Good evening everyone.

Welcome to the City of Jonesboro Metropolitan Area Planning Commission meeting for Tuesday, October 14th, 2025.

I'll call, make a roll call.

If you're here, press your I button.

Okay.

Wait a minute.

Wait up one row.

We can vote you here.

Mr.

Pointer, if you're here, press your I button.

Take a little bit less.

Big salary take away in pressure second.

Pressure I button.

See now you're here.

Oh you're good.

You are good.

Oh, okay.

Okay, I'll open up for the discussion of the minutes from the September 23rd meeting.

Are there any changes to be made?

Or I'll entertain a motion for approval.

Zoper makes a motion to approve the minutes as presented.

Here second?

Little second.

Minor technical difficulty here.

Take a voice vote and move on.

Did you enter the roll call votes?

If you're in favor of the approval of the minutes, press your I button, please.

Minutes are approved.

Ready?

First item we have on the agenda tonight is the orchard phase two subdivision.

Applicant Mark Morris is requesting approval of a final subdivision plat for 61 lots, single family subdivision on 23.10 acres, more or less.

This is located at southwest quarter of the Section 4 Township 13 North Range 4 East.

My name is Mark Morse, and this is my lovely assistant, Ms.

Eden.

I got some help tonight.

We got the uh first lift of asphalt, got the bond amount approved.

We're waiting on to get that in the mill.

Okay.

City planner, you have any comments on this?

Uh yes, sir.

We've reviewed it.

It does meet all the requirements of the subdivision code, and so we would recommend approval.

Commissioners have any questions or discussion?

Mr.

Chairman.

Yes, sir.

I'd just like to say, Mr.

Morris, you do a very fine job in what you do.

And you should be congratulated.

Most of the time we're here mentioning your moaning.

But you do a first first rate job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

He's got some help tonight.

See, Mr.

Zoper.

Little motion to approve.

All those in favor, press your I button.

Anyone oppose your nay button?

We're still on the previous screen.

There we go.

Here we go.

Now we're ready.

Subdivision has been approved.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Next item we have on the agenda.

This is a preliminary subdivision.

Don Parker is requesting approval of a five-lot subdivision containing 5.59 acres in the core mixed use redevelopment district.

We have the proponent for this item who would state your name for the record.

Don Parker on behalf of First United Methodist Church of Johnsboro.

What's the plan?

The plan is we have taken I think 27 or 8 meets and bounds parcels and combine them into five separate lots on the existing there's existing structures on most well not most.

I think lots one and two and lots three, four, and five are all parking lot.

Any questions from any of the uh commissioners have a question at this point?

Able to pull up the go ahead.

So is this basically covering the block where the buildings are and then the parkings behind the side?

Okay.

It's really so really the only reason the blocks are divided for the parking is they're in separate locations divided by street.

So we're just trying to put everything together.

We went through an alley abandonment with the uh city to uh get rid of an old alley that really hadn't been officially platted, but it was there and there was a sewer line, so we took care of all that with city water and light and got that cleaned up, and we had a little encroachment on a neighbor had encroached on us.

We gave them about uh three feet of where the curb was, and so it's all cleaned up and and good.

And Mr.

Little, did you have a question?

I just wanted to see the map if we're just about okay.

More of those technical difficulties.

Are we working on that city planner?

You have staff comments?

Uh yes, sir, we do.

Um, again, we've looked at this.

Uh, it does meet the requirements of our subdivision ordinance, so we would recommend approval.

Okay, and we also we also cleaned up a uh little portion of where there was uh where the city had expanded their turn lane coming from union where it curves back and to where it hits Maine.

Uh that uh southwest corner, we cleaned that up a bit.

Property line actually had extended out to the street, and we made clear that was granted to the city to the back of the curb, I believe.

Mr.

Little, did that answer your question now that you had the plat up?

Yes, yes.

So that includes the parking across to the east as well.

That small parking lot on the yes, that that is that is true.

Okay, the other there's another parking lot there, but it's owned by St.

Bernard's, and we just lease it from them.

Chairman, I'm a motion.

We approve the request.

I have a motion to approve.

They're here a second.

Styling second.

Hold on while we get the vote ready.

You would cast your vote.

Okay, your subdivision has been approved.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, sir.

Now I'll turn this meeting over to have a FOIA presentation.

Mr.

Chairman, I'm John Baker.

I'm an attorney with Mitchell Williams, and uh our law firm represents a whole bunch of governmental bodies, a bunch of public entities, governing bodies all over Arkansas.

And I'm retiring from the practice of law in three months, but I've been advising my clients about significant changes that have come about to the Freedom of Information Act that recently came into enactment in August.

And my law partner said you need to take this on the road to all of our public clients and even those who aren't our clients but with whom we work a lot.

And our firm works with the city a lot, and uh Ms.

Duncan asked that I share this with you guys because I've been sharing it with with others here in Craig Ed County and all over Arkansas because this is a serious change in the FOI law, and I need everybody, nobody wants to have a bunch of lawyers talking at them very long.

I'm gonna get off as fast as I can, but this is a serious change in the law, and we all need to be up to speed on it.

Uh I'm not gonna go over the six-pager I just handed to you.

I'm gonna let you put that on your nightstand for those nights you can't sleep, and you can pull this bad boy out and thank John Baker for giving it to you.

But it summarizes uh my areas of concern, but I'm only going to zero in on a very few.

The first one uh I guess is a change that you may never have worried about, but I can tell you game and fish commission's worried about it because they'll send out a public notice when three game and fish commissioners go to a duck blind with each other and go duck hunting.

They'll send out a notice of a meeting with three commissioners and a duck blind in the cash uh river.

And I always thought that was wild, but the law was vague about it.

If you run into each other at church or at a movie theater or at a groundbreaking or a rubber chicken charity dinner, don't worry about it.

There was vagaries in the law before, but now we know that is not a problem.

You don't have to send out a notice that three of you are happening to be going to a rotary club meeting together.

That's okay.

And they've clarified that.

So that's helpful.

Probably nothing you kept up at night about.

Uh, but at least uh we may not get as many FOI notices out of the game fish folks anymore.

So the big deal is on page three number three.

You need to you need to put a star by this one because this is the sea change that has occurred.

So you cannot communicate with one another as members of this governing body about any matter that is likely to come before your body in the future.

Any issue, any specific example of a property issue, any general strategic issue that relates to overall zoning and planning that may come before your body or is foreseeable to come before your body, you cannot talk turkey now with one another about that, except in this room in a convened meeting.

That is a sea change from the way we have had the law before.

The law used to be three or more of you got together and talked about it.

That was a no-no.

Now you cannot talk to one another.

They want the legislature has imparted upon all of you, they want the sausage to be made, the decisions to be made in this room in a convene meeting only.

And that's a big change.

It was common for my clients to talk to one another before a meeting.

What do you think about the Penske matter?

I don't know.

What do you think about the Penske matter?

Seems a lot of reasonable to me.

You can't have those conversations now.

You can't text one another about it, you can't call one another about it, you can't talk about it before this meeting in the parking lot.

You can't talk about it even after you voted on it outside of this meeting, because guess what?

It could get reversed and come back down before you from city council.

You're the sausage, the discussions have to occur for the first time in your convened meeting.

And that, my friends, is going to be hard to do.

That is a sea change in the way we've done it before.

You're used to talking to each other.

You can't do that anymore.

Now, you can talk to your constituents, you can talk to people like Brother Parker, because he's not a member of your body.

You could talk to your wife about it, talk to your preacher about it.

You can talk to anybody else you want to about it.

You just can't talk to each other about it.

And you gotta be careful, because I can envision circumstances where there's some blog going on on social media about some hot topic, and you weigh in with some nice statement about it, and then one of you weighs with your nice statement about it on the same feed.

Well, you've just communicated with one another about a topic that may come before you.

But that's what it means.

Now, here's the reason you can't do it, because they changed this part of the law too.

If you violate this rule, and somebody believes you have, they can now actually file a lawsuit and just simply ask the judge to invalidate whatever you voted on.

It's invalid because you violated these these requirements.

We never had that in the law before.

So that is a significant change as well.

So there's actual new teeth, different teeth in the FOI law that we never had before.

So you need to be very careful in making sure that you don't talk Turkey about anything that's going to come before this body, or that might come before that reasonably foreseeably come before this body outside of a convene meeting.

I got a lot more in here, but I'm not gonna go.

That's that is the takeaway.

And that is a hard pill, a different way of of conduct from anything most public servants have done.

I want to stop and answer questions first.

Do what now?

They have a pre-meeting on Mondays in the afternoon.

The day before the Tuesday meeting where they go over the one's invited, not everyone attends, but the media is also invited.

So I and they're notified about it.

So that I don't think is a violation of this because they've been getting it.

You gotta give notice to the body that gets notice to this gets notice to that cleaning.

Right.

I mean, it has to be in a talk unless you're in a convened meeting.

Right.

And that's weird.

I mean, that's that is like a muzzle, you know, on the way you've done it before, I imagine.

If you're like every other client I've got.

But you're right.

They can have that pre-meeting.

They're gonna I I would recommend strongly that they notify the press.

We do.

Yeah.

And if you screw up the notice, that's also in here now.

They can invalidate whatever you voted on.

So that's that's new teeth, too.

So it gotta be now that's generally staff takes care of the notices, but no pressure, Carol.

I mean, we gotta that's uh that's super serious now.

Yeah, it's always been serious, but like now it has ramifications if you mess it up.

Stronger than it ever had before.

What are the questions?

I told you I was gonna be quite.

I have a question.

Yeah.

So if I'm talking to Monroe sometime about a flood that happened on his street.

So you're a staffer?

No, you're a staffer.

You're a city staffer.

This guy.

Yeah.

Or any anybody uh anybody up here.

We're talking.

We talk about projects because there's contractors, uh, civil engineers, architects.

Say there's a flood on G Street, and we're just talking about it.

And then six months later, something comes to our body about this flood on G Street, and we talked about it before, not knowing it was going to be here.

Is that um I think like a lawyer who will sue you?

And they're gonna say, you're in the planning and zoning business.

If there's a problem in the city with land and how it's zoned and designed, it's pretty good chance it's gonna come back in front of you.

So, yes, I I as a mean plaintiff's lawyer will sue you to invalidate that when you screw my client over because you were talking about it, talking turkey about it outside of the confines of a noticed meeting.

So if it is, in my view, respectfully, that is something that's reasonably foreseeable to come before you because it was a public event that affected the public, and it and it deals in your area of jurisdiction.

So I'm afraid now.

I want I was thinking you were gonna ask this.

You can ask staff for information.

You can actually, there isn't there is one exception that I write about in here, you can actually ask one another for background information on a topic.

They don't consider that a violation.

So if you phrase it as a question, and by the way, I recommend you do all of this by email and not orally, so there's no miscommunication or confusion.

Hey, on that G Street flooding incident.

Do any of my fellow commissioners have any information about yada yada yada?

If so, please send it to me.

That is permissible.

You can seek information.

You just can't talk about your feelings about it, how you're thinking about the issue from a vote standpoint, or how we should solve the issue.

That sort of turkey talking can't occur.

You can only solicit information from staff and one another.

There's another exception for like scheduling.

Like if the chairman is trying to figure out when the heck can we have a special meeting?

Like we got something that's kind of time sensitive.

We gotta have a special meeting.

When can I get a quorum here?

It does permit him to to call around and figure out and staff who can make it on you know October 15th.

We gotta have a meeting, and I want to make sure that we don't we'll have a quorum.

That's permissible too.

But those two exceptions are bad.

So Mr.

Little, I'm afraid that probably is a no-no.

It's a it's a big change, everybody, and I need you to to review this, talk to Ms.

Duncan with questions, uh or you can call me if you want to, although I don't have a uh client relationship with you, but um it's a serious issue, and it's a big change, and and a lot of folks are gonna get burned on it, and I'm I want you to not be one of them.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

If there are any other questions, any other questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, sir.

You have anything else?

Sir.

Okay, we're adjourned.