mixing five and six together.

So I mean to me, I think everything's mixed together.

And so that's all I'm gonna say about this here.

You know, I don't I I I get this uh to Jared's point, but I I think there's avenues.

You know, I I saw some uh congressional spending that's happened and some other Northwest Arkansas getting money and we got some, and I'm thankful to my congressional degradation for that.

But I I think that there's opportunities coming.

Uh we do have the four military cells, so I do think maybe the one point five is probably correct if if we do get the uh as those new people come in as we start seeing new visitors coming to our city, and so if you want to change the number, it's fine, but I I really think the impact is Neil no Neil's my thought, no is my thought on this, and so is most people.

Thank you.

Why don't we take it uh ten minutes and we'll come back and complete it?

Okay.

I didn't know that.

I didn't know that.

So that that scares the engineers, it scares it scares me because it scares them, right?

So what the bigger benefit to me, yeah, if we put that line that comes in the south and comes in the southeast part of the city in Chapter Crossing area.

It doesn't just serve Chaffee Crossing, it also makes that we've got we've got the water fed to both ends of town.

One goes down, the other one can supply.

Well, that's you know, yeah.

Right now, right now they go I mean if some something catastrophic happened in the area of the Midland Bridge.

I mean it it have to it have to be really catastrophic, but it could be an earthquake, you know.

Yeah, because it I mean because we do have a w uh water line underground and under the river.

Right.

But I mean that's that's the only place it comes in.

So I mean I get I get the I get the idea that well why should the rest of the city I mean for the thirty-one miles of transmission line while we're not?

I mean, everybody's paying for all of them.

So is that actually but she's running for judge?

Yes, she is.

She's pretty sharp lady.

Yeah, she is.

Thank you.

We're going to reconvene.

Thank you.

Mayor, I just had a question if I might.

Yes.

I just I was just kind of wondering uh since the discussions you know blended together on items five and six.

I just w if there are questions about item six or just wanted to make sure we were still uh uh diving in on that.

Okay.

Why don't we just consider that since they kind of blend it together?

Uh and you may finish your presentation and we'll we we need those slides from uh Hawkins Weir.

Okay.

Yeah, that was that was we made no.

He's gonna get those for you.

And I'm gonna have those updated too as for your requests at a one point four percent grunt one four percent growth rate.

That'll flatten that line out a little bit, but the the need is still there.

And I I'd like to have Jimmy, since this is still part of the wash master plan discussion.

Jimmy, could you come in?

Sure.

He told me some critical information that I was not aware of.

So over the the last five years we've experienced five crises and we offer the city water system operated within a crisis mode.

In the last five years we've lost Lee Creek treatment transmission or Lee Creek treatment plant.

We've lost the Mountain Burg treatment plant.

We've lost uh the 36-inch transmission line from Mountainburg to town.

We've had the purple water incident from Mountainburg.

We've had a uh this past year we had a 20 inch uh 20-inch line in town transmission line that went down, and during that time most of our reservoirs were down to less than 30 percent storage.

So I would like to be able to operate in a non-crisis mode.

And we there are some items that we can kick down the road, but phase two.

Some i if we had phase two, the the transmission 36-inch transmission line would have been a non-issue because it would have had a dual fee.

So I I know this is a uh a big ask, but we do operate in crisis mode very often.

And if we have a drought this summer, more than likely we will have to go beyond water rationing.

Uh I mean water conservation.

We're at to go to water rationing to uh to cut the water use.

Aren't those things that you just mentioned losing the transmission line, losing the the Lee Creek.

Aren't those pretty significant items in and of themselves?

Like that that would that would mean we're in crisis mode as it is.

Like that's not a um that's not a like that wouldn't that that is just a crisis mode.

So like it it is, but w normally you can you have some build some redundancy into your system.

So we we currently have two transmission lines coming across the river to Fort Smith.

Uh the youngest one is older than I am.

Right.

No.

I don't know.

So our ability to do that.

That's what you're doing.

And those those are the things we need to to address.

And just for everybody's benefit, we've got two lines coming down from Lee uh from uh from uh Mountainbird.

Two lines coming down.

They come together underneath the river, then they once they cross the river they split.

So we have two from Mountainburg, one from Lee Creek, and they they come together to a common point and and two line then two lines come across the river to Arkansas and to Fort Smith.

And the new 48 8-inch transmission line is gonna come in on the east side of the town where we have some weaknesses in our distribution system to get water to the east side of town.

And uh there's some items in the CIP that it's gonna help Well it's gonna alleviate one of the crisis problems that I know that is coming on one of our transmission lines from our U uh Uber Pump Station to Wildcat Mountain.

Every single crossing has failed except for this this one major transmission line.

And it's made out of the same material as the other lines that have already failed.

So I know it's coming.

And uh it's just a question of when it's coming.

Mr.

Jimmy, how many do you do you have uh the data on the the current utilities has a revenue bond to pay off do we or is that paid for?

We have a uh current uh bond.

When do we know when it it will be paid up?

Uh 2031.

2031.

And was there any sort of refinance option available to the city at the time, or is it pretty much you have to hold that one to 2031?

That was already refinanced.

Okay.

Once.

Is there any understanding based on current revenues, what we still might have available to do?

On current revenues, we can do what's in 2026, assuming that we get all of our uh lines back, uh all of our refunds back from the State Highway Department for their projects.

So and and do we know when we expect to hear from that?

It's an ongoing process.

We're in the process of well, we just turned in an estimate for a little over three million dollars this week for for reimbursement from the state.

And to me also, uh I know you wrote down this down, Mr.

Todd, uh, about the unrealized cost if it would say it was 10 percent of our unrealized or unaccounted for water, if it wasn't leaking out, but it was rather just not being counted, um, and we conduct that study.

But what I hear you saying is if we have the highway and things kick back to us as you hope, that we have the money to do 26.

But you mean that as cash and pay, correct?

Not as in any sort of revenue pool.

That's correct.

Revenue bomb pool.

Okay.

And then I would be curious to think about if it was what's that number?

What kind of revenue is that captured back?

Because then perhaps that's where we need to start.

I'm I'm in all for it, and I receive your spirit.

I mean, I the thing I'm always nervous about is the big old line breaking one day, and we're sitting here trying to figure out what to do and how to get water across the river.

But I I just say like let's as to the spirit of Director Rigo.

It seems as if we've almost kind of had death by vision.

So if we could walk back and say, instead of like a paralysis, what can we take action on that moves this ball forward?

And uh if we can get a projection of the unaccounted water captured if it was a certain percentage that we expect, because I think we don't want to presume that that is all just water leaked.

So our uh transmission line from Mountainburg has been in our uh master plan since uh 1995.

And to Director Settle's comment, though, and I would agree is this is a win for all the region.

So let's look at the way for all the region to be a part of the answer, and then let's bring up a solution that you know we can talk in circles, but I would rather start talking linear.

So that's that's my comments.

Thank you.

Uh again, did you have any further comments?

I do not.

I would give Lance Mountain Boy a chance to uh interject with any additional data you may have if you'd like.

Todd, I do want to I do want to add uh I really would like for you to get a plan put together for us to see on that um alternative leak detection options.

Let's get some pricing.

Let's see what what that could look like.

We'll do thank you.

And Todd, I can actually tell you that in the current CIP there is uh some money that was for watershed management that can be pulled towards that because we did not go after grants and we do not do watershed projects uh where we pay for the whole thing.

We always do it with a grant to extend the money.

So there were not grant funds this year for that.

So there is uh some funds there that is 350 and that so it's um but yeah, so um couple of things that we've talked about.

Unaccounted for water right now for 2025 or 20, yeah, 2025, about 36 percent.

That's where we're sitting.

That's where we've been sitting the last two years.

Actually, I saw an in so we're tracking it by month uh since October.

We've actually gone up in unaccounted for water.

Even with all the leaks.

Even with all the leaks fixed.

What do you attribute that to how is that?

Yeah.

Um it can be meters are going out.

Um there could be more flushing that is occurring.

Um, hydrant flushing.

Thank you.

Um but yeah, it it's gone up about two percent from what we've seen.

Um to Jimmy's point, we are one catastrophe away from being the next Helena or Jackson, Mississippi.

Um the fact that over the last well, since 2018, um, we have dodge bullets is a is a credit to the staff of Fort Smith, and it's it's a combined staff from from Jimmy and the engineers that I've worked with there, the plant operators, and others.

Um I don't mean to sound doom and gloom, but I want to be factual with all of you.

When you lose a 36-inch line, and the very same day that you lose a 36-inch line, the only plant that you have less left that can produce at full bore goes down because of a storm.

And you can't get it back up and running really quick, and you're draining your clear well with your storage at the plant, you're looking at a uh a system-wide boil water notice.

When you have baffles fall and you can't get your plant back up and running for about two and a half weeks at one plant, and it puts Van Buren and Cedarville, parts of them under a boil water notice, it was but by the grace of God it did not impact Fort Smith.

And it again goes to the people that know operations, know the chemistry of the water, know how to treat it, know how to get a plant up and going.

Um the transmission line is important, but at the same time, if you build a transmission line and you don't have a way to put more water in there, it's it's not gonna do you, you know, you're gonna have an empty straw or a partially filled straw.

So it's kind of the the chicken or the egg when it comes to a plant and the transmission line.

That's why building it in phases and is um Jimmy stated, you build phase two, you do have some redundancy where we've had washouts before.

You do have uh some things where we can actually, if I remember right, um flow the 40 million gallons uh by gravity when we complete two.

Um that really has an impact on cost savings on what we spend on pumping during the summer and things of that nature.

So I did want to kind of give you guys where we're at with unaccounted for water.

Director Kemp, I fully agree with you.

If we recapture five percent of that from meters, what does that look like in revenue?

Well, figure, you know, if we're producing an average of 33 million gallons, take 36 percent of that, um, and then three out of that, and then put it that towards just the lowest rate or lowest residential rate.

That's a large amount of money over a year.

So that that does have a big impact.

So then I come back to where are we with the meter conversation?

And I think that needs to be brought before this board again is what is the meter conversation and what is the next recommendation from staff?

And then ultimately, you know, I mean I feel the weight of what you're sharing, and I appreciate you sharing it.

You know, this is a legislative body.

Bring us something to legislate, right?

Uh what what is it that you what is the recommendation that we can hear?

You know, option one, two, or three, and and then let us think through it, and maybe all through the collective conversation.

Uh but it sounds if I'm hearing you, it sounds like we need to talk about meters, specifically three inch and beyond meters.

I would say all meters.

Because I mean, all meters make a difference.

Yes, your your three-inch and larger will make a bigger impact right up front, but if you have a whole bunch of small ones, you're gonna end up with the same amount of water going through that you're not accounting for there.

Um I think Matt wanted to say something on meters.

Um if I could one more time on the meter conversation, though.

Because I've set through meter conversations just from the from the observation point, and then also from being on the board.

But what are the other alternatives?

What are the show me the one that is not the techie meter but is a well efficient meter that's going to work for a good long time and can we hear about that plan?

If I could get Matt to address that please thank you.

As far as our meter specifications we uh rewrote those uh earlier well last year uh looking at those and so we've actually because I mean we had to order replacement meters just so we had stuff on hand.

Matter of fact we just got in I think we got in 250 meters today um on what we had ordered at the end of last year it was part of our our carryover carry forward stuff but um uh basically it was we were looking at badger AMR meters is what we were going with.

And so I mean we feel like that's the I mean that's the best direction because as far as like just your standard mechanical meters, I mean the the industry has gone completely is going away from that and is going more towards the the either AMR or AMI type systems and stuff and so uh we feel like with uh uh uh what we've got now it's like the AMR system itself is good but the meters that we've got are the weak point in our system.

Basically whenever we bought meters previously uh you know several years ago uh you know we went white basically what's the cheapest it was out there on the market and so we've had tons of problems with it.

I mean we have uh uh uh over twenty five percent failure rate I mean just out the gate uh with on on those meters.

Were those the Zener meters?

Those are the Xener meters, yeah.

Thank you.

And so uh uh just for stock for replacement, you know uh right now I mean that's basically what we what we've got in the budget.

You know we had uh we had over a million dollars in the budget last year for meters uh but that's you know basically that's gotten that's all been kind of cut out you know and we were looking at it at funding that uh more in the future and and that's all been cut out because of the whole issue with with the budget cuts and that's totally understandable.

I mean we can't we can't be spending more than than what we've got available but that was um uh something we were looking at doing is replacing meters and and and we can save money by replacing them in-house with staff and uh we figure we can do because we we've been talking about today what we can do with hat with staff we can do about 10,000 meters a year with staff if we can afford to buy them.

And so that's you know 10,000 meters.

Well it was 36,000 meters isn't I mean households and Borsmouth?

Uh we've got around 40,000 meters and 2000.

Yeah I think just on the four year project.

Yes.

But what's the cost of those meters?

Uh so it would run us based on what we we've just paid on these others I believe it's it would cost us that would be about two point six million a year uh doing about 10,000 a year.

Okay.

About 40 million dollars or meters that was a there's one of the things that that's an installed price with I'm sorry Jeff and that was with a range.

I mean they would Matt was starting to say that's an installed price but you know the range given was you know 25 to 45 million dollars based on the type of meter that we purchased and the type of electronics we purchased to go.

Those were the AMI meters.

Well sure but but and like what Matt's saying if we selected the meters that they've chosen what are what 200 how much how much per meter?

About 260 EP.

So you're saying 2.6 million a year for four years?

Yes.

So we go to 10 point 10 10 point four million versus 40 I mean I mean just to be safe let's say let's bump that up a little bit for inflation and say eleven.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then we don't have to pay cloud storage with these do we?

Pay what I'm sorry?

Like cloud storage and things like that like you do with the AMI?

Uh no I mean it is the AMR, I mean it would be the same thing we're doing now with our AMR.

Because I know with the AMI there were a lot of hidden costs.

I mean we would still have costs associated with the the software and everything but um uh I I'm not I'm trying to think if there's any cloud storage but I would be I'd have to ask IT about it.

Well not only that why don't we sell as a significantly better it's if if it what's the probability of installing those meters and they already root their cost in one year.

And they rekeep their cost in one year?

I mean I'm just saying like if basically you get 2.6 million more dollars in revenue because they're they're they're as it's hard to say because I mean we've got currently if you think about it, I mean we got currently got a quarter of our meters that are failing regularly.

I mean you know, once we get the zenters in that are and and we're not now we're not buying new zeners, it's not that, but but once we you know those that we we send out for warranty and everything and we get them back and about a fourth of them out one every four is failing when we test it on the bench when we get it back.

The Zener meters had not recouped their costs was my was my understanding that the board before I was on spent about six million on those and had not recouped their costs on the center meters.

Is that would that be accurate?

I I I I honestly I cannot have a lot of people.

I know it's been a while since we've had this discussion.

Uh let's go back to I think uh Director Rigo and then Director Settle.

I mean I just want to say really quickly, like the the sooner we I mean, it's no offense meant to anybody, but like the way that item six is kind of presented as is uh uniquely uh unsuitable for you know finding a solution.

I mean, you know, you talk about $382 million, possible funding sources for unfunded projects could include rate increases, impact fees, incorporation surcharge mechanism.

I mean, we need some stuff to to digest.

I mean we need to see like what what does it actually look like to fund these things through this these sorts of mechanisms that have been contemplated?

Um, you know, I mean, because you can't make a decision if you don't even begin to understand uh the way forward on the number.

I mean, I think also as well uh uh uh the when you talk about uh hey, we're one calamity away from a Jackson, Mississippi type situation, you know, the only two responses to that can't be, well, keep kind of scraping along doing what we're doing, or you know, approve the $382 million unfunded CIP plan.

I mean, there needs to be, I'll say to say it before the break, I'll say it again, things that chunk this down into more manageable and understandable components.

I mean, if you just look at what's in front of us here, and again, this failed, so I know this is not going to be what this is going to be, but you can't say we we're we're setting aside $2.4 million to spend this year and next year we should set aside fifty-three point seven million dollars to spend.

What is that delta represent?

Well, is there fifty-one million more dollars of urgency next year versus this year?

And if so, that needs to be explained a little better.

And we just need to begin the process of breaking this down into manageable approaches, because even if you emptied out all of our broke all the rules and emptied out all our fund balances across the four buckets to the tune of sixty-five plus million dollars, that wouldn't even get you to the end of the decade on this unfunded plan that's in front of us.

So just uh we need to do something different, obviously, and so I would uh like to see some more specifics um in smaller increments to to at least begin considering.

Uh just to answer Director Count's question.

We do have bonds outstanding for that were issued in 2015, 2016, and 2018.

And typically you can't refinance those bonds until it hits 10 years.

So then typically those bonds are a 20 or 30-year bond, what have we decided to apply?

So I think most of these are sewer projects if I'm right, Lance.

Uh it's a mixture of water.

Yeah, water and sewer, but yeah.

So typically most of the money is typically spent spent.

Uh but there doesn't say you but you've got to remember the 2015, 26, 2018, whatever the interest rates were then, if you go to today's interest rates will be higher, so you might have a you might gain some capital, you might not.

So it just depends on where you are at.

Okay.

Director Samage.

So just to um to ask Director Rigo, is what I'm hearing you say is that you might entertain a a look at this alternative leak detection to sure.

I mean, I got I got no problems with uh detecting leaks however we detect them.

We're not going to solve uh this challenge alone, and I know we all know this, on the back of uh unrecovered uh water.

I mean it's an important arrow in the quiver, and we should do everything we can to recover the water uh that should be appropriately charged for.

But I think there's going to be other arrows from the quiver fired at the target.

No, I I I for one I under I I take your comments to heart and uh weigh them against uh you know I think uh for one thing, I think this this list, the CIP list illustrates the magnitude of projects that at least that we have contemplated are necessary for the system.

Uh but to your point, Director Rigo, in terms of how to use your term chunk them together into manageable management manageable items.

I I look to the comments that uh Jimmy Johnson made, you know, in terms of what is what and and as a as a lay person myself when it comes to listening to these guys talk about how the system works, you know, I I understand that this this the direction of of backfilling the city for lack of a better word from the southeast with a water connection solves a lot of issues or at least relieves a lot of pressures to where that particular type of project elevates up to the top of those chunks that we need to to try to solve.

And so I mean from from that perspective I take those to heart moment.

I think it's about eating the finding ways to eat the elephant because uh you know clearly it was mentioned earlier that uh having this additional transmission line capacity has been on CIP lists since 1995.

Yes.

That did not lead to it being constructed.

So you know it may be a different, uh more priority-based approach.

Well, I think uh too with this leak detection, it's not just re-recapturing that water, but it's it's the capacity.

I mean that we potentially could get five hundred thousand million gallons a day capacity, maybe one point five, I don't know.

We'd have to see.

But that that buys us a little time to figure some of these things out.

Okay, thank you.

Anything else on uh item five or six.

Did you have anything for the presentation prepared for item six.

Okay, go right in.

I can abbreviate it if you like.

Yes.

But uh, I think just presentation.

Yes, and some introductory comments, but looks like where did I go?

Yeah.

I think we need to move on to citizens form.

I think everybody's been waiting quite a while.

Okay.

Sounds good.

That's no one boy.

Okay.

I appreciate your time, Todd.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's go to the citizen floor.

First, we have Andy Andy Postrick.

Uh hey, thanks.

Uh thanks for having me.

Andy Postric, Fort Smith.

Um I love living in Fort Smith, and I don't have anything to complain about tonight.

I just wanted to give some positive feedback on some things that I've seen in the city.

Um, both in the uh in the recent and in the long term.

So first one is just I love uh the small town feel that we have.

I can't go to the farmers market without running into somebody that I that I know.

Um thing that happened recently that I was kind of um interested in is uh my my wife's coworker is a professional wrestler, and we went to go see him wrestling, and while we were there, we ran into my veterinarian at a wrestling event, and that was weird.

And then um just tonight my lawyer is here unexpectedly uh wasn't uh planning to bump into her.

So uh that was great.

Um the other thing that I want to bring up, which is is on the agenda tonight, so I apologize, but the water leaks are way down, and that's something that the citizens are very sensitive to, as you recall from a year or two ago.

Some of you may have ran on this platform of getting the leaks down, and I feel like that's been achieved.

And uh everybody who participated in that deserves a lot of praise.

So I just wanted to thank the city for that.

Another thing that happened is solid waste had uh cost of service study, and everybody's very, very concerned about their water sewer bill, which also contains that solid waste portion that doesn't get as much attention.

But uh you guys passed a gate fee increase, which sounds bad, but the alternative would have been seven dollars a month on everybody's water bills.

Uh and so the the city the citizens don't know that that you did that, that you saved them seven dollars a month, but they would have been pretty mad if you didn't take that step.

So I appreciate that.

It also allowed us the folks that use our landfill outside of Fort Smith to get shocked.

Exactly, yes.

Yes.

And then they contribute a whole whole whole lot of solid waste in in our landfill.

So I appreciated that.

I don't remember how the vote went, but I'm glad it went the way that it did.

Uh and then last one, um on Tuesday of last week, uh some small business owners came up uh and I just wanted to express how appreciative I am about Fort Smith and the small business culture that we have and the support that we give to our small businesses.

And I'm by support, I mean you know, us residents, we are proud.

We we love shopping at our small businesses.

Um one that I just sort of discovered, they've been here for a while, is the Bakus down here at um at Brunswick Place.

I just thought that they did uh like cheesecake and stuff, but we went in there and they have sausage rolls and then these little meat pies, and they're amazing.

Um it just uh I did took me completely by surprise.

So anything that we can do to attract new small businesses, make it easier for somebody to start a small business here, I'm for it.

Uh and that's all I have for you, thank you.

Next we have Lisa Williams.

Glenn Forte.

Good evening, folks.

Not too happy the way I've been treated at the police department in the month of January.

I will give me a minute.

I'm pissed.

I mean, you provide it.

I am pissed away I want everybody to be able to hear.

Well, I want you to hear it.

I'm pissed the way I was treated.

Let's hear it.

I went to the police station in January.

I don't have the date with me, but I'm sure the camera has my picture, because I'm so ugly, I've been told.

But I try to deal with my director when this problem started over a stolen vehicle that was at a repair shop.

I not only had one vehicle at the repair shop, for the record I had three.

So why would you try and bull somebody and say the landlord wants it out because of the appearance?

Well, it so happens the phone records and everything are coming from the person that did the paperwork, which is in my phone.

I don't need to go through it now.

My attorney's gonna handle it when I get the time I've been out of town to go see my brother Joey McCutcheon.

And there's several issues here.

And my director, Rico, wouldn't give me the time of day.

But I have a gentleman by the name of Lee Kemp.

I'd like you to stand phenomenal service.

I'll take care of it, Glenn.

He's got the owner admitting he stole a 42-year-old vehicle, and it's in my telephone from Lee Kemp, if you will, with him texting it to me.

The owner wants you to come down here, Glenn.

After he sent me a threatening letter in the mail, certified return, I have your vehicle.

Ha ha, $65 a day.

Ten days go by, I get another notice.

We're having an auction.

You don't own the vehicle anymore.

So I go over to the auction, I bring a friend with me.

He's elderly like me.

He goes and bids on it.

We go back at 4 30, see the owner open up the bid.

Also, if I will, for the record, the owners of Christopher Delopolis, 60 years old as Oxman.

Excuse me, thank you, sir.

I appreciate it.

You're welcome.

I have trouble with a dry mouth and I got a bad cough.

Thank you.

And I go down there and I say to him after the bid, he says, Yeah, it's five grand that's owed.

How do you get five grand at sixty-five dollars a day?

This was in December, the auction was.

So I says to the owner, I don't want to talk my business in here.

Let's step outside.

I says, You don't know who I am.

I'm the rightful owner.

I grew up with a mob in Boston, Irish mafia.

My best friend, a big tone company.

I know how the crookedness works.

No one's gonna pick up a vehicle being in the towing business after 30 odd plus years that has no value to it.

Then he's trying to extort money from me, and I can show you people in the phone.

My director here, brother, Lee Kemp out of his heart, went and served me and took care of business.

He got the owner to admit, yeah, it's a bad deal.

The guy in the garage put me up to it.

I'm going after his business license, and I want to see all these people go to jail.

They jacked me and thought they were taking a tourist down.

Well, I got news for you.

Now we got a problem with the detectives.

There's two of them.

One is my house got broken into an October.

I had people putting siding on it, and then in December, it might be November, I believe it's December of 25.

I did a stolen report on a scooter.

So the cop tells me today at the police station on the phone, because I call the sec chief secretary, the chief won't ever talk to me.

I've never talked to him to this day.

It's his job to talk to the residents.

End of story.

I talked to Shirley, I believe it is, and she says, I'll have someone get on it, and I'll have internal affairs.

Get a hold of you.

It's not about internal affairs.

I went to the police station to talk to the prosecutor one day in January, Colton Page.

I went in one set of doors.

There's two sets of doors.

I'm standing between two sets of doors, and there's a civilian like me.

He says, Hey guy, you can't go in.

I says, Why?

It's after eight o'clock.

He says, Oh, they changed the O's.

No one ever informed me as a city resident.

So there's an officer in the room there coming to the door with a five-gallon pill, his prisoner or a probation guy has stick to pick up bucks and trash.

So he says to him, Can I use the mansion?

RFU lock the door.

Wouldn't let me use it.

I peed my pants.

I have a medical issue when I will bring paperwork to show you people.

Mayor McGiven's.

I'm tired of being treated like an animal in the city.

And you can see where the city administrator went.

I've talked to the new city administrator for the record.

Thank you very much.

I think your five minutes is up, sir.

And we appreciate you being here.

Next we have Kristen Kitchens.

Hi guys, how are you guys?

I'm I've just moved back to town.

You know what the great thing about moving back to town is?

You get to pick where you want to live.

And so guess what?

I picked um subbase in P006.

It's right near the flood zone where I started helping with those people with the buyout.

And uh issues weren't getting fixed.

And so um, you know, my first day um there, I decided, hey, I'm gonna put a GIS map out, and I'm gonna go walk the neighborhood.

So um let's talk about some issues in the neighborhood.

I've only made it on my street.

I've got one manhole.

Um P008, 1470.

It's been replaced twice in two years.

And you want to see how bad it looks because it sure doesn't look like it's up to the next standards of what our consent decree is at, right?

And I fully have some information.

And I would also like to ask where the 1713 um uh item number is where it was approved with the city with Hawkinsonware for the subbasin drawing, because um I can't find it anywhere.

Um I haven't really seen a great drawing for that basin anywhere in our city um package or anything to that nature.

And also at the end of our year's consent decrease, that's the only one like in the whole area that hasn't been done.

But we're doing all these other outlining areas, and that's one of our major areas.

So I'm kind of concerned on like, you know, what we're doing for um, you know, like to make sure that the basin 10, 12, and 14 are being done right because those are our major ones within the consent degree that weren't done to begin with.

But um uh and the GIS map, of course, is still um, they're not correct.

Okay.

So um basically they're not showing if the um works were done, how old the manhole is, or um, some of them are saying they're gonna consent decree ready and they're um not, and they don't match the reports that I FOIA on um all the manholes for P3 Carol 8.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Next we have Crystal Cadelli.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Um, I want to start tonight by um addressing the contract agreement conversation that was had earlier.

Um I think that anyone in business should know the importance of having a contract or an agreement for a service provider, a construction project, or any large uh acquisition.

Um, this provides protection for both the um seller and the buyer, and it sets expectations.

I think that um anything otherwise just could potentially lead to loss of revenue or you know, legal fees for uh not completing the job as proposed.

Um unfortunately in the stay and time, a handshake just doesn't cut it in business.

Um time and time again, I sit out in the audience, dumbfounded at the lack of care and the poor business practices of certain members of this board.

The city, as we talked about tonight, is currently facing an exorbitant amount of infrastructure needs.

Somewhere in the ballpark of a billion dollars, married with over 30 percent of failing water meters, which is nothing new, something that was brought up at least a year ago.

Um, which is causing billing issues and um water leaks.

Um, this board should be focusing on these two items at every study session until there is a plan on how we are going to fund them and the timeline of completion, and then there should be follow-up on the completion of the items.

Instead, this board focuses on finding ways to waste our money and lend us in numerous lawsuits either by private citizens or the federal government.

The inefficiencies of this board and administration has led the city to move backwards instead of growing, and we can see this in the loss of tax revenue.

The citizens have lost confidence in this city government, and we don't need another park at ACME Brick.

We need to uh add a 13th detainage palm.

We already own 12 in the city and sell the rest of the land to pay for the infrastructure projects.

We also own 26 residential properties from 2022 to present due to drainage issues.

Um what's gonna happen to those properties?

They're just gonna dilapidate and be an eyesore for the city.

We should fix the drainage and sell those as well.

Um we look at our budget as being healthy, but the truth of the matter is we're not healthy at all.

We are in debt.

And instead of building more parks and buying slides, we need to start putting the money towards our infrastructure and make it enticing for people to want to live here and move here.

There are hundreds of citizens that are getting their water turned off on a monthly basis.

She had Parrot Island can go 19 months, paying less than a single person household.

Please spare the people with the surveys and twisting it into what the residents want.

A survey of 50 200 a thousand people only equal.01 percent of the city's population.

I know this is gonna be harsh, but I do feel like it needs to be said.

Mr.

Rego, Mr.

Settle, Mr.

Good, and Mr.

Kemp.

Your actions on this board have clearly shown a lack of commitment to serving the citizens of Fort Smith.

And it appears that our best interests are no longer your priorities.

It is my hope the 2026 and 2028 elections will bring the change to this board the Fort Smith citizens need and to make the city thrive again.

Thank you.

Next we have Chris Cadelli.

Good evening.

I'm still uh trying to wrap my head around all the uh Parrot Island water park issues.

Um as a concerned citizen, I'd like to express my opposition to the continued reckless spending on the water slide edition and the no bid contract recently approved in a four-to-three board vote.

I'm concerned this no bid contract was awarded to a comp uh to a company uh Jeff Dingman said at the January 20th meeting said decided not the company decided not to bid in the open bid process last October because they weren't qualified aquatics, they weren't a qualified aquatics uh contractor.

What changed between the open bid process and the no bid award to make the contractor feel qualified?

Was it was it merely director Lee Kemp's direct involvement and consulting with the contractor that brought about the newfound qualification?

Do board directors typically consult with contractors prior to prior to or during a bid process.

Director Kevin Settle expressed serious concern about potential litigation over bidding irregularities during the alley rehab bid process.

So I can't help but wonder why he supported this no-bid award on the slide edition.

I firmly believe the numerous issues surrounding Parrot Island Water Park will continue to haunt the city throughout 2026 and beyond.

I'm sure there's going to be further requests for monies to complete that project.

And then lastly, I would just ask if the board could provide the citizens with updates on the national search for a new city administrator.

Thank you.

And last we have Dan Williams.

I was like, no way, you know.

And then I come in here and I'm in a meeting in the other room in there, and he's sitting right in front of me, and there was a conflict from Miss Christina here, and uh he wanted he had gotten up and shared something, and then uh next thing you know, he pulled out the phone and he text as I put in there, Mr.

Good right there from his own, call me back up to the microphone, and you know what?

You've you played it off for a long time, and then you said, I'd like to call Mr.

Uh LeVon Morton back up there to the microphone.

And I thought, isn't that interesting?

That person that it's not a happenstance.

That person called and told me that for an hour on the phone, and I'm thinking this can't be for real.

Okay.

Whatever y'all have going on is being found out.

Okay.

I'm just letting you know.

And you can keep playing your games if you want to.

But I'm thankful that this lady right here is taking a stand.

Okay?

I'm thankful for it.

And I'm thankful for that smark you have right there.

Because guess what?

You did make a wrong decision, and you hadn't owned up to it yet.

But we all know you did it.

And you won't be able to run from that bad decision.

Because it will haunt you.

I believe that I believe Chris got it right.

It's gonna keep coming back, it's gonna keep coming back.

Because when you do things the way they're not supposed to be done, and you don't admit it to it, eventually it's gonna get you, and this one will.

Thank you.

That's all.

Thank you very much.

Uh motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Thank you.