Good evening, and welcome to the regular meeting of the Joplin City Council. From Monday, October 20th, 2025, Mrs. Naush.
Eternal God, as we begin another meeting of the Joplin City Council, we ask that you invest in this body, your strength and wisdom, to fortify us and guide us, so that we may enhance the prosperity of our community and improve the quality of life for those we serve. Amen.
Mr.
Carlin, I believe you have some guests with us this evening.
I do, but if you all like to come up to the podium, we have guests this evening from Vita Nova Village to lead us in the pledge.
Vita Nova Village is not, is a not for profit organization committed to fighting homelessness in our area by providing a planned community of safe and dignified housing.
Their mission is to give people a hand up, not a hand out, and by creating this foundation
of a home where they can rebuild their lives and contribute back to their community.
Vita Nova is about hope, restoration, and long-term solutions to homelessness in our city.
and Ronda Thompson will you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you.
But
a round of applause for the efforts of being in a village.
I was speaking with Rhonda briefly before the meeting began and she was kind of updating me on where there are on the construction front.
And when I drove by there today, I seen some new dirt on the side and we're getting ready to have some foundations poured out there.
Walls are being built off site.
We're going to look up one day and there's going to be a village of tiny homes over there that's going to be able to have.
I help a lot with our homeless community in the near future.
So keep praying for them, and I am sure.
I am absolutely positive if you are moved by what they're doing over a beating of a village, they will take your check.
I just feel really good about being able to say that and it being true.
Roe call.
Mr. Bard.
President.
Mr. Carlin.
President.
Mr. Coppel.
President.
Mr. Detar.
President.
Dr. Farnham, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Lawson, Mr. Shaw, Mayor Cortez.
Present, presentations.
AOPP Transit Grant Planning Update.
Good evening, Tony.
Thank you, Mayor.
Good evening, Council.
So, if you recall last year about this time we were awarded the Areas of Persistent Poverty Federal Transportation Administration Grant.
that was intended to help us look at a more sustainable transit system, perhaps a transportation type authority, and also look into expansion ability.
So we went through a typical RFP process, as you know, we brought on Transpro, David Johnson and his colleague Sarah Frost and team to start a process of analysis.
So over the last year, they've gone through a whole series of assessments and surveys which you'll see in front of this evening.
They looked at assessment and goal setting.
We went through public engagement process which included public outreach surveys, a series of meetings with area community leaders.
They've done feasibility analyses, various governance models, different types of service deliveries and funding options and structures.
measures. They've looked at revenue planning and looked at some of those funding structures
and scenarios and cost some of those out and looked at revenue potential and then scalability
of each one of those. So, David this evening is going to go through
a presentation which you'll see before you and we'll answer some questions at the end.
Thank you.
Good evening and welcome.
Thank you, bear, council. Glad to be in front of you and present
an update on the Joplin Regional Transit Study. I believe you can see the slides and I'll
I'll be following long in front here.
So bear with us as we work through that.
So wanted to give you a next slide,
a quick background on the project.
Tony set that up a little bit, so I'll be brief.
But of course, this is a federally funded project.
It is focused on public transportation.
Of course, the city runs two different services
within that program and we'll talk about that in just a minute.
So our team is here tonight to give you an update on that study.
And we're leveraging a study that was also conducted
in 2020, also by our friends and trans-systems now GFT that kind of did a much larger look at
the transit system, but only for the city of Joplin, and this is, of course, a regional look,
and really focused on the structure to make that a regional entity. So next slide for the schedule,
we're almost at the end here, and our final deliverables will be an implementation plan, so hopefully
Hopefully there's some input tonight for the team on the direction that we're headed so
that we can deliver an implementation plan that the city will actually use.
That is our goal.
So actionable plans is what we're about and we're hoping to deliver that by the end of the year.
Next slide.
So we start every project at TransPro with a discussion about what's the success look
like at the end, right?
We want to make sure we have sort of a guiding principle, something that helps us keep the whole thing in check as we go along and so that's what you see here on slide five is the goal is for Joplin, the Joplin area to have a regionally governed and operated transit system that is operationally sustainable, connects people to destinations and promotes economic development. So those three pillars are what we're trying to stay true to.
So we'll move in and talk a little bit about the existing conditions of the service you currently provide, starting on slide seven, and then a little bit about the engagement we've done with the public and other regional leaders.
So the three bullets on slide seven are really just, you know, there is a need for transit in Joplin.
That's demonstrated in sort of the basic data we use as transit planners.
And of course, the region and that's the grants that was provided was to look at specifically a low income households.
But Joplin as a region has more low income households and people with disabilities on average compared to the state of Missouri as a whole.
So there is a need just based on those two inputs.
You're probably familiar with the operator shortage that resulted in the suspension of the trolley.
And so creating something that's operationally sustainable in the long term is really important and a lot of that has to do with the simple aspect of driver pay operator pay and lifting that out of the city, which is one of the goals of this study would allow you to do that.
And also the limited services that are offered today limits access to jobs so people who don't have reliable transportation or can't afford it are limited in how they can help participate in a local economy.
Next slide please.
So just very briefly on some of the engagement we did we did a two surveys so I'll try to make it clear why one and the other one we did two different ones.
And then also did some general outreach on Thursday and then of course we also convened
a steering committee made up of some of your peers in the region to bring them along
and course correct where needed.
So on slide nine, the online project survey, which was sort of the general public, anybody
could answer this throughout the region, we received about 241 responses through the summer.
For 82% of the response to that survey agree with a statement that we put in front of them
that the Metro needs regional transit that connects people with destinations in communities
outside of Joplin.
So there's a service today within the city of Joplin and so everyone or 82% agree that
it should look beyond that to the whole region.
And some of the other responses from that, the challenges in making transit better include
the frequency and reliability of the current system.
Again, there's that financial sustainability and, of course, being more regional in nature.
Because that is how people move around the region, right?
Some key destinations we heard from that survey, education, recreation,
some of the industrial parks that aren't served today.
And, of course, you're nearby communities, such as Carl Junction and
and they agreed with the priorities for a new system to be operationally sustainable to provide more access to destinations throughout the region and of course promoting economic development.
Now on slide 10, the phone survey is a statistically valid phone survey that we can save with 5% of margin of error and
and weighted towards Jasper and Newton County populations that, you know, these percentages
are, you know, accurate, right?
As opposed to the opt-in of the online survey.
So this is a representative sample of both counties and going into this survey, we made
an assumption that we would be looking at the whole of both counties for either an entity
that would drive this new regional system and the funding mechanism to make it happen.
So, 391 people answered the phone, which is the challenge these days, with 265 in Jasper and 126 being in Newton County.
And it was conducted at the end of May.
And only 12% reported using some kind of service that we offered up to them in the last six months.
But again, here a very high number of people finding value in transit, even if they don't use it 82%.
So on slide 11, we have a couple of call outs from the phone survey results.
Again, 85%, which is slightly higher than the overall value.
Investing in transit is good for the community.
So these are wide swath of the community here against statistically valid results.
And access and providing transportation for people with special mobility needs and
low household incomes are most important with that.
So we take these results and we use that to determine what services a new entity and a
new funding mechanism could provide.
So beyond again what the city is offering today.
And again most important is connecting people where they want to go, providing again transportation
for people with special mobility needs, and then low income households making it affordable.
probably know this, but a lot of surface transportation doesn't pay for itself even
with fares and user fees, and then of course creating job opportunities, which is not
something we see a lot of in these surveys. We do these with transit agencies across
the United States, but we think people were well aware of the staffing challenges that resulted
in the suspension of the trolley program. That's a unique scenario that you dealt with here
and we think that's more and out of those results.
And then our final step in the engagement for the project was convening a steering committee.
You can see on the left in the box who was invited and who we followed up with who couldn't attend in person.
We've had two of these meetings, one where we helped to define success and
then one where we tested the recommendations that you're going to hear tonight.
And we hope to have a third one with this same group where we say okay look we've got direction from the council.
we've had additional conversations with leaders in the region, elected officials like yourself,
we've said, okay, we can buy off on these recommendations and help advance them to the next phase.
All right, starting on page, I think it'll be 14. The first issue we took up in this study was on
governance. So as you are all aware as a governing body, you have a structure that, you know,
certain checks in place how legislation moves throughout and how funding is handled and budgets
and everything. So setting up a new entity would require us to define a governance model for this
new regional entity. So we scoured Missouri statutes hoping to find something that didn't require you
to make a special visit to Jeff City and ask for something unique. That was a challenge we kind of
set for ourselves. That still is an option you have if you choose to forego these recommendations. But
But at the top of the list is a transportation development district, which is a, it's not
unique to Missouri, other structures like it exists in many states, but it's essentially
a special district that you create new, almost like a school district, a sub-unit or a sub-component
of state government where the statutes enable this, and it provides the most flexibility and
control for you as decision-makers on what the revenue sources are and
then who you put on the board to govern this, provide that flexibility.
And we'll talk more about that option because that is our recommendation to you tonight.
A couple of other options that exist again, existing in state statute,
a county transportation authority, which is a little less flexible and
does require to be a county of the first class to advance that.
And then transportation corporation, which is essentially functionally a non-profit that is essentially controlled by the Missouri Highway and Transportation Commission, and it provides the least flexibility.
And also a call back to the survey results that people are generally supportive of creating a new entity to resolve this regional goal.
So
a little bit more detail on slide 15 about the governance model that we're recommending,
the TDD plus the addition of a nonprofit.
So a little bit of background on why you would do both of those, is number one, the TDD is a creature of state statute. So as those statutes change, change the entity itself would need to adapt. So creating a nonprofit gives you that stability of saying the transit operations and the owner of the assets in the sponsor, which would be this sort of designation to receive federal funds, would sit with the nonprofit. And that the TDD
It's self would simply act as a conduit of funds and this model actually exists elsewhere in Missouri, so you wouldn't be the first to use it.
Also, the TDD board is sort of defined by statute and a nonprofit, you can kind of make it up as you go along, making sure you have regional representation the way you see fit.
that the TDD does not allow that.
And then of course the proposed boundary
would be the entirety of the city of Joplin,
which is where you have the services today,
plus the entirety of Jasper County.
So pretty big area, and that area would be covered
with services that we're proposing as well.
In the table below, we have some steps we think
that you would need to take as a governing body.
So this is where you actually would need to act
to advance this plan if it's advanced beyond the study phase you would probably need to authorize staff to create the nonprofit that would operate the system and then allow those assets that are currently all city owned, so vehicles, staff, things like that, to the nonprofit so that it could begin to operate regionally.
You would probably also need to come up with an agreement so that this new nonprofit that would then take the city owned assets and make sure you have clear cooperation guidelines.
You're probably in these arrangements with other local governments or other nonprofits that you do business with or exchange revenue with and this would be the same.
You also need to formally pass a resolution as one of the formation partners if you advance
that recommendation of a TDD to form the TDD itself.
I think there are other TDDs in this region pretty sure, so if you're not familiar with it
essentially goes to the circuit court.
They treat it like a civil case and then advances through there and then the outcome is, oh,
you can have an election, you can form the TDD, it's legal and can advance.
So, but the step for that starts with this governing body and whoever is the other governing
body that would be your pair up for the TDD, has to take, it takes two of those entities.
And we are all recommending that other body be Jasper County.
Also the transfer of FTA status, so you are the recipient of federal funds for transit and
that process takes some time, so we would recommend that you, if you advance these other recommendations
to initiate that transfer process.
They don't have a checklist, unfortunately we asked.
And so we just take some time to prove the new entity,
the new nonprofit has the financial, legal,
and technical capacity to receive federal funds,
as the city does today.
And then finally, as you are probably aware,
the transit system today is funded by a portion
of your transportation sales tax that's collected citywide.
The goal for this is to reduce the transit program's reliance on that sales tax revenue,
but you wouldn't probably want to shut it off right away.
You would probably want to decrement that contribution down over time to allow the new entity to receive TDD revenue sources or funds.
And then to help acquire vehicles as the system expands to serve the entire region.
Any comments or questions on those, because those are very specific to you all.
Council, Mr. Carlin.
You would said you, and listed visiting the surrounding community leaders,
have we talked to them about sharing in the financing of this project?
And what was their response, if you will?
So, yeah, those members made up the steering committee and yes, we had the conversation about funding and
And the recommendation to do a sales tax and we'll get to the revenue, I think that's the next slide.
Would that be like the general Jasper County sales tax?
Is that what we're talking about?
Yes, so currently, again, the city is funding it through the TST portion of that.
This would then grow that sort of coverage of a new sales tax to include all of Jasper and all of Joplin.
And then you would serve that new region.
And so the service would expand to meet where the revenue is being collected.
So yes, they were part of the conversation and we put several options in front of them.
There's an option in the TDD Act to do a property tax.
So they said, don't do that.
Also, special assessments, don't do that.
And here's the various increments of sales tax you can do in the 8th of a cent increment all the way up to 1% and they said, let's cut it off at a half set.
That Mr. Coppall.
Yes sir, is there an opportunity, so I'll use a fire protection district as an example to have a defined area that's not the entire county.
More or less where it divides it up into a east and a west side because I think we could keep a transit system, pretty busy servicing.
from Joplin, Duquesne, Dunnewig, Web City, Orinogo.
That's in a fairly tight area, but not have to go all the way out to Carthage, Sarcoxie.
And a lot of those other areas that are considerably further away on the east side of the county.
Split the county in half and do an east and a west, is that a possibility?
The boundary for the district is completely within the cities or whoever the two entities that created within that decision making authority.
So if you did not want to cover all of Jasper County or Jasper County chooses not to participate as the other formation partner you could absolutely bring that in or splitting it up I wouldn't necessarily recommend because the TDD needs to be contiguous according to state law.
So if you take that recommendation, it needs to be one sort of boundary and as a result, one revenue source
But you could bring it in so that you're not covering all of Jasper County and perhaps just include the cities that are interested
And I will say that part of our follow-up outreach is to have those more specific conversations
Taking the direction from you tonight as the owner of the current system and say, okay, well the job in city council said well
Well, it shouldn't really maybe cover all of Jasper County.
Let's bring that in.
So then we would instead of talking to the Jasper County government,
talk to the local municipalities instead and see what kind of boundary makes sense based on that.
So what my proposal was would be contiguous.
It just wouldn't be all encompassing of the entire county.
And it would still have its own operating board, which would be able to levy attacks.
for something of that nature, is that would that be accurate?
Yes, you have complete control over the boundary.
It's creating a new political subdivision from scratch with a TDD when you do a sales tax.
So you have total control over the size, which then also determines where the revenue is collected.
Perfect, thank you.
Thanks, sir.
Anyone else?
Please continue.
Okay, so on to that end, on slide 16, you'll see that district does look large.
And so we are anticipating a proposed, you know, a recommended change to what we're
proposing.
This is just really comes down to, quite frankly, the math.
So you may know, but if not, sales tax is not granular.
You need to really a jurisdiction level view.
And then once you get within that jurisdiction,
it's really hard to estimate.
And so that's why we just picked all of Jasper County
and all of Joplin.
It's easy to do an estimate or estimate the revenue for you.
Once you start bringing it in and maybe not using a municipal boundary
completely, it's a little tougher in this early analysis.
But absolutely we can bring that boundary in.
I will note on Carthage,
It did come up in the, both of the surveys quite often as a destination and just on a pure demographic level, it has a lot of the same factors that we noted that Joplin has as a city.
So we did include that in there for that reason.
And I think they have attempted to operate some sort of subsidized, I think it's taxing service on and off to me address some of those needs.
using, I believe, the city's general fund.
It's a hike to cart the trim here, as you know though.
So on slide 17, we'll talk a little bit about the rest of the revenue picture.
The revenue today, your 2024 transit budget was just $2.6 million funded through a combination
of federal and state grants, federal being the line share their customer fares, and a portion
again of the TST.
Again, the revenue options for this new TDD is sales tax, a property tax, a special assessment,
and of course, all of the options would have fares and the existing federal and state grants.
And I will note, and you'll see in the asterisk, that as the region spends more locally,
it is able to attract more federal annual funds for operating service.
So take Carthage, for example, it is outside of your urbanized area.
It is considered rural by the Federal Transit Administration.
You are not currently tapping into rural transportation dollars as a city.
And this new entity could tap into those funds, which are programmed through the state of Missouri.
And grow the amount of federal funding you're bringing into the region.
And that's true of both the urbanized funds as well, because you're currently only serving the city of Chopin.
Okay,
so that's the revenue picture, a couple of supporting comments of statistics from
the survey.
Again, this is the statistically valid phone survey that people are 57 percent willing
to pay more in local taxes to support transit and very limited support for the other revenue
options which of course are steering committee also steered us away from.
And within that, the things that would improve their support for that are having performance measures and good public reporting of the spending on transit, a sunset or expiration day, which is not required in the TDD act, but is often the case.
This listing specific projects to be funded and then perhaps directly electing a board of directors.
In the case of a TDD, if you form it with the county, for example, electing them directly is not an option.
So again, the nonprofit gives you that option to expand your representation beyond what the TDD itself allows.
You could have a representative from county government, all of the municipalities within Jasper County could all have a seat on that nonprofit.
As an example,
and of course the survey results there shown graphically onto the right slide 19 shows what a sales tax would estimate again, we're talking the city of Joplin and the entirety of Jasper County. So please take that into account. We're looking at the numbers.
The rates range from an eighth of a cent all the way up to three quarters.
We're including three quarters because there is an opportunity to be transformational with transit.
A half set gives you a noticeable improvement that could be regional.
So there's two big improvements there, noticeable improvement for city residents.
And then of course, the region being served for the first time.
And then the numbers that reflect that.
On the third column, this is a recommendation, it's not required by law.
But having a capital revenue carve out that's codified into this program would ensure that your system remains operationally sustainable from a capital perspective.
So agencies often get in the habit and it's very good nature to put all their money out on the street, as they say, into operations service service service.
But sometimes that comes at the expense of your fleet and the things you need to get service out on the street.
And so this would essentially force that entity to be good stewards of the assets, which
are also federally funded.
So you have obligations there to keep them in what's called a state of good repair.
This would sort of force that into being.
And I go, of course, all of this is based on assumptions that we're using 2024 data that
the first year revenue would be generated from a district would be 2027, and no estimated
increase in sales tax to be very, very conservative.
So sales tax fluctuates as you're all aware, as elected officials.
And so a system based entirely on that probably has to account for zero growth in the long term.
All right, so our recommendation slide 20 is half-sales tax.
Again, the property tax and special assessments were not popular both in the survey.
And with the steering committee and the steering committee says, you know, 1% is too much.
Let's shoot for a little bit lower and we can still be transformative.
The half cent would allow expansion throughout the city and improve frequency.
So that's how often the bus arrives in the case of trolley and also adds Saturday service for the first time.
So thinking about the population that the transit system serves here and in many cities.
It's really become more of a seven-day need because of the jobs, right?
So these are not typical office jobs, eight to five Monday through Friday, like a lot of us enjoy.
The jobs are more retail, light industrial, and they tend to have sort of a seven-day look
on shifts and things like that.
So Saturday and Sunday service, which we're not actually right.
Meeting, yes, Sunday, but that becomes more critical. And again, the 10% capital set aside to maintain that state of good repair.
All right, so on to what you would be buying if you advance that recommendation. So slide 22. Kind of breaks down between the two services you provide today, which in transit speak, we call them fixed route. So a fixed route line on a map and a fixed schedule. You call it the trolley, which is great.
They love that nod to history, the existing service and then what's recommended.
And then demand response, which literally means if there's no trip requested, the vehicle
isn't moving.
So very different than fixed route.
And that service is called maps.
And when certain eligibility factors are met, it's also called pair transit.
So again, the existing service is pretty limited.
And it operates in loops, which most people don't travel in loops.
you tend to go in one direction so we would propose changing that and increasing the number of
lines from 3 to 7. So a significant increase in just what it looks like on a map. And we would be
including service to Dunnowig, Duquesne, and Carthage and increasing the frequency on some routes
to every 30 minutes instead of every hour. So imagine if you're subjecting yourself to a bus
schedule and the bus that you miss the bus that's coming every hour, when you increase that to every
330 minutes, the chances you're going to get somewhere on time improve pretty dramatically.
And we're not proposing any change to your current fair structure, which is $2 for trip for
a base fair, and then a reduced fair for seniors disabled, who qualify in military medicare.
And on the map side, it would grow from currently serving the city, and
then other cities by request where they reimburse you for those trips, not the full amount by the way.
to a countywide service or whatever the district boundary becomes, leaving the fair structure in place and then then providing a what we call a complimentary ADA pair transit to the fixed route system.
Consultants speak that's essentially required by the Americans with disability act so you can't really control it. It's sort of an unfunded mandate but when you grow that system you have to grow that service with it.
And then, and it's kind of in the same style as maps, and that would also extend to
Saturdays is our recommendation as well for all the same reasons we listed.
So that was a lot.
So feel free if you have any questions to at the end because the service, you know, it's
important to understand why we do certain services in certain places and at certain levels.
So these are our technical recommendations, but every transit system in America has a political
consideration where the lines on the map go who get served because not everyone can be served equally
unlike fire and trash, which tend to kind of get everybody. Transit only goes to certain places
because there's never enough money to go around to everybody. On slide 23 you'll see the comparison
of both the funding area and the services themselves so growing quite a bit. The shaded blue area is
your map service so that's again picking people up where they are and taking them where
they want to go and then the green and then red lines are your trolley routes proposed
or current and then recommended and then how frequent they will run according to the
legend up top and then so you're seeing quite a bit of coverage growth here in correspondence
on its to the size of the district.
Slide 24, again, the trade-off here is always between what we call coverage and frequency.
So you can make the trolley run more often, but if you're given X amount of money, if
you make it run more often, that's more money.
If you make it go more places, that's more money.
So that's a balance that every agency including yours has to make all the time, including with
your current service.
So, as we grow the districts or grow the service area, we have to think about how often those buses are running as well because it's all coming from the same bucket.
Serving more locations in the region with a trolley route was something we heard loud and clear from the surveys.
And it will require more people will use the service and that will contribute to the traction of federal funds into the region as well since it's partially based on ridership.
But increasing the sales tax is also an option to add additional services if you see something
that you think should be covered but then those are also the trade-off again of coverage
and frequency.
But increasing that sales tax again would probably run a file of some of the political feedback
we've received from both the steering committee and the survey.
So finally, our next steps, we put a lot in front of you tonight, but here's what the project
is doing to finish out by the end of the year that we plan to convene the steering committee
a third time, perhaps with some more work to do, then a session tonight to get guidance
from you. Then we'll be doing immediately after tonight some additional elected official
outreach, some people that we didn't get in the room for the steering committee. You'll see
them listed there. And then we will deliver, again, an actionable implementation plan for
city staff and whoever your partner is, if you choose to advance a TDD to get that across
the finish line. And we know you have other things on the docket as far as elections
and things like that, so that'll be a completely up to you. We're putting this forward as sort
of date, agnostic and can be implemented whenever you're ready. And that's a plan, that implementation
plan would be ready for you and the team to advance by the end of December this year.
with that I'll take additional questions.
All right, Mr. Dittor, we'll let you get it going.
Thank you, Mayor.
Thanks for the information, obviously a lot,
and I know you guys put a lot of hard work in to it
and appreciate that.
But just throw down a couple of questions
and really looking at the service.
What was the deciding factor of the steering committee
when they were looking at this,
and they were looking at the fixed routes, right?
So we've got the 30-minute routes and a job one.
But then we're going all the way over to Carthage,
And not really hitting like Web City card to build some of these closer areas to me and I'm obviously I'm not wasn't a part of this
Kind of seems like you would we'd want to start closer and expand out
But I don't know what this is what was the factors that determine that decision if you would expand on that
I'm sure a lot of people absolutely councilman
So again, you're seeing the technical analysis and as I mentioned earlier every transit system takes into account
political you know considerations and so often that comes
in with coverage, right?
So the line on the map doesn't go to my community.
I'm contributing to the cost of the system.
Those communities are getting maps service.
So that's a given, but it doesn't show up
as a line on a map.
So if asked the technical perspective would be,
we're looking at demographics,
the drive transit use and need.
And that's more need, there's more of a need
in Carthage than say Web City, right?
And that probably doesn't need a lot of explanation,
But when you just look at the data, household incomes, you know, access.
I'm manufacturing jobs, I'm imagining.
Yes.
I'm a little bit more in Carthage than maybe there are in Web City or Carterville.
That's kind of some of the reasons why.
And then the need, maybe the demographic of the population was a little bit different in those areas.
Another question I've got a couple more.
So we brought up maps.
We're talking about maps when we're doing that.
How many more maps vehicles were we would be part of?
Because I imagine we don't have enough that you do not.
Right.
So growing the service, that will be part of the implementation plan.
So once we have clarity on the size of the district, which will then provide clarity on the revenue that comes in and then the level of service you can provide, then you can calculate the number of vehicles you need.
So it's really just a math problem and we need those inputs to be kind of answered first before we say you need 20 more vehicles or whatever it is.
The good news with vehicles is that the federal government is very generous, 80% match.
The state of Missouri has a vehicle contract where you can save some money by ordering through them.
Your options reduce, but that's pretty much a small consideration when you realize how much easier it is to do.
Staff is already actually looking at that, by the way, because they hadn't been done historically.
And so, yeah, it's the capital part is generous, less so operating, but
But because of Joplin's size, you do get 50% match for operations.
So again, growing service will attract, even if you don't buy more vehicles,
growing the service would attract more federal funds.
So yes, so if the need is there, it's the demand is there,
then we're going to get some more funding for capacity on that, right?
We're going to meet that capacity.
But, you know, and then kind of where everything hits the road is dollars, right?
We do anything we want, it just takes the money to do it, right?
When we talk, when you guys are mentioning that sales tax, is that just a brick and
What are tax or is that retail sales?
That's what's allowed.
No use tax money in there.
No, unfortunately use tax, well, I shouldn't say that.
The use tax is not allowed in the TDD statute.
Okay, yes, I know different communities do don't have
and say that's why it's kind of one and all.
I think it's allowed in the CID act, but not the TDD act,
but it doesn't matter because that's not what we're
recommending.
Okay, that's fine.
Thank you, that was those were my questions.
Thank you, Mayor.
Mr. Carpone.
Can we go to slide 19, please?
So you sounded when you were talking about the estimated revenue that you're kind of unsure
what it would bring in and that this was just purely estimated, correct?
So it is confident when you use a existing jurisdictional boundary, right?
So, again, that's from the Missouri Department of Revenue.
They know exactly how much sales tax, Jasper County, for example, in the City of Joplin, collect.
When you change the boundary to be less than or different than it?
Sure, yeah.
I'm just wondering, it'd be pretty simple to make one phone call to Jasco, because they do a half cent sales tax, which includes the City of Joplin and the rest of Jasper County.
Now, it doesn't get the Newton County portion, but that's not very much.
You just seem like you were stretching to, you know, for an accurate accomplishment of this number.
Back to slide 18, please.
So your statement, 57% of community survey respondents would be willing to pay more in local taxes than to get down to the blue slide.
44% say not supported of any new tax which already defeats the 57 number then to
my math 34 plus 8 plus 4 is 46 not 57 with 10% being unsure or refused to
answer so I don't think you could include them in that number so I question your
your slides there. 22, please.
On your recommendation of 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Joblin is a very manufacturing, job, centric, entity, carthage as well. You even
mentioned trying to provide services for manufacturing type jobs and that
carthage would be more in tune with that than others. An awful lot of our
manufacturing jobs in this area, work 12-hour shifts.
So ending a trolley at 6 p.m., yeah, the 6 a.m.
may be able to get them to work, but ending the trolley at 6 p.m.
It's not going to get them home.
So what good is this going to do if we don't look at our businesses or even go into maybe
a partnership with our businesses and say, hey, if you can do 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. shifts,
We will run the trolley from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. or whatever to encompass that.
If you can line up your shift schedules that way, we can do that.
But doing a 12 hour system, when our jobs work, 12 hour shifts and schedules, doesn't work.
That math ain't math in there.
So I do have a little bit of a problem with that aspect of it.
Thanks, sir.
I would note on the hours are, again, this is our recommendation.
So if you want to advance where we cover more hours,
it just needs to come at the expense of something else within the
amount of revenue coming in.
So it is a lever you can move absolutely,
just like the lines on the map in the days of the week.
Okay, so did you consider that whenever you put together these recommendations?
Yes, absolutely.
I mean, you know, that is one of the job types that we've mentioned, but there's also retail.
Then there are people that do actually work a traditional schedule.
And that is just the challenge with expanding transit throughout the schedule.
Because as you get later in the day, a ridership almost always drops off even if people do need it to get to ship.
So you try to just it's just a balancing act of so how many of our
Major job suppliers, especially in the manufacturing and entities
Did you make contact with
We actually didn't reach out to any employers yet. So that's not it
Anyone else
Council I think that I've seen in this presentation
Drew can we get to the last slide, please?
I think where we are here on October 20th is looking for guidance in the next steps confirmation.
So any discussion on guidance that we're willing to give here,
Mr. Jackson?
Yes, I think something he mentioned right at the end of his conversation.
Mr. Coppel is some of the next steps will probably be talking to the employers.
And I can remember probably about two years ago there was an economic forum that was held here in town.
Transportation was one of the identified needs from some of those major employers in the community, so I think if we could start looking at what these other pieces of data are, what those needs are, you know, outside of the government entities that are involved, just start looking at the operational business entities, maybe that could help us, you know, make a more informed decision. Anyone else?
Mrs. Carlton.
I'd like to look at what other communities be at Web City, Carthage, Carterville certainly are more rural areas and qualify for more rural funding as opposed to Joplin, the more urban area.
So is there a potential this thing can really support itself, if you will?
So the rural funding is similar to the funding the city already receives today, so it's a 50% match for operations.
So by now there are no local contributions for rural service in the region we're looking at.
I guess what we'd need to look at is Web City or Carthage, let's say we know Carthage is a rural area.
Is Carthage willing to match the 50% in order to get the rural funding to help pay for the service?
Those are the kind of questions I would ask.
So the recommendation is to include those cities in the collection of the transportation development district sales tax.
So they would be contributing through that mechanism, rather than from their general fund or some other.
And mechanism like a transportation sales tax or something.
Would that necessarily be 50%?
We can certainly do the calculation if the final decision is to include those communities in the district boundary.
to determine how much money they're generating, and does it match up with the cost of service they're getting?
Right now we haven't done that analysis because we're still trying to make sure we have direction from everyone on the boundary and the revenue source.
I just think we need to know that before we can really make a commitment and move forward.
As well as we would have to know that we had a tax, a sales tax coming in, but I would need to know that
And those communities we're talking about servicing would really help in the support of the transit system.
It is information that can be known.
So we will take that as a note and make sure that's calculated in the updated plan.
Mr. D. Tar.
Thank you, Mayor.
I thought we're looking at the recommendation proposed next steps, but
you said earlier when we first started like this is something that could be way down the
future right this can be five six years from now you know we're gonna be sure I don't
know but it's so I just don't know I'm like are we are we looking at doing something getting
some taking these next steps that then this is going to get to a point where we're like
we're not ready to do this yet so let's put it on the shelf so at what point are we I got
figured my bourbon here and I don't want to say it wrong but other than a lack of better
or words, is it wasting people's time to get together
and move forward at this point?
I don't know, so maybe that's the discussion
we should be having, or is it makes sense
to kind of move forward, get to a certain point,
like the implementation point, like get to that point,
and then we're like, yeah, we're going to shelf this,
or do we just kind of nip it in the mud now?
That's kind of my concern is that we go do all this work,
we get all these people together to do all this thing,
take the time, and then we're like,
hey, we're going to hold off forever.
Yeah, and we've had these discussions,
so we're trying to gather as much information
As we can now inform what an implementation plan might look like look like in the future
Okay, whatever that is. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, too
Mr. Shaw
On the page here where it shows all the mayors of all those different organizations
Did we just list these or did these people actually participate?
So I believe they're listed as invitees and then I think at the bottom of that
That box we indicated who actually was in the room in person, and then we had some follow-up discussions with people who agreed to meet with us that weren't in the room.
So it's a much smaller group than the invitee list to your point.
Not everybody agreed to participate in the discussion.
I'm not concerned as in looking at that list because history shows that it's hard to get all those people to agree on things together, so I just want to thank you.
That's all I would also add that, you know, that was the original invite list.
We're trying to land on dates to meet on people in the case they could be there, weren't there, others came, so that was part of it.
That's where we had a follow up meeting and we're going to have a third one as well.
And then what's not shown on here is we also went and met separately, which each of the county commissions to gather there and put.
Mr. Lawson.
I'm mindful of the time when you could get on a trolley in Carthage and make your way all the way to picture Oklahoma.
Gary may have been here then, I wasn't, but anyway,
I think we're trying to attract more industry to jobless.
And one of the big challenges is finding employees to work those businesses.
And I also think that Joplin is not just within the confines of our city limits.
Joplin is part of the broader community and what's good for the broader community is good for Joplin.
And that's just my way of saying I think we should pursue this.
anyone
else? I think taking a look at these opportunities to expand public
transportation in our community is worthwhile. Take a look at. I think tonight's
presentation is also let us take a look at, you know, what's that going to cost
and what is all going to entail and, you know, this isn't as simple as flipping a
switch and everything is there. So I'm definitely willing to continue having the
conversation but what I'm hearing from the council tonight as far as next steps and guidance
is let's go talk to those employers let's get as many of these people in the room as possible
get their take on things and and and then we come back and maybe have some more
meat to put on the bone if you will to try to get in a better spot to make a more informed and
complete decision. So, would that be accurate council? Okay, sounds good. Thank you, gentlemen.
Appreciate you very much.
Next item, please.
Winter weather preparedness, snow and ice control.
Good evening, sir.
Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, council. So, I'm going to speak a little tonight on our winter
Under whether preparedness and snow and ice control program before I get going here or introduce a couple of gentlemen.
I have Scott Boofer, he's our infrastructure superintendent, he's standing there.
And then also I have Cody Marty, he's our streets and stormwater infrastructure maintenance supervisor.
These are the two gentlemen that I depend on heavily during winter storms or ice events.
Between the two of them, they have over 25 years of combined experience.
So they're a wealth of knowledge, and they make a lot of important decisions when it comes to the safety and
well-being of the citizens, we're
on them up here.
So I'm going to do a little overview here.
The Public Works Infrastructure Maintenance Division performs snow and
ice control on all bridges, arterial streets and collector streets.
The Infrastructure Maintenance Division leaders annually attend the American Public Works Association's snow conference for insight and training and snow and ice control best practices.
The goal of the snow and ice control program is to provide adequate mobility and safety for citizens and emergency services.
In addition to bridges and streets, the infrastructure maintenance division treats and clears trolley stops, but you're familiar with those from the last presentation sidewalks adjacent to city owned facilities, trouble areas which are historically steep grades and intersections that we deal with year after year and public parking lots.
So, event preparation begins way before the start of an event.
So it begins when extended forecast, predict possibility of winter weather for the area.
And then as the weather system approaches, our staff begins to monitor the national
weather service, hazardous weather outlook, we monitor short range forecast from local media.
And then we always consult with emergency management to get a handle on everything that's
going on.
And then when winter weather is imminent, and we know it's coming, our crews are staged
and we get ready for the event.
So winter weather preparedness.
We basically use three categories when we're preparing for a winter weather event.
There's material and inventory purchases that we're having very early on.
equipment preparation and operator training, and then event priorities.
As far as materials, the materials that we use, we purchase those in bulk during the
off season, we typically do that in late summer, and it basically depends on the quantities
that we get that we purchase based on historic usage and our current inventory.
So, going into this season, as far as road salt, we purchased 1,200 tons of road salt and 4,500 gallons of beet juice.
Equipment operations or equipment preparation and operator training, this is a really important aspect.
So, our preseason preparations, which is right now, late October, early November.
Remember, we have some new operators every year.
We have new operators this year, about 20% of our operators are new.
They've never driven a snow route in the City of Joplin.
Out of the remainder of our staff, about 30% have five plus seasons under their belt, which is good.
You always want that experience, and then the remaining 50% have between one and four seasons.
So, compared to years past, we have a lot of experience on the plows.
To prepare for the season coming up, we do a lot of inspections.
We get a lot of help from the garage. They do a lot of these.
Our snow boxes are inspected. Our snow plows and the blades are inspected
to make sure they operate like they should.
And then we go through all of the lights on the trucks and the snow boxes
to verify that they're working in proper order.
One note I'd like to make for this year, we just got done installing brand new LED lights on all of our snow plows and all of our trucks.
So we noticed last year during the heavy snow we got in February that the difference between Modot's trucks and our trucks was significant.
So we made the decision to go ahead and put LED lights on our trucks, and it's going to make a big difference for safety for our drivers and for the public.
So pre-event preparations, this is the 24 to 48 hours before the actual event happens.
Our crews, they start to mix the brine, which is a solution of salt and water, that's mixed to 23.3% salinity.
We make drier runs with our operators on the routes, and during those drier runs, they're checking for things like obstacles and
obstructions, work zones, utility cuts, if you think it could be an issue once they're covered with snow.
And they make mental notes of those.
And then we do when they come in, we do a final pre-event equipment inspection.
So snow and ice control priorities during an event.
Number one is bridges.
Everybody knows you've seen the signs of bridges ice before the roads, so we keep it really close.
Close watch on those streets are number two, very close second.
And then we have trolley stops, sidewalks adjacent to city owned facilities, these two items.
We typically use our crew members who don't have a CDL to do these tasks.
So while the CDL drivers are out treating the bridges in the streets,
our other crew members without CDLs are doing the trolley stops and the sidewalks.
And then we have the trouble areas that I spoke about earlier, public parking lots, and then medical centers in schools.
The medical centers in schools, Freeman and Mercy, they take care of everything within their medical center, but the roads around those centers, Freeman, for instance, 32nd Street, Macintosh Circle, we make sure those are cleared.
And then Mercy, you have Indiana Avenue on the east side and the 50th Street on the south, we make sure those are cleared, they're actually part of our routes.
and then schools
Typically, they're out of school when we have a big snow. So, we don't worry about those too much. But if we get a big one, we'll help them out and try to get it cleared so they can come back.
Next slide, please, true. So, we'll talk a little bit of bridges here. Bridges are prone to ice formation when air temperature is slightly below freezing. And bridges are monitored and treated with assault, brine, combination, prior to freezing temperatures.
Scott and Cody keep a very close watch on the bridges as as a storm is moving in those are the first things we go out and we tackle typically we have eight bridges that we monitor throughout the city and
And to treat those bridges, it takes
hour and a half, two hours, about two hours to do those from start to finish.
We don't send out an entire fleet of trucks.
Typically, we have one or two trucks that do that because it's really early on in the event.
As far as the streets go, we only plow arterial and collector streets.
Streets are treated with a combination of salt and
and Brian before and during plowing.
Trucks are used in tandem during plowing operations.
You can see these slides, the bottom slide there.
That shows our trucks working in tandem.
Now we also on our larger arterials
like 20th street, streets like that,
the really widens of five lanes.
We'll use three vehicles, three trucks.
You'll have the two with the big plows pushing the stuff to the side, and then we have another truck that follows that does the intricate work along the curb.
Herbs can wreak havoc on the snow plow, so usually the operators in the third truck, those are the guys that have a lot of experience.
We have four fixed routes, and we run those routes simultaneously, and each route takes approximately four hours, so we can run all of our routes in a four hour timeframe.
These next slides are our snow route maps.
You can kind of see how it's laid out here, four different areas.
These have been developed over time for efficiency and safety.
These trucks are big, visibility is not the best, so these routes, they're situated toward
they can make their turnarounds and be fishing at that and safe.
You will notice you can go through those in your own pace there.
There's a slide at the end that has everything combined just to give you an idea of the amount
of area that we cover.
You will notice that some familiar streets aren't included on our snow routes like 32nd
Street, East of Maine, 7th Street, Range Line, North Maine, North of Murphy Boulevard,
Newman Road, that's East of Range Line that goes out towards Missouri Southern.
Those are all state highways, so we don't maintain those during snowstorms,
Mo.Maintains those.
We get a lot of calls on those streets.
Not that they don't do a good job, they do a great job.
But our schedules don't align.
So we could have main street plowed and look in really good up to Murphy and then as soon as you cross Murphy Boulevard
You'll see a huge difference. That's why their priorities are
I-44
So
anti-ice pre-treatment. This is always a subject people are interested in so this is an alternative method to
pre-treat our streets before a storm comes in
So, anti-ice can be applied to dry roads and bridge services up to 12 hours prior to a winter weather event if conditions allow and we would prefer to do this overnight.
That allows the mixture to soak into the pavement and in the evening and at night in the winter time, there's not as much traffic on these streets.
rates, so it's not being spread out by car tires, it's actually soaking into the pavement.
It consists of 90% brine and 10% beet juice, and what it does is it forms a barrier between
the roadway surface and the snow or the ice, whichever is coming down, and it helps to prevent
bonding between those.
Pre-treating all four of our routes takes approximately nine hours.
So, you can do the math there.
We have a 12-hour window, takes nine hours to pretreat these routes, so we have a very
short window there to get this done.
We have two trucks, the slide or the pictures there on the left, that's one of our trucks.
We have two trucks that are outfitted for an IIS application.
We did request another truck in the 26 budget.
Thank you for approving that.
We're hopeful that we can at least get the tank and the application apparatus in before January.
And we can use these in any truck that we have.
As a matter of fact, the ones we have now, we go out and apply this.
And then when we're done, those trucks go back.
We take the tanks out, and then we put the snow boxes in because they're also used to plow.
Unfortunately, NIIs is not an option if pavement temperatures are below 15 degrees or if rain or freezing rain occurs prior to or
Be expected to be during an event. So which happens a lot around here?
You go from rain to freezing rain to snow, but we do have a lot of opportunities to use it.
If weather conditions prevent an IIS application, then the standard treatment methods are used for snow and ice, which is dissolved in brine combination.
So I have a few highlights here from 2025.
We actually had four winter weather events last year from I think maybe late December through February.
Two of those events, they really didn't amount to much.
We did treat the bridges and the roads, but we didn't even drop a plow on either one of those.
But we did have to that we push some snow January 9th and 10th.
We had three to five inches.
We worked from the first snowfall.
It took us about 24 hours to get all of our routes cleared.
and then February 18th and 19th. Everyone might remember this one. This is the 6 to 10 inch winter storm that shut down I-44, rerouted traffic onto range line. We had a lot of a lot of issues, but we worked with the Fire Department, the emergency responders, MoDOT, and within 36 hours from the beginning of that storm.
We had our roads passable and both of those storms we were able to pre-treat with the
anti-eyes.
So we made a tremendous difference within here's some totals from after from those from the
whole season.
We used just a little over 1,000 tons of road salt, 6,625 gallons of brine and 2,700 gallons
of beaches.
So, there's a short video I'd like you guys to watch.
You may have seen this already.
It's a show me Joplin video that Drew and his communications department, friends Wallace,
produced this, put it together.
It will touch on almost everything I just talked about, but it'll do it in about two minutes.
So.
Before the first snow of the season, the streets crew and the Joplin public works department
is planning and getting ready for the worst winter weather. We start planning in early
fall or even in the summertime. We start purchasing our salt and summer time. Then when fall comes
you know we'll start preparing our guys on the droughts and training on equipment. Connecting
foul blades to trucks, loading and filling salt blotches and spreaders and preparing a mixture of
beet juice and brine which is salty water used as a pre-treatment or weather conditions allow.
That mixture creates a barrier between snow and the street making it easier to
clear away snow before it sticks and reeds. When it comes up to an actual snow
event we'll have certain guys designated certain trucks and routes and they
know ahead of time where they're going. Running two different shifts a day and
night shift. The crews will focus first on bridges, primary and secondary or
trivial streets, then work their way towards collector streets, and finally known
problem areas such as hills and curses which are dangerous with sling. We don't
plow in residential areas. Joplin, like many cities in the west, can't afford to
have the number of cloud trucks and drivers who would take to plow every mile of
every neighborhood street. Finally, narrow neighborhood streets with cars,
parked alone, and could also very beautiful. We'd be plowing in their driveways,
covering driveways up, and it actually makes it harder to get out. With the
resources we have, it's hard enough to keep the top priority areas clear of snow
If you can make it to that main road, that's where the plowing and the material happens.
Cody Marty's team in the public works department takes part in following best practices for snow removal
and getting streets back to safe driving conditions as fast as possible.
Just know that we're trying our best and that we do have your best interest in mind to take care of you guys.
Before I take questions, I would like to acknowledge four guys that really worked their tails off during these events and that's Matt Clark and his three mechanics at Central Garage, they don't get a lot of glory, but they, they're there during the day shift, they're there all day and during the night shift, they typically have one person there.
depending on the size of the storm.
Without them, unfortunately, during snow storms,
what can happen will happen and we tear things up
and they try to get that back,
that stuff back out there on the road
as quick as they can.
So, some unsung heroes there, the guys in the garage.
I know a lot of times snow events, you know,
kids like it because they get out of school
and it's fun to watch.
We don't get a lot of snow around here.
So when we do have these events, people get excited.
But one thing I can tell you, typically at least a week
before people even start talking about this stuff,
we've been watching the weather forecast,
and we've already started preparing for that.
I can't stress that enough, you know, the safety of the citizens and everyone out there on the roads when they can get out there, that's always at the top of our minds.
And so these guys in the recruiters do a wonderful job.
We can be more proud of the way they handle the snows we had last year, the one in February.
We don't very many like that and they did a great job getting the streets ready.
So with that, I can take any questions if you have any.
Council, any questions?
It's a couple.
Yes, sir, I concur the job your team did last year was exemplary.
Question, though, on the preparedness side of things, the last couple of years we have had to Mr. Johnson's vernacular, a toolbox contract with a construction company that way we had backup equipment operators.
I don't know if that's something necessary or that wouldn't be a bad, you know, ace and the whole kind of thing to have in place.
I would be very supportive of having something done well ahead of time.
So they could be trained on our equipment beforehand in case we do need them.
Or if you all feel our staffing is more than adequate, then I'll defer to your judgment.
But if it's even in question, I'm not opposed to having that toolbox contract in place and
their operators trained on our equipment so they're ready to go.
That's a good question, thanks for the input.
I know in the past a few years ago, and we were having a hard time with our staffing, we did do something similar to that.
Right now as it stands, we're basically at full staff, just regular turnover.
We have 25 operators right now, and when we run a shift, it's a 12 hour shift, and we have 13 trucks, 13 plows.
We run 12 of those at a time, so we have enough staff to cover both shifts.
And that doesn't include these guys when they, if they need to, they can jump on a plow.
So we have 28 total, but if we ever got to the point where we, we thought we needed to bring in a contractor to help us out.
We've been down that road before and definitely be a consideration, but for this season, I think we're looking good.
Okay, I'm a preparedness guy, so I'd rather have them in place and not need them than need them and not have them or have to wait to get them spun up.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Mr. Dieter.
Thank you, man.
Mine is really just echo what Mr. Comple said.
I just want to compliment.
We all in your department because I don't know that I've ever seen roads cleared so fast so that pre-treatment of the bribe, I remember we presented this last year and I was like, this is cool stuff. Beach you seriously? But no, I thought you guys did awesome and so I have like all the confidence. I love this presentation. Yeah, they did it last year exceptionally well. And so I expect that you raised the standard. So, you know, say up there. But no, you guys did great job. So I just want you. I know I said that after the last storm we had.
But man, just pass along to your team, yes.
Yeah, kicking that out.
Scott and his guys, Scott makes a lot of decisions out there.
I'm always kind of pressing them, hey, when are we doing this?
When are we doing that?
And between him and Cody, they make a lot of the decisions
to the no one that's go time it.
They have a lot of experience doing it,
and I trust them 100%.
Well, I'll thank them, thanks Scott.
Cody, appreciate it.
Thank you, man.
We have, we have routinely, I have,
of routinely and I think some other council members up here have in the past couple of years.
We occasionally receive a phone call from a resident wanting to know when we're going to plow their street.
So could you briefly speak as to why we don't plow residential streets in the winter time when we're having events like this?
Yeah, I can speak on that a little bit.
So residential street plowing, that presents a logistical issue and
the safety issue for us, along with, we kind of talked about staffing, you know, we have 12 trucks,
city this size, if we were to go to residential street plowing, we probably have to double
our fleet, and we don't even have enough operators to run that many trucks.
Most of us have lived,
well, I don't know about most of us, but I've lived here long enough to know that very rarely,
three days later is that snow is still around especially on the roads. Now you will get an event
that's out of the ordinary. But as far as residential streets, I don't know if any of you have
ever lived in an area where they do get a lot of snow.
Those residents understand the importance of
getting your car off the street.
I don't know that we could message that enough around here. We would
be plowing in so many vehicles, I think you would probably get more calls if people can't
get out because we plow them in.
And then our streets are pretty narrow in the residential neighborhoods.
So I know it's been discussed, but in general, I mean, last year, the February storm, most
roads were passable within a week, I would say.
But the main roads, our goal is to get the main roads passable so if you can get to those,
So you can get where you need to go.
The other phone call that I get often is you guys do such a fantastic job of plowing
the main thoroughfares, the arteries, and the main roads that you block in my street.
There's so much snow piled up at the intersection of my street where I can get on, say, 20th street
that I can't get my car through that snow bank to get out to the main road where it is clear and I can go somewhere.
Speak to that for just a moment, please.
I'm glad you brought that up.
So you may have noticed through the budget work sessions that we put some snow plows in there to put on the front of pickups, pick up trucks.
And when we're replacing these trucks, we're buying larger trucks than we have in the past set of a half time.
I mean, we're going to three quarter times, every three quarter, maybe boned up to one time.
Those trucks are designed to have snow plows on them.
And the goal is to use those to take care of those issues when they arise.
Now, we won't have that issue with every storm.
But the ones that have significant snowfall, we know that's a problem.
And our crews will be using those vehicles to try to alleviate that issue.
I think the overall message that I hear you putting out today is
We know the snow was coming, we knew it, we've been watching it for a while, we've been paying attention, we've done a lot of work to prepare for it, and we're out there getting things taken care of, so if you are having issues, it's okay for you to make a phone call or
share the text and everything, but we are working to get to you, and we're going to make sure that everybody can move around this community safely.
Thank you very much. Great job.
Finalization of consent agenda. Council, anybody up here need to speak to the consent agenda?
Is there anyone in the audience needing to speak to the consent agenda? I deem the consent agenda finalized. Reports and communications.
News from the public information office.
Even to Mr. Douglas.
I mean, this is going to be tough for me because I did not print these slides.
We're going to have to kind of look over my shoulder here so let me get a little awkward.
First, we've got a charter review commission meeting coming up October 22nd at four o'clock
here in the City Council chambers of City Hall.
The public is invited to come to this event in order to.
Oh, thank you. That is a little bit easier to read.
So the folks welcome to come and give some input on the proposed changes to the city
charter. Some of those topics are going to be council rate pay, the nominating petition
signature requirements, renaming the emergency ordinance potentially to expedited ordinance.
Public Works Director, a licensure requirement, and then publication requirements.
And then the next steps are going to be that the charter review commission will gather all that feedback.
Finally, I have some recommendations and then bring them back to you, the council.
We're going to Evert Park, groundbreaking coming up, Tuesday, October 22nd at 1 p.m.
At Evert Park, we're exciting to finally get this project underway.
So we're going to be having some year round amenities coming available.
in that historic neighborhood park.
The new splash park has been planned for summer with an ice ribbon that will be active in the winter.
An amphitheater, a new playground, covered basketball courts, historical markers.
There's been a lot of thoughtful work gone into planning all of this and
we're really excited to get started on that project and the park department plans to build a cuter
We've been on that in the summer time, is that right Paul?
Yeah, don't forget to get your tickets for the State of the Community event.
That's going to be on January 14th at the Cornell Complex.
You can scan that QR code, just point your camera at it, and click the link.
And it'll take you to sign up through our park registration system.
And then you can buy as many tickets as you'd like.
There's $25 per person.
And there's going to be, there's a breakfast involved there and you'll get a little bit of swag, little teas are pouring on, little j-con, lapel pin, everybody who attends will get one of those.
And dresses business casual, but seating is limited to only 250 people.
So tickets are available, first come first served, when we sell out of tickets, we sell out of tickets and there's no refunds.
So for you open, give your tickets today.
And be sure that you subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, the citizen, there's a little video with a message from the mayor at the top of that every month that kind of goes into in depth topic and then there's information throughout that newsletter about project updates and events that are coming up in our community and all kinds of things, spotlights on our staff like our like our snow cloud drivers, there's spotlights there to kind of shine a light on the good work being done by our public servants across the organization.
You can follow us on social media, we've got lots of Facebook pages, and that's it.
Any questions for me?
Any questions for Drew Douglas, Councilor?
Drew, I see none.
Thank you.
Citizens, request and petitions.
Amanda Bearden.
Evening
Amanda, I will need you to speak your name into the microphone for the record,
and you will have five minutes.
You can pull that microphone down a little bit if you need to.
You saying I'm short, Dr.?
I didn't say that.
My name is Amanda Bearden.
I am a member of the next step, Joplin Board, and also a Board of Access Healthcare, but
I am here representing one of the, as an advocate for the homeless community.
So I'm going to get started so I can finish up and then my friend Tiffany is going to end
up our speech here today.
So first I'd like to start with asking that the council, please remember that recently a
leader of this city was quoted in the Joplin Globe as saying people who don't want to live
on the street can get housing if they want.
That is demonstrably incorrect, and over the next several meetings our group of advocates
will share information with you to explain this.
I'm here today to discuss evidence-based approaches to help those members of our community experiencing
homelessness and the information I'm sharing comes from federal guidance, peer-reviewed research,
and proven programs nationwide.
Most of the information I'm going to share with you will be from the National Alliance and
homelessness, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, and
a thesis case analysis from the Ohio State University.
Housing first, the foundation of success, housing first is the approach that prioritizes
providing semi-permanent to permanent housing to people experiencing homelessness.
Thus, ending their homelessness and serving as a platform from which they can pursue personal goals and improve their quality of life as stated in the national alliance in homelessness.
A few key points, this approach is guided by research that people need basic necessities like food and a place to live before attending to anything else that's less critical, like getting a job, learning how to budget and attending substance use issues.
Services have been found to be more effective when a person chooses to engage.
When housing is offered with voluntary services, up to nine out of ten people will remain
stably housed a year later.
And that is directly from the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness published just in 2024.
One study published in the National Alliance in Homelessness found an average cost savings
of on the emergency services of $31,545 per person housed in the course of two years.
Meaning because they had housing, their emergency service location saved $31,545
in the cost of providing those emergency services because they had stable housing.
Another study showed that housing first approach can cost up to $23,000 less per consumer per year than a shelter program.
So first we want to approach the idea of an interim solution while the job link community establishes better resources.
That interim solution is very well reflected in many cities.
It's a permitted village or a transitional encampment.
So while we build permanent housing solutions, we need to main interim options.
Clearing an encampment without offering housing or support does not solve homelessness in the short or long term.
Instead, it simply moves people experiencing homelessness from block to block or street to jail.
Rather than viewing tent cities as a threat to public safety, communities should view self-organization by those experiencing homelessness as an opportunity to provide services and to address the root cause of the homelessness and guarantee the human rights of all of those residents.
There are several examples that are referenced in the documentation I provided her of successful
tinted cities or permitted villages in Seattle and in Finland as well.
I'm going to end my time today.
We have several opportunities to speak to you.
You're going to see me a whole lot between now and March or by the time we find successful
and humane solutions.
But as I leave you, I'm going to let Tiffany, who's a member of our community currently struggling with permanent stable housing to read a poem to you.
Amanda, Amanda, excuse me guys, when you signed up to request to speak to us, you were given a set of rules and regulations regarding addressing the City Council and sharing your time with other citizens is not allowed.
Okay, then I will if I can collect back those like last ten seconds and I'll read her poem for us
Who protects us from the protectors?
They say serve and protect but out here all I see ever see are the lights red blue
Red blue like they're warning the world that I exist
They make me wake me up with flashlights in my eyes boots kicking at my blanket
Voices barking move along you can't sleep here
I want to ask, then where can I sleep officer? Where do you go when every inch of
ground is already owned by someone richer than hope? They call it transgress
passing as if I broke into heaven. They call it loitering as if I could afford to
go anywhere else. They call my blanking blanket camping contraband. My tent
light illegal, my bike trailer suspicious, my bags too many.
When the sun comes up, the bulldozers come too.
Steal, jaws, grinding through everything I've built. My ten. I'm sure it's your time. Of course, I did. Thank you. Mr. Coppel. I move that we give her an extra minute to finish her speech. Second. Motion's been made and properly seconded to give a man to time. Thank you very much, Mr. Coppel. Vote.
Please vote.
Council, please vote. Motion passes, eight in favor. One opposed. Mrs. Bearden, you have exactly 60 more seconds.
Thank you sir.
When the sun comes up the bulldozers come to steal jaws grinding through everything I built my tent my clothes my last piece of piece they'd burn it all flames
licking at the edge of my memories like they're cleansing the city of the sight of me. I stand there watching smoke rise from my life and I think they call it clean up but all I see is a
They say it's for public safety, but for who's public, for who's safety.
Not mine, not the woman clutching her dog like it's the last piece of family she's got.
Not the man coughing up blood in the shadows of law that only loves you if you can pay rent.
They say justice wears a badge.
I've seen it wear a smirk.
I've seen it hand out tickets for the crime of simply surviving.
So tell me, who protects us from the ones that are supposed to protect us?
Who do we call when the sirens are the ones chasing us away?
We will see you next month.
Thank you, Mayor.
I have a question.
Mr. Jackson?
Yes.
Mr. Speaker, I had a question.
During some of this outrage with the situation that happened, there was a post that was made trying to
to dox the job and police officer.
Is your organization condone that sort of behavior?
I'm not here to speak about the citation.
We spoke to the police chief about that.
I'm here to speak about changes in the ordinance
and the rules.
Does your organization support the doxing
and police officers?
I told you I'm not here representing an organization.
I'm here as an advocate for homelessness
and posting public information is not considered doxing.
Next time I come, I can look up that definition
for you and bring it.
Providing someone's contact information,
I believe would be trying to get people to reach out to them and possibly harass them.
I think it's very unbecoming.
I think you're assuming the intent and also again, I didn't do that and I'm here as an
advocate for homeless and I'm here to talk about the ordinance.
Yes, but you gave it a nice little love, Carimoji, so you did support it.
I gave it a what?
A little Carimoji to love it.
If we would like to have a conversation about what people have done on Facebook,
I would like to share what you've done and said to me on Facebook.
So we could do that.
I'm going to call for decorum in the chambers at this time.
We are simply letting the process play out where citizens have requested to address council, and we're going to hear them out because they've done the proper thing, they've addressed the clerk, they filled out the required documents to address council.
We're going to allow that to happen, but while we do, we are going to maintain decorum.
We are going to speak civilly, we are not going to raise our voice, and we're going to hear each other out, and we're not going to try to talk over each other.
Mr. Jackson, I'll give you a moment to finish making your point.
Yes, sir. Part of what I'm concerned about is there's a lot of remarks from me about this that unless you work with this community, you don't have a right to have a voice in what's going on.
You don't have the right to endorse these ordinances or changes for them, whatever it may be.
But yet I have some people in my zone, just blocks from my house, who are dealing with a homeless situation next to them,
where squatters have entered a home and has created a safety situation right next to them.
I think they have a right to voice their concerns about things that happen with the homeless community.
They've had raw sewage dump down the storm drains outside their house.
They've had bug-infested mattresses thrown in their evac yards.
These people have a right to have a voice about what's going on with the homeless situation in the community.
I have business owners contacting me about they have a line item on their quick books for
someone to go out and pick up drug needles, clean up human fecal matter, pick up broken prophylactics,
many disgusting biological hazard things.
They have a right to have a voice in this conversation, and
And they have some very legitimate concerns about safety, and we have to consider those things.
And that is the reason we have these ordinances.
It's to provide safety.
It is to provide a framework for our community that keeps order, that keeps structure.
It's not to be mean.
It's to make sure that things are safe.
It's not sanitary to let people camp in parks.
there's not the amenities there for them to shower and use restrooms in the evenings.
It's a sanitary issue. If I go camping at, say, stocked in lake, those campsites have rules
and regulations. We don't have that set up for our parks. That's not what they're made for. They're
made for recreation. It's not to be mean that we're having these things, but it's to have structure
order and safety of the community, and have a community that people will go out and participate
in our parks. We'll go out downtown Japlen and feel safe. We'll go out and not have to
worry about what they may step in. It's not to be me. And I want people to understand
that. And people come to us saying, what will you do about these challenges and these problems?
What else can we do? We cannot afford to just, you know, make free housing for people.
That's just not an option. So that's why these ordinances exist. It's not to pick on somebody.
And I've seen I've been on a ride along with the police department. They do the pedestrian
safety stops, you'd be surprised some of the people who are stopped.
And usually it's someone who's walking down the middle of the street and sometimes there's a sidewalk right next to them.
And the officers will tell them, hey, use the sidewalk.
But if there is no sidewalk, they tell them, look, make sure you're walking against the flow of traffic.
We've had many fatalities in this community from people doing that.
We've had many structure fires from people breaking into abandoned houses.
That's why these things are in place.
And I'm concerned for citizens on all levels of this community and
I'm not going to tell people just because you have not volunteered with some
one organization, you don't have a voice in the matter.
Thank you.
Is there an opportunity to respond, or am I required to sit down?
I'll give you a brief opportunity, Mrs. Bearden.
So I would appreciate if you would have listened to some of the things I said in the beginning, because we're not asking you to build a bunch of random houses.
And also I'm not going to address the citations and the enforcement.
That was for the law enforcement that we visited with yesterday and had an extremely amazing conversation with Chief Pearson.
What I am going to say is those of us that have done the research, if you'd like to see
any of it, you can see the references on the document I handed you.
There are other options besides you putting up a bunch of housing.
What I am going to say is that the way that this ordinance is worded is challenging for any
individual without stable housing to be successful in not violating it.
What I am going to say is we have ideas, but I have five minutes to prepare it for it
presented to you. So, you know what? Next week, next month, next time, there's going to be some more presentations, there's going to be some more presentation.
I do not believe that someone that has not done the work and just wants to say, oh, I'm upset because I see dirty things that they get to just say, throw them out with the garbage.
What they should be saying is, what can we do and what have other cities and countries done to end homelessness?
And that's what I have here for you, and that's what I prepared for you on the document.
So if you really do want to learn about best practice and some ways that we can help eliminate
the challenges that are being experienced by the city, by those advocating for those
homeless, and for those experiencing homelessness, please take the time to do some real research
and look at the information we're providing you.
Yes, sir, I did bring you a bleeding heart story.
But I also brought you data and you know what in three weeks, four weeks when I come back, I'm gonna bring you some more and again, and again, I am signed up through Mars.
Thank you, Mrs. Spiridon.
Thank you.
Please take your seat.
Thank you, Mayor.
I would just like to say that Portland, Oregon has seen a 29% increase in homelessness since last year, so there's your data.
Next presenter, please.
Chris Stockton.
Chris Stockton, you've been called to approach the podium. Are you in the chambers?
Members, Chris Stockton, next presenter, please.
Mary Price has withdrawn her request to speak this evening.
Next presenter, please.
Frank Thompson.
Mr.
Thompson, you state your name for the record you'll have five minutes.
Frank Thompson,
I'm here tonight, not with rumor or speculation, but with facts.
Facts taken directly from the Missouri State Auders official report on the city of Joplin.
And while some in leadership including our city manager and our unelected mayor have tried
to downplay this audit as not that bad, the truth tells a very different story.
Recently, the city manager made a comment suggesting that the citizens who pushed for
this audit have cost the city a quarter of a million dollars.
I want to address this directly.
Yes, I am one of the several citizens who pushed for this audit and I stand behind that without
wavering because accountability is never a waste of money. Our city will spend that much and
more on the next study. It commissions to justify a decision it already plans to make.
The difference is this audit exposed the truth and that's worth every penny that we spent.
The state auditor rated Joplin's performance fair. That's not a passing grade.
It means serious weakness, poor oversight, and repeated failures in transparency and accountability.
Let's start with transparency.
The audit revealed that 80% of the city ordinances in 2023 were pushed through as emergency ordinances.
When an ordinance is declared emergency ordinance, it bypasses the normal waiting period and limits public comment.
that the auditor stated clearly that this practice reduces transparency and prevents
citizens from being heard.
The city's response was they always allow public comment, but the auditor corrected them.
The charter does not require it.
That means they can ignore public input whenever it suits them and they have to meet before.
And after citizens started paying attention, those so-called emergency suddenly dropped from 80% to 40%.
That's not improvement. That's proof the process was being abused.
Now, instead of fixing the problem, city leadership wants to change the charter to make the abuse look legitimate.
They want to swap the words emergency for expedited, but expedited is already in the charter and it means the exact same thing.
It's a word game. It's it's cosmetic changement to make it appear different
when it's really not. If anything, it exposes just how far they will go to
manipulate the public record.
The audit also uncovered $12.7 million in
expenditures that were never shown in the approved budget. Those funds were
were quietly added after the budget passed.
The city's explanation was the amounts weren't known yet.
But the auditor called that misleading because the state law requires a complete financial plan before the year begins.
Citizens deserve to know where every dollar is going before it's spent.
And that's what, that wasn't the only concern.
The auditor found that the individuals had, that certain individuals had unrestricted access to the city's financial system.
Credit card payments weren't fully reconciled.
There were $2.7 million in unpaid accounts, and the city could not provide documentation to prove that reconciliations or oversight even occurred.
Those aren't minor oversights.
Those are major control failures.
measures. Instead of correcting those failures, our leadership seems to be more focused on
changing the rules that expose them. They are rewriting the charter, not to improve it,
but to shield their actions. And let's be honest, the citizens of Javelin have been very
clear about what change we do want. If anything in this charter needs to be changed, it's that
the people should elect a mayor. The citizens have said it repeatedly. We want a mayor chosen
by the voters. Someone accountable to the public whose vote only breaks a tie or acts in a
supermajority situation. That's change we've asked for but that's not what the council is doing.
Changing the charter to make wrongs appear right is not leadership, it's manipulation and in my opinion
it's disgusting. This audit paints a clear picture, a city operating on loopholes instead of guardrails,
No independent internal audit since 2022, unverified vehicle stipends, dangerous buildings ignored until the ordinance was written to excuse it, tax money directed to outside boards with little to no review, the auditors didn't have to use the word corruption, the facts speech for themselves, and I continue.
Here's
your time's up, Mr. Thompson.
That goes to prove more.
Next presenter, please.
Mr. Shackles has requested to speak during new business.
Public hearing.
We have none. Consent, agenda. Mayor, Mr. Dittar. I move for the approval of the consent agenda is finalized, motion's been made and properly seconded to approve the consent agenda is finalized. Please vote.
Motion carries nine in favor. Resolutions. We have none. Ordinance is emergency. Council Bill number 2025-455. In ordinance emitting chapter 18, animals of the Joplin City Code by emitting certain fees found in section 18,
144 and containing an emergency clause.
Good evening, sir.
Good evening.
Mayor, if I may, may I present on 455 and 456 at the same time?
Please proceed.
Thank you.
So I bring tonight the yearly contract renewal for
the update and for sheltering services.
So, this is on emergency agenda tonight, it coincides with the fiscal year and the approval of the fiscal year budget.
So, this is tied with that.
So, we have a price increase this year, the price increase is based on the consumer price index, it's at 3.1%.
That's the standard index that we use from year to year, last year, sheltering.
We took in, 2024, 2,645 animals were taken to the shelter and anything else on here
I need to cover.
Guess what that is?
I'm taking a question.
Council, Mrs. Carlin.
Once again, if we re-up our contract every year on November 1st and that corresponds
with the budget for next year, why aren't we doing this in a timely manner so that it's
not an emergency?
Did we not know that there was an increase or I don't understand why we don't do it
So in advance, so it doesn't have to be an emergency issue.
So my understanding of that is to ensure that the line item within the budget,
that there is a budget line item that coincides with us that matches the amount.
That's my understanding.
I think to Ms. Carlin's point is we couldn't have done that two weeks ago and then finished it tonight.
We can look into that in the future.
I don't know the answer to that, to be honest with you as far as how it all fits in with the budgeting process.
But, absolutely, we can look into it and I'm not trying to be overly obtuse here, but excuse me, I'm sorry.
Mr. City Manager, I'm not trying to be overly obtuse here, but if our department heads don't know who does.
Mr. Coppola, I remember correctly we did the schedule of fees presentation during our budget work sessions.
And the next regularly available council meeting to get that approved would have been that October 4th.
I don't think there was turnaround time that allowed us to get all that stuff packaged up and ready for tonight.
That's why the budget adoption stuff is coming to you tonight.
For budget approval, purposes, we could maybe move back our meeting dates even further.
We're already starting in August, perhaps July, so that we could.
I don't so much have an issue with the overall budget because we do public hearings going over the budget.
So that provides plenty of opportunity for people to attend and question items in the budget.
But when we come to the ordinance of this nature, and especially the next one where we are renewing the contract with the Humane Society, I don't understand why that couldn't be done two weeks ago.
And then we finish it up this week and it's still be ready to go by November 1st.
I hear you Ryan and I will discuss and I make an improvement there.
Fantastic.
Thank you, sir.
Anyone else?
Thank you, Mr. Talking.
Thank you.
Council, we've heard testing on the council bill 2025-455 Chair will entertain a motion.
Mayor.
Mr. Lawson.
I move the council bill number 25-455 be passed on emergency basis.
The motion has been made and probably segmented further approval of Council Bill 2025-455 on emergency basis, please vote.
That motion passes nine in favor.
Next item, please.
Council Bill number 2025-456, an ordinance of proving an agreement by and between the Joplin Humane Society Inc., and the City of Joplin, Missouri, providing for the animal sheltering services for the City Animal Control Program, authorizing the City Manager to execute, set agreement by and on behalf of the City of Joplin, Missouri, and containing an emergency clause.
Council, we've heard testimony on this council bill already, is there any discussion?
Chair, we'll entertain a motion.
I'm sorry, excuse me.
Mrs. Carlin?
Well, once again, I'm just going to say that if we know that every single year we're going
to renew our contract with the Humane Society on November 1st, then it should, the very
thing we've been criticized for is emergency ordinances and then the very next meeting,
When we know a year in advance that we're going to renew a contract, we're doing an emergency ordinance.
That's my point.
I would agree with you, Mrs. Carlin, but I would also offer up this for just for anybody that may be listening and maybe see the other side of the coin.
This is our last official city council meeting in this fiscal year.
The next time that we meet is going to be the 2026 fiscal year.
November 1st is a few days out, 11 days out, 12, maybe 11 now it's 8 o'clock at night.
So this is the last opportunity that we're going to have to get things on the books for
the next year.
I would also add that in the spirit of dialing back the emergency ordinances which I get
But completely, I do believe that we've done a good job of dialing those back from where
they used to be all the time.
But in concerning these particular ordinances that are on here tonight, as emergency ordinances,
I would just like to add that there is nothing nefarious about renewing our contract with
the job on the main society.
And there's nothing nefarious about increasing the fees for some of our pet related things
that we've got going on in our community, but it is the last meeting of the Chaplain City Council in this fiscal year.
So, with all that being said, I'm sure I was out of line somewhere.
The Chair will entertain a motion on Council Bill 2025-456.
Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Detar.
I move to the approval of Council Bill 2025-456 on emergency basis.
Second.
Motion has been made and probably seconded for the approval of Council Bill 2025-456 on the emergency basis, please vote.
Motion carries nine in favor with none absent or with no opposed.
I'm okay, I really am.
It might be time for a break.
I think we'll take one after emergency ordinances are completed.
Next item, please, Madam Clerk.
Council Bill number 2025-537, in ordinance emitting the annual budget of the City of Joplin for the fiscal year 2024-2025, as adopted by ordinance 2024-151 on October 21st, 2024 to adjust appropriations and containing an emergency clause.
Good evening, Mrs. Haas.
Good evening, Mayor Council.
This council bill omens the adopted 2025 budget of the City of Joplin.
In compliance with charter regulations and accounting principles, the proposed adjustment is required to ensure that departments
Expenditures do not exceed approved budget appropriations.
There is a list that you all have of the items that are being amended.
But as a summary, we're emitting the City Council budget for the estimated cost of the state audit.
We're emitting various departments for utilities such as electric charges, water charges, waste water, and sanitation.
Emitting various departments for fuel costs, central garage repairs, and other vehicle repairs.
Minning various departments for repairs and contracts.
Minning various payroll accounts.
Minning the auctioneer fee due to the size of the auction this year.
Minning various grant accounts.
Minning the pension sales tax gap cost expenditure.
Minning the utility cuts account.
Minning the engineering fee transfer from certain funds to the general fund.
Amending the sewer shutoff, reconnect fees and bad debt expense, and finally amending the health insurance in general liability claims expenses.
The purpose of the budget amendment is to recognize changes that have occurred since the annual budget was adopted.
This budget amendment increases expenditures across all funds by $6,500, $11,800.
This is a budget amendment based on expected expenditures for the year.
However, expenditures for the fiscal year will continue through December, while revenue
cruells will also continue to be booked through the same time period.
This is not a projection of ending fund balance in the various funds, but merely budgeted expenditures
compared to actual expenditures to ensure compliance with the charter.
The actual increase or decrease of various fund balances will not be known until the accrual
entries are completed for the annual audit.
Staff recommends approval of this council bill on an emergency basis.
We do have to amend the budget before the year end.
I do want to draw your attention to a few items, because this is across all funds.
So one of the larger items is the logger's gap cost for the pension sales tax.
I presented that to you a few months ago, I gave you that update.
which was just came in higher than what was anticipated.
We have a large item.
We're amending stormwater projects in the parks and stormwater sales tax.
That is just because projects are happening faster than what we realized when we put the 2025 budget together.
Along, a long time ago at this point, we're amending engineering fees and that's actually just a transfer from capital improvement sales tax to the general fund.
And in the sewer fund, we are amending for a bad debt expense, so that's just writing
off bad debt.
So that is a book entry.
Also you'll remember the water company increased the shut off, reconnect fees.
And so that item is being amended.
And then finally, a large ticket item in the General Liability Insurance Fund.
And so those are the major items that are being amended.
As a reminder, we try not to them in the budget after year end.
And so there is some, so we also cannot have a charter violation where our expenditures exceed our budget.
So this is just budget, it is not actual.
It's not actual expenditures, it's just ensuring that budget covers our actual expenditures.
So at that, I would be happy to answer any questions.
Council, any questions for our city finance director?
Mrs. Carlin.
If I understand correctly, we still have some expected funds coming in that have not been paid to the city for the year 2025.
Yes ma'am those will still continue to come in and if you will recall from the presentation I made in the informal our revenues at this point our CD NAR expenditures.
Right.
So we won't really know until we're in fiscal year 2026 if we've spent more than we brought in.
Is that a correct statement?
That is correct.
Right now, in the general fund, that is not how it's trendy.
Okay, so if we have spent more than we have brought in,
then that money would be funded through the various funds for, say, that department, or that category.
Fund balances?
Fund balance, yes.
Okay.
But again, this is across all of our 25 issues, it's not just a general.
No, I understand that.
So, will there be a time when we will actually see those final, final, final numbers?
Yes, ma'am.
Okay, so we do final, financial statements, but it also is in our annual audit that gets presented to you all.
Okay, thank you.
Anyone else, Leslie, is what we're doing tonight different than what we've done in the past?
No, sir, other than I always try to sharpen my crystal ball.
Sometimes they're cloudy, too.
Yes, sir.
And sometimes they're clear.
Yes, sir.
Any other discussion?
Any other questions for Mrs. Haas?
Thank you. Council, we've heard discussion on council bill 2025-537, chair will entertain a motion.
Mayor, Mr. Bard, I'm going to have that council bill 2025-537 be approved on an emergency basis.
Second, motion is made and properly seconded for the approval. Council bill 2025-537, on an emergency basis, please vote.
So that motion passes nine in favor next item, please.
Council Bill number 2025-538 in ordinance provided for the budget of the City of Joplin for the period from November 1st, 2025 to October 31st, 2026, estimating the revenues for said period and appropriating the purposes stated the sum set forth therein and containing an emergency cost.
I got a fill and I will see you for the next couple of these.
Yes, Mayor, I would like to present 538 and 539 together.
Please proceed.
So both of these council bills approve the fiscal year 26 budget.
538 excludes the fire department expenditures and 539 is adopting the fire department budget.
So in total, this budget estimates 167,735,758 dollars in revenue, including transfers, but excluding component units.
a total amount of $185,222,300 and $222,301 in appropriations, including transfers, but excluding component units.
There were some changes from the proposed budget to the adopted, that has been included for your reference.
And then this ordinance does include rolling approved incumbrances, which will be brought back to you in November to show the
budget that you're adopting, so the original budget, and then those incumbrances to come up to the final budget.
So I will bring that back most likely at the second meeting in November.
Both of these council bills do need to be approved before the end of the fiscal year.
So they are emergencies because our fiscal year starts on November 1st.
With that, I would be happy to answer any questions.
Council.
Mr. Coppel.
Ms. Halls, 538 includes the payroll adjustments and the 2% COLA for all employees, correct?
Yes, sir.
Okay, thank you. Mr. Mayor, I will be abstaining from 538 and 539 due to a conflict of interest
Thank you councilman couple anyone else
Council we've heard testimony on council bill 2025-538 charitable entertainer motion
Mr.
Detar I move the approval of council bill number 2025-538 on emergency basis
Motion is made and probably seconded for the approval of Council Bill 2025-538 on emergency basis.
Please vote.
Motion carries eight in favor with one abstention.
Next item, please.
Council Bill number 2025-539 in ordinance providing for the budget of the city of Japan for the period from November 1st, 2025 to October 31st, 2026.
Estimating the revenues for said period and appropriating for the purposes stated for the sums set forth therein and containing an emergency clause.
Council, we've heard testimony on this council bill.
Chair, we'll entertain a motion.
Mr. Jackson.
I make a motion.
Approved council bill 2025-539 on emergency basis.
Second, motion's been made and probably seconded for their approval of council bill 2025-539 on emergency basis.
Please vote.
Motion carries eight in favor with one abstention.
Next item, please.
Council bill number 2025-540, an ordinance adopting a new step paid plan by reference the city salary administration plan establishing the annual salary of certain classified
in unclassified positions, and part-time seasonal positions for fiscal year 2025, 2026,
adopting a new step paid plan by reference police salary administration plan, establishing the annual salary of certain police positions.
Adafting a new step paid plan by reference fire salary administration plan, establishing the annual salary of certain fire positions and containing in the emergency clause.
Mr. Toss.
During the budget work session, City Council informally approved a 2% inflation adjustment to the salary administration for general police and
and fire employees, part time seasonal position positions, as well as created two new positions,
effective November 1st.
The new positions are assistant IT director and wastewater biosolids program supervisor.
These changes have been reflected on the various salary administration plans.
And, again, this is an emergency so that these raises can go into effect on November 1st.
And this was discussed during the budget.
So, staff recommends approval of this council bill on our emergency basis.
I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Council, questions from Mrs. Haas.
Leslie, I see none.
Council, we've heard testimony on council bill 2025-540, Chair, we'll entertain a motion.
Mayor.
Mr. G. Tar.
I've moved for the approval of council bill 2025-540 on emergency basis.
Second.
Second, motions made and probably seconded for the approval of Council Bill 2025-540 on
emergency basis.
Please vote.
Motion carries.
Eight in favor with one abstention.
Council, we are going to take a break.
We will see you back in just a few minutes.
Council,
let's make our way back to our seats, please.
Council, let's make our way back to our seats.
Clerk, you ready?
Ordinance is first reading.
Council Bill number 2025-01-2, an ordinance emitting the criminal code of the city of Joplin, chapter 82, offensive and miscellaneous provisions, article 5, offenses against health and safety by enacting a new section, prohibiting the displacement of transient individuals in establishing a time for this ordinance to become effective.
Mayors, members of Council, I'll be presenting this ordinance tonight.
Summary of this bill, it imposes a penalty, punishable under Section 1-5 for any individual entity or agent,
causing the unsanctioned displacement of a transient individual within the city of Joplin.
This bill includes specific language that describes the prohibition, it includes definitions as well as a number of legitimate exceptions.
The background here is that over the last few years, the city, by and through its police department and co-responder units has been able to confirm several instances of the prohibited conduct addressed within the ordinance.
There have been a number of displaced transient individuals and to name a few of them, Oklahoma police department or sorry, Oklahoma highway patrol has displaced that we know of to persons within the city of the city.
of Joplin, a medical center from Oklahoma as well, a medical center about an hour to the north.
Out of Nevada has displaced two individuals within the city of Joplin, and
we also have some regional police departments committing the same type of behavior.
This is placed to strain on public resources and
and created certain health and safety concerns
for the community.
It leaves the depletion of already limited resources
for local residents experiencing homelessness
in the community.
And this is an ordinance that's been designed
to prioritize citizens, resources, community health
and safety, and to deter other jurisdictions
from reckless displacement of transient individuals.
If there are any questions about the language within the ordinance, I'll do a brief overview.
The first section lists no person, and see or government agent from outside the city shall
knowingly cause a displacement of any non-local transit individual within the city of Japlin,
either directly or indirectly, by providing one way transport and drop off of said individual on
one public property or private property that is accessible to the public within the city of Droplin.
And when the person being transported and dropped off lacks a fixed regular and adequate nighttime residence,
it then provides a rather lengthy definition that I won't read out loud.
But I'm sure you've all had the time to review and I can answer questions.
Importantly, this does include a number of exceptions.
of this would not apply to any person being transported for the purposes of saving book.
In addition to a jail, it would not apply to any person being transported for emergency medical services or treatment at a hospital, it would not apply to a person being transported to reside at a shelter, temporary housing, permanent housing, when the officer agent employee has independently verified that that individual being transported has been accepted to reside at the facility. It would not apply to a person being transported to a hospital.
a verified medical appointment or government non-profit social service or a court hearing.
Okay, and so there are a number of legitimate exceptions listed with that I will take any questions.
Council questions for Assistant City Attorney.
This is not much, Mr. Copper.
Yes ma'am, is this going to be a city charge or is this going to be handled through county?
This would be a municipal ordinance in our city code under chapter 82.
Okay, is this going to be considered an extra valuable offense?
Our municipal charges are not extra valuable.
I really didn't think so.
So, as much as I applaud the concept behind the ordinance, it doesn't really have any teeth because we're talking about somebody from outside the city, sending somebody into the city, but because by nature, there are outside the city, unless they're caught actively driving them into town and dropping them off at that specific time.
There's really not a whole lot we're going to do about these people other than having
charges sitting on the books.
And I would say that applies to any criminal charge.
You get a speeding ticket in City of Joplin.
You might not live in City of Joplin, but you still have a speeding ticket or anything.
It just simply because you're not a resident of Joplin.
And you still are subject to these penalties.
Will you be arrested on a warrant, unlikely?
Well, you can't be held to penalties until you prove and guilty in a court of law and we can't get him to stand in front of a court of law unless they're in town and presented for such.
Yes, and that is the court process where if the person fails to appear, then a summons is issued.
That is a court order, failing to appear for a court order, is yet again another offense.
So we're going to mail them tickets?
And that is sometimes the service that is served to people that just come to court.
I'm just trying to play this out like I said, I understand and I like the concept behind it.
I'm trying to visualize where the rubber meets the road is, how is this going to be put into play and into practice?
And I agree with you that enforcement will be difficult.
Okay, thank you.
Mr. Lawson.
Who is the offender?
the person entity or agent.
I mean, is that like my experience when I worked at the hospital and such was they were sent to job and they weren't brought to job on all the time, you know.
So did somebody commit an offensive?
They just sent the person here?
And I would have to look at a specific factual scenario to give you an answer.
where the idea is to hold other jurisdictions responsible for the drinks.
Well, we've got to start somewhere.
So I agree with Mr. Coffle that's probably going to be re-limited on how well we can enforce it, but I'm willing to.
I think we should say, hey, if you're not supposed to do this and put a little teeth we can into it.
So thank you.
Mr. Jackson, I was just going to kind of ask the hypothetical, I mean, so in the instance, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol did this we knew who that was.
I mean, how well does that look for that individual's record whenever they go for their promotion or whatever they may do in their job that you have outstanding charges sitting in some other city and state?
These things actually will have repercussions in their professional lives if you don't take care of them.
And certainly for any peace officer cannot incur a criminal charge.
So, you know, it's, there's teeth to it in another way than just, you know, the criminal penalty, the fact that, you know, some people you have a professional job, you cannot have any blemishes on, you know, can make a difference.
As well as healthcare facilities are dropping off patients that cannot care for themselves, that is certainly tarnishing the reputation of the healthcare facility.
So I, is it perfect?
No, but I think it's got some really good framework to it.
And I appreciate, you know, the legal team here at the city working on that with Councilman Bard, and I'm a supporter of this, so thank you.
Mr. Bard, thank you, Mayor.
Well, this also include any entity or agency inside the city that will knowingly bring in an individual with no purpose of
giving him bedding or an overnight?
No, this is meant for.
Outside agencies only.
Really to hold outside jurisdictions responsible.
This is really not directed toward any entity operating within the city.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
I
think what I'm hearing, and I like things, you know, kind of country boy language to me, we don't want, and we're putting our foot down and saying, if you violate this ordinance, we're going to try to hold you to account.
You can not knowingly just put somebody in a vehicle and bring them to the streets of Joplin and drop them off and say, good luck.
That's not how this is going to work.
I think, without going into gory details, that the city of Joplin has adequate evidence to be able to present that this has occurred in our city in the past.
Without sitting up here in naming names, we know of some reputable organizations that have violated the spirit of this ordinance.
And I think what we're saying is we love our neighbors, but you cannot bring people and just drop them on the streets of this community without good reason for that.
And you should be responsible for that if you in fact do do that and we're putting in an ordinance in place
It's going to help us hold you responsible for that
So council we have heard testimony on
Council bill 2025-012 chair will entertain a motion
Mr.
Barrett I move that council bill 2025-01 to be passed on first reading advanced second third
Second.
Motion's been made and properly seconded for the approval of Council Bill 2025-012 on first
reading and advance the second and third, please vote.
Motion carries nine in favor.
Next item, please.
Council Bill number 2025-279.
In ordinance emitting the Joplin Development Code, ordinance number 2022-119 passed by the
Council of the City of Joplin, Missouri, August 1st, 2022, being appendix 29A of the Joplin
municipal code.
Mr. Bolander. Good evening. Good evening. And I won't be up here too long. As you know, we've held two public
hearings on this in the work session. Hopefully you guys have a understanding of what we're proposing
to amendments to our zoning code. Most of them are just corrections. We've moved some language over
from our previous code. And we did add a few new things to it that just here to answer any last questions
you may have it, have of it, but we recommend approval of the code.
Council,
thank you, Troy. I see no questions.
Council, we've heard testimony on Council Bill 2025-279, Chair, we'll entertain a motion.
Mr. Mayor. Mr. Comple.
I move for the passage of Council Bill 2025-279 on first reading,
advance the second and third. Second.
Motion is made and properly seconded for the approval.
Council Bill 2025-279 on first reading, advanced second and third, please vote.
Please vote.
Motion carries nine in favor.
Next item, please.
Council Bill number 2025-286, an ordinance approving a purchase order to be issued to Coral and Ford Republic.
To cover the cost of three, 2025 Ford Ranger 4x4 crew cabs, for the total of $113,168.
$100 and $0.88, within the approved city of Joblin, fiscal year 2024,
2025, budget with an effective date of November 4th, 2025.
Just to be my last one for tonight, so this is a administrative request as you are aware.
Anything, any purchase orders, over $100,000 we have to bring before this body for approval.
This was actually in our current budget, so we're not amending anything.
your last budget approval, you allocated $120,000 to purchase three vehicles for
neighborhood services as replacement vehicles.
What we are replacing, or like I said, three vehicles, two of them are 20, 10,
four to rangers, and one of them is a 2009 four to ranger.
So those are the vehicles replacing the neighborhood services.
because we did put out a bid.
The lowest bid was submitted by Quorum Ford,
other republic for $113,200.
So we are a little bit under budget.
So we recommend that you use up this bid,
and we'll proceed with putting together a purchase order.
Questions, council?
Mr. Copeland?
Just because of all of the budget conversations we've had
before. I'm curious, Mr. City Manager, so we're going to approve this, but this will end
up being a, I'm sorry, I can't remember the term, but we're going to carry it over in
an incumbrance going on to the next budget because it won't be approved until after the
next meeting and then so many days after that. So we'll actually be in the 26th budget,
but we're approving it here and it'll just be
encumbered into the following budget.
That's correct, sir.
Unless we were to take approval before,
take, receive them before the 31st,
which I don't think is likely to have a date
when you'd receive those, Troy.
How can we take a,
how can we take possession of them
when we haven't approved the purchase of them?
That's what I'm saying.
It's, yeah, highly likely it'll be an error.
I just wanted to make sure I was clear on how I was going to play out and make sure everybody understands it's being
encumbered into. It's approved in this budget that will be encumbered into the next one.
They will get the next one. Thank you.
At a $6,800 savings to what we originally budgeted as well.
Yes. Any other questions?
Thank you, Mr. Bolander.
Council, we've heard testimony on this.
Council Bill 2025-286. Chair, we'll entertain a motion.
Mr. Farnham, Dr. Farnham, Mayor, I move that Council Bill number 2025-286 be passed on first reading in advance of second and third.
Second.
Motion's been made and properly seconded for the approval.
Council Bill 2025-286 on first reading, advance second and third, please vote.
Motion carries nine in favor, next item please.
Council Bill number 2025-541, an ordinance adopting a new step pay plan by reference, the City Salary Administration Plan, establishing the annual salary of certain classified and unclassified positions, and part-time seasonal positions, effective January 1st, 2026, adopting the new step pay plan by reference, the fire salary administration plan, establishing the annual salary of certain fire positions, effective January 1st, 2026, and setting the date when this ordinance shall become effective.
Ms. Haas.
Thank you, Mayor.
This council bill approves an updated general employee salary administration plan.
Fort time seasonal salary administration plan and the fire or salary administration plan.
By complying with House Bill 567,
pursuant to revised statute 290.500 through 290.502,
making the minimum wage $15 affected January 1, 2026,
which is now applicable to public employers.
Governor recently signed this House Bill and beginning August 28th, 2025.
Public employers in the state were required to pay non-exempt employees a minimum of 1375 per hour.
And starting January 1st, 2026, $15 per hour.
Prior to the passage of this bill, public employers were exempted from Missouri's minimum wage law.
And we're only required to follow the federal minimum wage.
In early September, City Council approved a modification to the Fire Pay Plan to address the firefighter EMT position that started below 1375 an hour.
On January 1st, 2026, there will be certain general employees, fire and part-time seasonal positions below the required minimum wage of $15 per hour.
So the new pay plans will be making adjustments for general employees, steps one through three of grade N1 and step one of grade N2 will be removed.
This will make the starting paper in 115.
29 per hour, which is $31,810 annually, and for in 2, 15, 72 an hour, which is $32,700 annually.
Or fire employee steps 4 through 6 will be removed from grade F2, while steps 1 through 3 will be removed from grade F4.
This will make the starting paper F2, 15, 36 per hour, which is $44,723 annually.
and 1583 per hour or $46,106 annually for F4.
The first grade on the part-time seasonal pay plan will be removed and combined with the second grade.
This will make the starting pay for those positions, $15.34 per hour.
There are six general plan employees impacted by the minimum wage change.
The total cost for implementing this short-term resolution is $18,000.
of which 15,000 is the estimated 2026 fiscal year cost of this amount, 8,300 represents the general fund cost with the remainder occurring in solid waste park storm, our sales tax and TST funds.
These amounts are included in the 2026 budget.
There are 34 fire plan employees impacted by this minimum wage change, so it will estimated cost for
For implementing the short-term resolution is $147,000, while the fiscal year cost is $122,500.
The amount is split approximately $57,500 to the general fund and $65,000 to the public safety sales tax fund.
And again, these are included in the 26th budget.
It is more difficult to project the impact of the seasonal pay plan.
However, we're projecting 56,000 in the parks fund for 2026, which has been included in the budget.
Removing steps from the current pay plans to meet the state mandate is a short term solution.
The short term solution does create compression for the general employee and fire pay plans.
This compression doesn't retain the internal equity that has been previously established.
This will certainly need to be addressed through a long term solution,
which we are currently working on, however, the long term solution to address compression and internal equity caused by the unfunded state minimum wage mandate, as well as overall wages will require a new funding source.
We did discuss this during the budget work sessions, and this will not go into effect until January 1st, but staff recommends approval of this council bill on first reading.
Council, any questions for City Finance, Director?
Seeing none, Chair, we'll entertain a motion.
Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Dittar.
I move for the approval of Council Bill 2025-41 on first reading.
Advance the second and third.
The second.
Motion is made and probably seconded for the approval.
I've found.
Council Bill 2025-541 on first reading, advance the second and third, please vote.
Motion carries eight in favor with one abstention.
and next item, please.
Council Bill number 2025-619, in order to prevent a memorandum of understanding and
an agreement by and between the City of Joplin, Missouri, a municipal corporation and
Joplin family YMCA, response or ship rights on the premises of the 10 cup trail,
authorizing the city manager to execute said memorandum of understanding and
agreement, and such other documents as may be necessary, by and on behalf of the City of Joplin, Missouri.
Any more?
A little bit of background.
If you remember in January of 2024, our public works director, Dan Johnson presented
to City Council, the potential agreement between the Joplin Family YMCA and the City of Joplin
for dedicating easements for the construction of the Tinkup Trail, which was valued at that time of $130,000.
In turn, the city would enter into this agreement, allowing the job and family why, the sponsorship rights at the bridge, trailhead, and the other two trailheads on the team cup trail.
Those two other trailheads would be the one off a 30 second street in front of the Y and then off of Glendale down there by Mac and
in Doe Park, that was included in your packet, a map.
All the sponsorship rights, naming rights, or assignments would be approved in riding by the city prior to any placement on any signage on the premises.
Also a little bit of background.
The total project expense for the 10 cup trail, including the bridge is just under $3.3 million, the 10 cup trail and bridge is funded from two separate funds.
We have a contract with Hartman in the amount of 1.6 million for the trail, which is funded by parks and
storm our sales tax, and Elements has the contract for the bridge, which is just under, it's that 1.6 million funded from the ARPA and TST.
Funding source is not apical in this, and staff recommends this on first reading.
Council, any questions for Mr. Bloomberg?
Paul Cena, thank you.
We've heard testimony, Council Chair, we'll entertain a motion.
Mr. Mayor.
Mr. Lawson.
In honor of Mr. Estrada, who has spent the night with us, I move that council bill number of 2025-619 be approved on first reading.
Second.
The motion is made and properly seconded for the approval of Council Bill 2025-619 on 1st Street in advance of 2nd and 3rd.
Please vote.
That motion passes 9 in favor.
Next item, please.
Council Bill, number 2025-620.
In order to prove in a contract by and between the City of Joplin and Joplin industrial electric company in the amount of $1,698,100 for park security lighting installation authorizing the city manager to execute.
You said contract by on behalf of the City of Joplin and amending the annual budget of the City of Joplin for fiscal year 2025, 2026 as adopted by an ordinance 2025-145 on October 20th, 2025.
You're back.
I'm back.
All right.
It's weird to see having up here twice, isn't it, in one night.
Usually it's just one.
Again, I like to give a little bit of background in my ordinance's security lighting and security cameras.
As our voter approved projects through the phase three of the quarter cent parks and
stormwater sales tax, the security lighting will make our parks safer, which was a high priority
based on the comments from our citizens during our parks master plan process, also during
the city manager's listening tour.
The parks that will be included in this project are Leonard E. Wirt, Landruth, Humphrey,
Garvin, Cunningham, and Parhill.
Mercy Park has already been done, has already been completed.
Both of these projects were originally included in the fiscal year 2025 approved budget.
However, because this ordinance will not be effective until November, this item includes a fiscal year 2026 budget amendment for
parks and stormwater sales tax fund an amount of $1.6 million, $1.1 million, $698,100.
The security camera RFP is being advertised this week and will be brought to the City Council
in the near future.
The original security ligand estimate came in, well, was $1,510 million while the security
a camera estimate was 300 million.
This item includes $1,568,000 for the Security Liding Project while there is 130,000 included
for the conduit for the Security Camera Project.
Additionally, Security Liding at Mercy Park has already been installed as part of the overall
security lighting project in the amount of $122,271 on the back side that you all
receive is a breakdown of the budget. It kind of explains it a little bit
better. So you can see the security lighting original budget was $1,510,000 less
the mercy park security lighting, which was 122,000 less than the Joplin Industrial Electric
Actual Security Lighting Contract, which was 1,568,000.
So we have a total over original budget of 180,000.
The security camera budget, original budgets 300,000 less, the actual bid for the conduit
of 130,000 in this security camera lighting.
So the remaining balance, we have 170,000.
So with all those numbers thrown at you,
the overrun on the security lighting,
original budget will be funded by the combination of three ways.
Either one, some approved projects coming in under budget,
such as the Mercy Electrical,
which we did come in under that project, $56,000.
two rolled funding from phase two of the parks and stormwater sales tax or three higher than projected sales tax revenue over the next ten years, ten year life of the tax.
The funding source for this project includes a budget amendment for the fiscal year of 2026 parks and stormwater sales tax fund and staff recommends this approval on council bill first reading.
That was a lot.
You did talk a lot.
A lot.
Councilor Mr. Jackson.
I imagine this is probably more of a question for Mr. Edwards than he'll probably have to let us leave it.
Without the funding being certain as to what we're going to finance this, I mean, why not look at an option of the parks department through the parks and storm water sales tax will.
You know, far from the reserves and pay that back with the parks and storm water sales tax funds.
I think we need to have a defined funding mechanism before we just execute a check for almost $1.7 million as my concern.
Mr. Jackson, I think that's exactly what Paul laid out.
We already know we have savings from one of our projects.
And then revenue due to the parks and stormwater, the parks fund from the parks and stormwater sales tax over 10 year period.
We feel really confident in that being over and above the estimate.
And then there's still room for cost savings within the projects themselves.
So we feel confident that we can absorb this cost within the parks fund using the parks storm on our sales tax.
But just to make it more clean when it be better to say, let's borrow the funds from the reserves and then over time pay that back.
I mean, I don't think that's necessary.
Secretary, Mr. Jackson, but Leslie, do you have a cleaner way of doing it?
One of the comments during my evaluation was to have greater understanding of the finance,
the total picture, as was mentioned, and so we're trying to include as much of that information
as we can in these council bells.
Yeah, so essentially that is what we're doing, Mr. Jackson, and the fact that March 12,
From our sales tax, we collect that money for a long time period and then we do the project.
So the money is sitting there in reserves.
What we're showing on this council bill, as Nick has said, is what you all have asked for to see the whole picture, but the money is there.
The only reason the budget is being a minute is because it was actually included in 2025 just didn't quite get done.
So we need to amend 2026.
Mr. St. Andrew County, crack at this?
Mr. Mayor, can I take a crack at this?
Yes, go right ahead.
I'm going to point it at you, so I'm going to go ahead.
You said Parks and Stormwater Phase 2, which is the one
that's wrapping up right now.
It's not Phase 3, which we're getting ready to go into.
So between what we saved at St. John's,
plus the fund balances in the Parks and Stormwater
phase two because we always keep contingency money plus cost saving so we will have that
money left over in phase two. Once it finally is complete we have one or two more projects
left to finish out of phase two. So once that's done we'll know exactly what's there but
we are talking about taking it out of the reserve balances from parks and storm water phase
two to pay for that which will already be there. We just have to let everything finish
before we know exactly what's there.
Is that it?
Is that appropriate?
Yes.
You're good, Mr. Jackson.
Anyone else?
Mr. Copp?
Mr. Bloomberg, just so everybody's clear,
we lined out this project in 2024.
We put it together.
We said this is what the engineers asked us
is what we thought it was gonna cost.
We're prior to 2024 maybe.
Prior to 2021.
Okay, so 2021, we said this project should cost.
$1.5 million, $1.510 million, and fast forward four years later, costs have gone up.
We didn't calculate the interest rates and supply chain issues to force prices up quite as high as what they did.
So that's where that project is.
This project wasn't specifically said in the budget that hey, this is what it's going to cost.
And then, okay, magically, six months later, we're off by a couple hundred thousand dollars.
It's, we're basing this off of a 2021 price.
That was adjusted for inflation, but our adjustment calculations weren't exactly right.
But that's the budget that we had, and this is reality, so that's why there's the numbers don't exactly line up.
Is that a fair assessment?
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Thanks, sir.
I see no other concerns, Mr. Bloomberg. Council, we've heard testimony on Council Bill 2025-620, Chair will entertain a motion. Mr. Mayor. Mr. Coppel. I move for the passage of Council Bill 2025-620 on first reading and advance the second and third. Second. Motion is made and probably seconded for the approval. Council Bill 2025-620 on first reading, advance second and third. Please vote.
Motion carries nine in favor.
Ordinance's second reading and third reading.
Council Bill number 2025-142, an ordinance approving amendment one to work authorization, OLS, two fours, OC, 001, was Olsen for
professional engineering consultation services and not take seat amount of $61,150 for the seventh street sanitary sewer relocation project in authorizing the city manager to
Or his designated execute the same by on behalf of the City of Chaplin and setting a date when this ordinance shall become effective.
All right.
Council, we've heard previous testimony on this council bill.
Is there any discussion?
Seeing none, Chair, we'll entertain a motion.
Mr. Mayor.
Mr. G. Tar.
The music council bill, 2025-142.
We passed on second reading, advance to third reading and passed.
Second.
Motion's been made and probably segreded for the approval of council bill 2025.
5-1-4-2 on second read and advance the third reading in the past, please vote.
Motion carries nine in favor.
Unfinished business.
We have none.
New business.
We have four residents that would like to address council.
Katie Callahan.
Say the name again.
Katie Callahan.
Katie Callahan, you've been called to the podium.
If you're in a building, please approach.
Next presenter, please.
Thanks.
Taylor Stewart.
You've been called to the podium and council chambers.
Please approach the podium.
Next presenter, please.
Shawna Fisher.
Do
you need Mrs. Fisher?
Please state your name for the record.
You'll have five minutes.
Yes, ma'am.
Yes, sir.
My name is Shawna Fisher.
Good evening, councilor.
Good evening, Mayor.
I'm here today to explain to you guys what has happened in the city of Joplin.
I
can't see well, so I'm going to have to take close to my paper.
I'm a resident and a mother and a grandmother, and here tonight to speak, not just for myself,
but for other citizens who have, who deserve justice, fairness, and accountability in this city.
For several years,
several years, I have witnessed and been subject to systematic and coordinated
efforts by certain Joplin City officials, police officers, prosecutors, judges, and courts
deny me due process, target me with retaliation, and violate my constitutional rights, simply
because I refuse to be silent about wrongdoing. Here's what I like to experience. I had been
unlawfully arrested multiple times, most recently just last week, often for minor or pretractual
reasons, such as protesting peacefully or allegedly having an expired driver's license.
In these incidents, incidents, I was subjected to excessive force and humiliating restraint,
including being placed in a restraining chair, denied medical care for hours, and mocked
by jail staff.
I am aware of a 2016 incident where the City of Joplin's tax payed out $250,000 for a
similar incident as to what just happened to me.
I have been denied my right to access court records, denied the ability to file motions,
or to intervene in cases affecting my family
and barred from attending hearings,
can starting my own grandchildren and my property.
Court clerks and judges have refused to accept
the
other page.
You can use the other side motions
and other things filed in their courts.
Now, when I was arrested this last week,
I was taken into custody the protesting
and they made allegations that I had
They inspired drivers license, I wasn't driving.
I was drove there.
Joplin City prosecutors office and the code enforcement
have repeatedly issued ordinance violations,
not just to me, but to my landlords
with the threat that they must pursue an addiction against me
or face prosecution themselves.
After my landlords agreed to evict me
the city dropped their charges, that's a piece of process.
When my grandchildren were taken in to protect the custody,
it was based on false allegations
Despite my lifelong relationship with them, I was denied the chance to be placement option to even see or speak with them for three years. I have not had any contact with my grandchildren or be able to participate in their hearings or anything that's decided for their faith.
When I have spoken that file sunshine and way of request and protested I have been met with
recalculation more false charges and origin from the city officials who believe they are
above accountability.
I have been laughed at and told that nothing will happen and that they are protected because
of politics.
I have video and audio evidence of export taking indications between judges and court clerks
violating proper procedure officers using excessive force and city employees mocking my attempts
to suggest this. This issue has been addressed several times with the chief in person and
in many messages in e-mail since April. Many times through e-mailed a message, my concerns
have been completely ignored, which has directly led to this most recent incident, while I was
physically assaulted by an officer overseeing jail facilities. It's this kind of thing, it's
kind of thing can happen to us this and has broken no law and no violence, not to myself
or to anyone else, I can only imagine the things
of these people are capable of doing to someone
who has actually broken the law.
Okay, so basically in 2016 the city was sued
and paid out $250,000 for leaving a man in a chair,
the same restrained chair, they had me left in for hours,
for 20 hours causing his debt.
Now as they can do what they have done to me,
for calling the names, because that's all I did,
was called the names,
And not these were having me locked up for nothing or protesting against their corruption, but they can do that to me. They can do it to any
citizens.
And they're so thin skinned and they can't take a little bit of name call and maybe they need to go down to the flower shop or the local bakery and work instead of being carrying around badges and having that kind of power.
Seriously, that's really good.
Okay, so they have no business where wearing a badge.
We have no business in police officers and putting their violent hands on citizens who have no reason whatsoever other than they are
Tavable and have nobody stopping them and nobody holding them accountable. So
actually what happens to me? I was put into it. I was a
Prima- Shana. Shana hang on. Your time's up for just a moment. We're gonna see if any council members has any questions for you
Council.
I have a question. Are you done?
I just had one more statement. I would like her to
I would like to hear her for a statement.
Are you making a motion, Mr. Alza?
Motion is made in probably a second to give the presenter another 60 seconds to make her motion, make her point.
Yes, sir.
Please vote.
Yes, sir.
I was not playing motion.
Motion carries seven in favor with two opposed.
You have 60 seconds to finish up.
Yes, sir.
I would pre-state that I wasn't put into the chair.
I walked into the chair willingly and sat down in it.
Nobody put me anywhere.
I was not threatening anybody with any violence.
And while I was being strapped in,
I think what was done to me, my skin was ripped off of me,
my skin was pulling it so tight,
ripped my arms up above my, above this,
and kept me tied that way for hours.
While they were doing that, the lady in charge tilted my head
back, I didn't fight her, I let her do it.
It put both of her hands on the sides of my jaw
and applied as much pressure as she could to dislocate my jaw.
That's what this lady Jailor did to me with no violence whatsoever.
I've never threatened to police officer any violence, and that's all I have to say today, thank you.
Thank you, please.
I do have a copy of a letter of intent to file a civil rights lawsuit.
So I'll begin that to your court clerk.
All right, thank you, ma'am.
Thank you.
Mrs. Naush, next presenter, please.
Joe Shackles.
Evening, Mr. Shackles, I'll need you to state your name for the record and then you'll have five minutes.
Hello, my name is Josh Shackles, and I will try to keep my comments brief. I know it's been a long evening for everybody.
I did have a prepared statement. I'm going to throw that out the window, and I just kind of want to talk to you guys for just a second.
So I wear many hats in this community, and one of those hats is with our Convention and Visitors Bureau.
and I regularly ask the hoteliers what what problems are you facing in your
area and about a year ago we discussed that they may hire a private security
force to come and help remove trespassers from hotel properties. At our last
meeting I asked them the same question and they said Josh I don't know what you've
done, but you've solved the problem. Our hotels are safe. They're clean. Things are going well
for us. We're making money. So I feel like that's probably not me and probably a lot of other
people that are in this room that actually deserve that credit that they gave me. Another hat that I
aware is to care for our homeless population. And we did
recently have an issue where a lot of people did not really
understand what the camping ordinance means in practical
application. And we had a person that received
a citation. Of course, there were quite a few people as you may
have seen on social media that were upset by that. And I had
the opportunity to sit down with our chief of police and discuss that situation so that
I, as someone advocating for them, could actually understand what it was that that young woman
actually got in trouble for because I couldn't figure it out. She had only been on our bench
for a few moments to
help educate some of the volunteers and providers and people that were
interested in this situation, our mayor, Mr. Cortez, and our chief of police came and sat
down with many of those people. And I'm very thankful for the time that they spent to help explain
that. And I feel like I understand that ordinance a little better. But many of the people that
that ordinance might affect the most may not understand it very well. And so one of the things that
that I would like to see this council consider is to add signage near those benches that explains
the ordinance. That way, if somebody is to violate that ordinance, they know they're
about to violate an ordinance. It's not a surprise to them. Another thing that I would like
to see this council consider is perhaps open up the parking lot just across the street from
the police station as a safe to park location for people that are sleeping in their cars.
This would allow those people a safe place to be. It would allow public safety to keep an eye
on them to make sure that they are safe in our community. And it would allow providers a place
that we could know that we may encounter those people. Another potential solution that would
not cost a lot of money would be to find a location where we can add lockers to our
downtown perhaps even at our police station where officers can keep an eye on people's
public or personal belongings if they have nowhere else to keep them.
And then those belongings are not with them as they travel around our town.
And I think all of these things would mitigate some of the charges that people are seeing and help everybody live together in a little bit better harmony.
Thank you guys so much for your time.
I would answer any questions that anyone may have.
Thank you, Mr. Shackles.
Mr. Coppel.
Okay, so a couple of questions that I'm just going to play devil's advocate here for a minute.
So, we use a city lot and make it a safe space for people to stay in their cars and either
A, something happens to their vehicle or something happens to that person on that lot.
I could be wrong but I would think that would open the city up for some liability to that.
And you mentioned a couple of times that having it by the police station, you know, police
Police officers could keep an eye on things, but our police officers are out on the go, especially in the evenings there's not police officers assigned to the station because they're out patrolling and doing other things.
What happened to be in there for paperwork or they may happen to be processing a, you know, somebody to bring into the jail, but it's not a staffed location. So I don't know that that would have the desired effect that you're looking for. I personally feel like I would like to see a public restroom downtown, which could house, you know, lockers who, you know,
You know, like you're talking about, you know, maybe like bus station ones that are, you know, pay as you go, something to that effect.
So I'm not in disagreement with the concept, it's, you know, where, you know, where we can put those things or put those locations or put those amenities and a funding source for doing those.
Absolutely excellent questions and and I don't have all the right answers but as you guys said earlier we have to start somewhere.
And and hopefully these give you some ideas that we can dream about and come back to and maybe find some inexpensive ways to make life a little bit easier for the most vulnerable in our community.
and for business owners that then no longer have considerable amount of property left on their doorsteps.
And just good for everybody.
Mr. Bard, thank you, thank you, Josh, for coming and speaking tonight.
I would like to publicly or see if we could explore the idea of putting up some no-camping warning signs around certain areas.
If anything, it might give the idea that we're not, it's for everybody, the ordinances for everybody and it's on display for everyone to see.
I think we've struggled with that ordinance a little bit this year because while it is an ordinance and there's no excuse for ignorance of the law,
Many of the people that it most often affects don't have the ability to watch the news or
a phone to look up what the ordinances might be.
And when the encounter of police officer, they're left going, what did I do?
So hopefully that might help mitigate some of that problem.
Mr. Jackson.
Mr. Shackle, I do want to tell you thank you for your approach to the subject and trying to be more intentional with conversations and solutions and try to mitigate some of the emotion that came into this last week.
I appreciate your efforts to try to calm some of the personalities that we're doing things that could have been essentially been harmful to some of our police department officers.
I kind of, you know, you and I talked about this a little bit.
I've definitely shared some of your comments and ideas with the City Manager.
But I really kind of thought a little bit about the people didn't know part.
And I'm not saying this to put you on the spot in any way.
At the same time we enacted this ordinance, we enacted an ordinance regarding, you know, the shopping carts.
that came across a lot of clear, and we didn't see shopping carts all over town like we used to.
So I don't know if it's people didn't take it seriously, people didn't think well what are they going to do because they got nowhere else to go, but I think we did get the message out.
I just think that the warning probably was not heated, and I do know there was conversations between council members and city staff like hey, why is this ordinance not being enforced?
First, and there was a very prolonged approach of them just giving warnings and not really enacting the penalties that came with it.
So I think it might have just been a lack of people taking a serious, and I could be wrong.
But we enacted two things at the same time, and one seemed to resonate in the other one, now it's kind of a big deal.
I think it was heard loud and clear in the parks, but many people did not maybe understand that it applied to all city property.
Okay.
That's my thought.
It could be, and I appreciate that.
Mr. Carpley.
Mr. Shackles, and I know not all houseless individuals end up at the shelters, but I don't know if I want a whole bunch of signs downtown.
down, but do you think we could help get the word out by either talking with the shelters
and seeing if we could post some informational signs there or have, you know, handouts
that they could help distribute and maybe the clinics and the economic security and wherever
Whatever else that the coalition thinks might help to get that information out.
I do believe that many of the providers are going to try to enhance our education efforts for people.
Our chief of police has agreed to help with some PSAs that we will show during meal times as well.
To help, make sure that people understand what that ordinance is.
Okay, fantastic, thank you.
Thank you sir.
Anyone else?
Josh, I'll just finish by, first of all, thanking you for the efforts that you make in our community.
You do a lot of things uncompensated and unrecognized in our community.
And that doesn't go unnoticed.
Definitely appreciate.
I will definitely stand on what Mr. Jackson said.
and we appreciate your approach to this conversation this evening.
It's not going to do anybody any good to get to that podium and scream at us.
And like I told you yesterday, it's not going to be us that solves the problem either.
It's going to be all of us that solves the problem.
It's going to take every single person in our community to take a little bit of responsibility
for our unhoused community and put forth any effort that we can to make life better for them.
But I will also stand on what I've said previously that it's not on just this body up here.
It's not on the city administration.
It's not on the community.
It is on that unhoused individual as well to want to seek the help that they need to get.
And I think this community over the last several years has really stepped its game up.
And that resonated well yesterday, that we've stepped our game up a lot over the last couple of years.
We've got a lot of entities together. We've got them all in the same room.
We've got a lot of people talking the same language. And we've got providers willing to step up and handle situations that maybe five years ago
we weren't necessarily all on the same page. So we've done a lot and we have more things coming down the pike.
I think we had Vita Nova Village here earlier this evening, what they're doing and what they're going to bring to this community is going to be a tremendous help to a lot of people in getting them where they need to be to get back on their feet and become a productive members of society, so I encourage you to keep up the good work that you are doing and I appreciate you coming to this body and offering reasonable recommendations and things that we could tangibly put our hands around and do.
Please keep doing what you're doing for community.
Every community needs a Josh shackles in it.
Thank you so much for your kind words.
If anybody out there that is listening to this council meeting would like to be recognized as the next Charles Shiverdecker, please reach out to me.
I have several opportunities for you.
All right, thank you.
Thank you Josh.
Have a good night.
Madam Clerk, last item, please.
Won't you go into close-
Mr. Mayor.
Excuse me.
Mr. Comple.
I have a new business item.
All right, Mr. Comple has new business.
First off, as I introduced this, I would like to personally apologize to our dispatch staff.
I was gone when the presentation was made about the issues that we're having with dispatch.
And it took me about three weeks to get up to speed and review the material because we're
in the middle of budget recommendations.
One of the most major glaring items from that that I saw was out of a department of 20 people.
We were seven people short, that's over a third.
Since that presentation we've had three more people that were in training leave, so that
puts us at 10 short.
So that's out of a group of 20 people, so that's approximately half.
And I think that is a critical juncture, also looking at the information that was provided, the normal work schedule for those individuals is 5-12 a week.
So 60 hours a week, what they're working in an incredibly stressful job, very nerve-wracking job.
Most of them are working 612s because of the shortages and just rumor but that we had
one individual do approximately 20 consecutive 12-hour shifts.
None of those statistics are tenable.
That doesn't include burning out people and them just leaving that doesn't include anybody
getting sick and off on FMLA, that is it include anybody that happens to be part of our military getting deployed for 30 days.
I do not think our system can handle that with the other aid of yours agreement.
I would like to direct the city manager to put together a work group to look at the problem in a very,
We very expedited fashion and bring us back some possible solutions and some possible ways on how we can address this and move forward with this.
Discussion, council?
Well, for expedited I think that, and maybe as I understand it, the city manager has been working on some of the issues that I'd like to see some information as well, so, to thumbs up for me, we can get that.
Mr. Jackson.
Yeah, I mean, I didn't take it as though it was finalized and it seemed like HR was going to be going back and trying to find, you know, some other things to possibly do.
If I'm wrong, I mean, our city manager could speak up, but I didn't feel like it was just kind of left as what do we do?
I think there is a proactive approach of, you know, trying to figure out some solutions and chart is given.
Sir, the number one listed item on solutions was to create a staff for a not emergency call taker position.
So we're going to increase staffing by creating another position that we can't staff.
The second one was hiring part-time positions.
My conversation with Mr. Edwards, I don't have an issue with that.
I've advocated for part-time positions, for multiple jobs.
One of the other ones was going to our medical facilities and trying to get,
have them put it out but trying to get nurses or EMTs or firefighters or police officers to come do this job.
when a lot of those positions already pay more than what this pays,
and adding into a stressful situation.
Another thing that was on that list was putting together a training program
through Franklin Tech or some of our other trade schools to do that.
I think that is a great alternative,
but the problem with that is you have to write the curriculum,
you have to get it approved through the school district,
you have to put it in place.
So that's on the long-term fix items of one to two years out, if not more.
But I don't think our dispatch will stand for one to two years while we wait for that to happen.
So that's why I'm asking for some more short-term, expedited
research or options to be presented to us.
Yeah,
thank you, Mayor.
I'm happy to bring back some more expedited options I have met with our public safety
chiefs, Leslie and Michelle, we did some brainstorming today.
I could bring back to this group kind of a recap of our brainstorming ideas and see where
that goes.
So I'd be happy to work on this mayor if that's the council's direction.
Thank you, if it could also kind of start to work on the long term as well.
I mean, the expedited is great, but we still need a long term solution for even the short-term fix.
Mayor, if I might, yes, sir.
Mr. Barter, I appreciate you bringing that up.
I want to make it clear, our long-term solution for me is improving our pay, improving our staffing.
And the next big opportunity to address that issue is in August.
I'm not saying there can't be other options along the way, but for
the big significant substantial changes that will be in August.
But I want a well functioning dispatch.
I know the chiefs spoke up for it pretty strongly today and
And we'll bring back some options that we think might work from now until then.
Perfect, thank you, Mr.
Ditar.
I just want to kind of report back to you all that the mayor and I had went last week, last Thursday, and participated in the one job on poverty simulation. And I think that for me it was a surprise. I couldn't believe how stressed that I got during that time. I thought I could, I thought I'd deal a little bit better, but one job on did an economic security and all the other entities that are a part of that, did a great job of really, I think, distressing
I've seen everybody out making people realize what it's like for some of our citizens to live on the threshold of you know in poverty, but on the threshold of becoming unhoused and how scary and how fast it can happen.
And so I wanted to thank them publicly to putting that on making me sweat a little bit, but the mayor and I participated in that I would recommend it to anybody that hasn't done it to take part in that.
And I think you'll see it from a different perspective, right?
To be in and somebody else's shoes for just an hour, even, was very powerful.
And anybody listening, anybody here on this council, I would recommend going through it so
that you can see the perspective from somebody else's, or see the point of view from somebody else's perspective.
So thank you, as it.
I'll finish that off by saying, I did learn a few things at that poverty simulation, and I think the biggest thing that hit home for me was during the simulation, you had to go to different places to get services that you needed, you had to go pay your range, you had to go pay your utilities, you had to go to the bank and cash your check.
like you had to go to economic security and receive services.
And when things got really tough, you needed to go to the pawn shop and
pawn some things so you could afford to eat.
And I know they set it up this way, but it was shocking to me how rude the people giving those services were to the people that were down on their luck.
They were downright rude.
And I would hope that any service provider that's in our community listening to this right now.
would know that it is frustrating, and it's overwhelming to deal with some of the problems that we have in our community, but there's never an excuse, never an excuse to be rude to another human being.
Madam Clerk, last item, please.
Both to go into closed session, which shall pertain to hiring, firing, disciplining, or promotion of an employee or particular employees of a governmental body, involving personal information to set forth in Section 610-021-Subsection 3 of the right statutes of Missouri as amended 2020, more specifically for the purpose of evaluating certain council employees.
This meeting record and vote to be close to the extent provided by law. The City Council shall adjourn at the end of the session.
Mr. D. Tarr.
I will make a motion to go into closed sessions for all the things the city clerk said.
Second.
Motion is made in probably a second to adjourn the closed session, please vote.
Motion carries nine in favor, we are adjourned.