Okay, good afternoon, everybody.

It's five o'clock, so we'll go ahead and we will call this meeting of the public safety committee of the city of Jonesboro to order.

First on our agenda coming up is going to be roll call.

So if you will mark your attendance on the device in front of you.

Seeing that we do have six members present, we do have a quorum.

So we'll go ahead and we'll proceed.

Next item on the agenda is going to be the approval of minutes from our previous meeting on Tuesday, August 19th.

I move to approve unless there's change to be noted, Mr.

Chair.

I second that.

Okay.

I have a motion and second to approve the minutes as presented.

Do I have any questions or concern?

If not, we'll go ahead and we will take a vote to approve those minutes.

Thank you, everybody.

That motion does pass, bringing us on to the next item on our agenda, which is new business, which are resolutions to be introduced.

First resolution to be introduced is a resolution by the city council of the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas, to condemn property located at 711 Burke Avenue, Jonesboro, Arkansas, 72401.

Parcel number 0143 1340 400.

Move to recommend to the full council.

Okay, I have a motion, a second to recommend to the full council.

Do I have any questions from anybody on the committee?

Okay.

Any comments, questions from the administration?

And any from the public in attendance.

Okay.

Seeing none, we'll go ahead and we will take a vote on this item.

That resolution does pass and does forward on to the full council.

Moving on to the next resolution to be presented this evening.

Is resolution by the city council of the city of Jonesboro, Arkansas to condemn property located at 2620 Crawford Drive, number 11, Jonesboro, Arkansas, 72401.

Parcel number 01, 144, 273, 02, 200.

I'll make a motion that this be forwarded to full council.

Second.

Okay.

I have a motion and a second to forward this item on to full council.

Do I have any questions or comments from anybody on the committee?

Okay.

Any questions or comments from the administration?

And anything from the public in attendance.

Okay, seeing none, we'll go ahead and we'll call a vote on this item.

That resolution does pass on to full council.

Moving on to the final resolution on our agenda today is uh resolution 25123.

A resolution by the City Council of the City of Jonesboro, Arkansas to condemn property located at 2017 Belt Street, Jonesboro, Arkansas, 72401.

Parcel number 0144 17102600 make a motion to recommend to the full council.

I'll second.

Okay.

I have a motion and a second to recommend this resolution on to the full council.

Do I have any questions or comments from anybody on the committee?

Any from the administration?

And any from the public in attendance.

Okay.

Seeing none, we'll go ahead and we will call a vote on this item.

And that resolution does pass and forwards on to the full council.

Moving on to the next item on our agenda, we have number five, which is pending items.

And knowing of none, we will move on to number six, other business, which um first and for first we have on the agenda is the vector mosquito control report for August of 2025.

Does anybody have any questions or comments concerning that report?

I will say, and oh I don't.

I will say in reviewing this, I I did have a question.

I'm gonna submit this over to Vector.

I was uh reviewing this over the weekend.

Is that I noticed that we had more total mosquitoes collected from year to year, about 550.

But what was different was the total average mosquitoes collected jumped from 7.3 to 73 per day.

So I feel like we missed a decimal point on that, but just as a point of clarification, I'm gonna send that back over to Vector.

But from year over year, in 24, we also had 12 total inspected sites compared to having 60 this year.

So I know that we're seeing quite a significant jump in the total sites inspected.

So I feel like that I feel like that number should be down, or maybe they just didn't check those traps as frequent.

Maybe something's changed on that point.

But um, I did notice that the total spray miles have remained about the same.

There's about 41 more approximately there from year over year, but I did notice a considerable uptick in our aerial sprays.

We had five this past month compared to two the previous year encompassing a difference of about 40,000 um square acres that was covered in the previous month.

But just um a couple of points that I think we need to clarify with um Vector as we continue to go forward with them, especially um with the disc with the discrepancy between the um total trap per day numbers going from 7.3 up to 73 mosquitoes.

I feel like that warrants a little bit of a broader conversation.

I didn't it made me think of just I guess next year they're they're up this year.

Is their contract up this year?

I believe so.

Okay.

Um I'd love to hear what they plan to do differently uh going forward.

I mean, I know we've seen some dry times, and I know it's even dry right now, so um things aren't really equal to a wet season, but uh we really like to see what they're gonna do differently next year as compared to this year, and uh hopefully they give us a different answer than we'll just add more sprint or maybe some controlled or some focused areas and uh using some different techniques.

So love to for them to give us a presentation on that.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Councilman.

Okay.

Any other questions or concerns from anybody on the committee?

Mr.

Chairman?

Yes, sir.

I'm just a broken record.

I mean, they do business in nine states.

I just think they could do a better job making presentation, and maybe as councilman McLean said with them being up for bid, maybe they'll be more interested.

But I mean the two Harvard MBAs that own the company, maybe they could at least zoom in and talk to us a little bit and have a real conversation and doing business in nine states.

They're to have some metrics for us to measure ourselves against because when you read the data, I have no idea what any of it means.

I mean, and I understand it's very difficult to compare.

I mean, they're doing work in Mississippi and Louisiana and Colorado and all these places and topography and weather, and there's so many different variables, but surely they can educate us a little bit so we know what are we up against and how are we really doing because we I mean, I don't think anybody up here I mean how do you even know what that report means?

Sure, right.

And um, I know one of the things whenever I looked at their website not too long ago is that they did talk about data reporting and some of the things that they had outlined on the data reporting segmentation, it didn't seem to be reflected in these reports just from the way I look at the titling and the way that I interpret it as well.

But I think that's something that we that we focus heavily on whenever we do file an RFP for coming up for future bids to give us some sample reporting and give us the capability to go through it and make sure it's the information that we want to see on an ongoing basis.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments from anybody on the committee?

Any from the administration and any from the general public regarding vector mosquito control.

Okay.

That is everything for that item on other business.

Does anybody else have any other business for the committee today?

Uh chairman, I do.

Uh in responding to a uh citizen's query, uh, I engaged with di in dialogue with the chief, and uh he had has uh prepared some remarks uh concerning our entertainment district.

Chief.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh yes, briefly this afternoon.

Uh council member Porter and I had a discussion about the entertainment district, and we're at that one year mark since we started the entertainment district, and um kind of bring up some numbers on what what reflects uh as far as police policing in that area during this one year threshold.

I did not get a go back and get several years of study uh prior to this, due to the late in the afternoon.

I didn't get a chance to get those numbers pulled, but overall varying from last August till September this year, uh police uh received 965 calls for service in the entertainment district area.

Now that could be a traffic stop, it could be pedestrian issue, it could be a dog, anything for any reason somebody calls the police department for whatever reason that goes under this tick mark 965.

From that number, there was 146 criminal reports uh made from that list of calls.

And these were where somebody was arrested due to or some kind of report was made due to a criminal activity.

18 of those were alcohol related.

It could be a DWI or public intoxication, and then 30 of those were drug related.

And so commend the community for doing better in that aspect of drinking and being responsible.

But again, here we are at that year threshold or more for the entertainment district, and just want to kind of lay some things out there and see if anybody has any questions.

If you'd like further analysis, then we can certainly get that and send it out.

If I may, so you said in with that's inside the boundaries of the district, doesn't necessarily mean it was downtown walking around.

Whatever we've defined as the entertainment district and using that geofencing, uh I had the now the analyst to uh pull the calls for that related that area.

So it could be a traffic stop, it could be anything.

And it's all broken down to every call.

Uh and I can send you this if you want to look through the data, but it but most of that is non-criminal related.

It's a lot of it's traffic.

Uh it could be somebody homeless standing on the corner, somebody wants a welfare check on or whatever.

That goes in that it is a call for service.

Okay.

So what that call for service is, it varies across the whole board or whatever.

But when you break down the second sheet, there was 146 calls that generated into something criminal.

So any other questions for the chief.

Has the uh park ranger program been in effect long enough to have an impact?

We're seeing uh a relief on having to send officers to officers to certain calls, especially downtown or at the parks.

Sometimes we get calls of just a welfare concern, a welfare check, and so the rangers are able to help us out on that call and feel those calls for us.

So we're starting to get uh some relief in that respect, yes.

So the rangers had to go through a training phase, and now they're out on their own, starting to do the thing.

Uh they're getting more in tune of what's going on, and uh so yes, the benefits starting to pay off.

Okay, good information.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Okay, that's our does anybody else have anything for the other business segment of our meeting today?

Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to the next item on the agenda being public comment.

This is the opportunity where anybody from the public would like to come up and talk about anything that was not on today's agenda.

Okay, seeing none, that moves us on to our final item today being adjournment.

So moved.

Okay, I have a motion and a second for adjournment.

All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, we do stand adjourned.

Thank you, everybody, for your time today.