BELLA VISTA -- The Bella Vista City Council unanimously approved all six items on its regular session agenda Monday night, including three that deal with purchases for a new Public Safety Building.
The 6-0 votes in the meeting, held at the District Court Building, were applied to four resolutions and two ordinances.
The first of two old business items was an ordinance amending city code to provide clarification regarding the distance from intersections of access driveways. Before putting the item up for a vote, council member Larry Wilms, who authored the ordinance, recommended it be amended to include an emergency clause to allow the ordinance to go into effect immediately.
The council then took three votes on the item: the first passing the amendment to the ordinance, the second passing the newly amended ordinance itself and then the third passing the accompanying emergency clause.
Derek Linn, a senior planner with the Bella Vista Community Development Services Department, told the council during last week's work session the new ordinance will remove a restriction that, in the past, made it difficult for certain corner lots to have a legal driveway. It relieves a layer of burden from those properties so long as a driveway is not in the property's sight triangle.
The council approved a resolution changing the name of Mold Lane to Mac Lane.
The item was tabled during the council's June regular session because city staff had yet to hear back from one property owner along Mold Lane.
The council was informed during the previous week's work session that all individuals -- property owners and renters -- on Mold Lane had been contacted and had given their approval for the name change.
The first item of new business taken on by the council was a resolution providing one-time stipends in the amount of $5,000 to full-time police officers in the Bella Vista Police Department.
The decision for the stipend was made through a grant on the state level, and even though the city had yet to receive the funds, the resolution was passed so the officers could be paid as soon as the funds are received.
Before the vote was taken, council member Jerry Snow asked if Police Department dispatchers could be included in the dispersing of the stipends. After it was explained that the grant only covers full-time officers, he was encouraged to discuss the possibility of stipends being given by the department or the city to dispatchers for a later meeting.
The resolution will amend the 2022 city budget to appropriate $177,622.50 in revenue from Arkansas' Full-time Law Enforcement Officer Salary Stipend Act of 2022 to the Police Department to fund the one-time $5,000 stipends for all of the department's full-time law enforcement officers.
The council approved three items -- two resolutions and one ordinance -- dealing with the new Public Safety Building.
The first resolution authorizes the mayor and city clerk to enter into a contract with Howard Technology Solutions, through a state procurement contract, in an amount not to exceed $270,000 for the purchase of audio-visual equipment for the new public safety building.
The original resolution called for the 2022 city budget to be amended to appropriate the funds from otherwise unappropriated and undesignated financial reserve to the capital budget for the project, but after a look at the project's budget it was determined that wouldn't be necessary.
During last week's work session, Mayor Peter Christie told the council, "We will not have to appropriate from the budget. Finance Director [Kim] Hall and [Police Chief James Graves] sat down with Nabholz [Construction] and went through each single line on the budget, and we compared it to the prepaid issue costs, and there was a $330,000 double count. So we have the money to cover this, and we don't have to appropriate from the budget."
The council then passed a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into a contract with Blue Guys IT, through a state procurement contract, in the total amount of $106,443.00, for the purchase of the Todyl Security Solution program, which will enhance the city's cybersecurity efforts, and an ordinance allowing the waiving requirements of formal competitive bidding and authorizing a contract with Bulldog Security in an amount not to exceed $180,000 for the purchase of access control equipment to go in the building -- security cameras, key fobs, etc.
That ordinance authorizes amending of the 2022 city budget to appropriate the $180,000 in otherwise unappropriated and undesignated funds to the capital budget for the project.
The council's next meeting will be a work session at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 22 in the District Court Building.