By Andrea Bruner, White River Now
Above: An area on Aberdeen Drive in Eagle Mountain where the City of Batesville will place a speed table. It will be one of two speed tables in the Batesville neighborhood. The speed tables are being installed at the request of the Eagle Mountain Property Owners Association, which is paying for the project.
Eagle Mountain will be getting two speed tables in the near future at the request of the people who live there.
City Engineer Damon Johnson told the Batesville City Council on Tuesday night that the Eagle Mountain Property Owners Association is making the request. One speed table will be on Aberdeen Drive at the boardwalk and the other at Woodmont, after the Y but before the first intersection.
He said the property owners have offered to pay for the speed tables and the city Street Department’s labor. Johnson said advanced warning signs will likely be needed if the council approves the speed tables.
Johnson predicted the speed tables, which are made of recycled rubber, would be “easy to put down and easy to remove” if needed, although he did say these could lead to permanent fixtures if these are accepted by the public.
Mayor Rick Elumbaugh said there needs to be a contact person and phone number to direct people if they call City Hall about the speed tables. He said he had received complaints after the city of Southside had installed similar speed tables on Luster Drive although the city of Batesville had nothing to do with that, noting, “That’s out of my jurisdiction.”
The council approved the installation at the expense of the property owners association.
Johnson also presented information about the guaranteed maximum price on the new water treatment plant project. The city has been approved for a $110 million loan to be paid by a sales tax that is already on the books and the city is already collecting for, although the money has not yet been borrowed. Johnson said this means the city will be able to repay the debt that much quicker.
The guaranteed maximum price is over $99 million, assuming the current scope of work does not change. A contingency is built in, particularly since some of the bids were well under those of the other companies that placed bids.
“Both companies were, I would say, uncomfortably low,” Johnson said, but he noted he has double-checked the bids with those companies and the bonding companies.
“They say they have good bids; they don’t know why everybody else is so high. We’ve chosen them, but just in case, as a little bit of a parachute, you might say, we’ve added some extra contingency so if there was a problem, and those contractors do not fulfill their obligation, there is a way to get over that hump.”
Incidentally, the price tag when the city finalized the design in late 2020-21 was $65 million. “The engineering wasn’t off – it was just done at a time before we had the crazy inflation of the last three years,” Johnson said.
The council approved a motion accepting the bids.
Johnson said other city operations are going well, and they continue to work on the design for the new parks project near Riverside Park and clear the land for the new park, including the site of the old Riverside Gardens (pictured below).
“By the end of the year, the project’s scope should be well defined,” he said.
The city also continues to work on remodeling the new site for White River Specialized Industries (pictured below), which is being moved off Cottonwood Drive to make room for the new parks project. Elumbaugh said he hopes to enlist the help of John 3:16 Ministries to help with the move when the time comes.
Both the water treatment plant and parks projects are being funded with sales taxes that were extended by city voters in 2023.
In other business:
* Police Chief John Scarbrough shared that Bad Boy, Inc., has donated more than $50,000 to the department for new bulletproof vests that are actually lighter than the previous styles and will take some weight off the officers’ hips.
The city has received two of its new Dodge Durango police units (one of which is pictured below), with plans to have the vehicle striping finished and the new computer system operational in a matter of days. He brought one to the council meeting, as well as one of the new weapons for which the council had previously approved funds.
He said the city may miss part of its grant reimbursement due to how long it has taken the department to go online with their computers in the vehicles. He said the city had ordered the wrong equipment and sent it back, then ordered the correct equipment — but it apparently did not fall into the timeframe for reimbursement.
If the installation fee is not reimbursed, it would be $750 per unit, which equates to $18,000 for 24 units. He said he hoped to finish installation in the department fleet by today, Oct. 16.
“It was a learning curve that none of us were prepared for,” Scarbrough said.
With the new police station at 710 S. St. Louis Street across from Sonic, the chief said the department is looking to host an open house with the new uniforms and equipment in place. No date has been set yet.
In his monthly report, Scarbrough, who has also joined the Arkansas Association of Chiefs of Police, stated the police department was down on calls (933 in September to August’s 1,023) and incident reports (49 from 62) but slightly up on the number of accidents (51 to the previous month’s 44), although the number of arrests remained the same (24).
* Fire Chief Mark McCollum said the city’s ISO will remain at a class 2.
The Insurance Services Office (ISO) rates departments on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the best. The lower the rating, the lower a community’s fire insurance premiums are as a whole. Departments are typically evaluated every five to ten years.
“An 80 is the lowest score you can make and still be a class 2, and we had an 80.45,” McCollum said, “so we just got there by the skin of our teeth.”
The ladder truck actually failed the initial test because the suspension had come loose under the truck, but the ISO representative allowed the fire department to call the repair shop to come fix the problem, so the truck did end up passing, the fire chief said.
“The truck is so old you can’t buy parts for it anymore,” McCollum said, noting the truck is a 2007 model. The man who worked on the truck reportedly told the department, “That’s going to be the last set of brakes you put on that truck because it’s so old.”
But the ISO rating does not just look at the fire department – it also takes into consideration dispatch/emergency communications, water supply (such as the size of water lines), and firefighter training. McCollum praised the other city departments and said it was probably the water department that pulled the score up so the city could keep its rating.
Out of the 1,238 fire departments in Arkansas, only 31 have a Class 2 ISO rating, and 15 are rated Class 1.
McCollum said his department had made 54 calls in the past month, eight of which were actual fires. About half were rescue/emergency medical service (26), and the remaining were hazardous conditions, service calls, good intent calls, and false alarms/false calls.
He said one of those calls that the fire department had responded to was the fire at Eagle Mountain Elementary on Sept. 30.
“We had the guys on duty, which was four, and we had six others show up, so we did that with just ten people,” McCollum said.
On the following Friday, firefighters were invited to come to the car rider line to greet students and teachers.
“They gave us stacks of thank you letters, and it was really heartwarming. They let us know they appreciated us,” the fire chief said.
In addition, the Batesville High School football team came to wash fire trucks as part of the students’ service hours. The Arkansas LEARNS Act requires students in grades 9-12 to complete 75 service hours before graduation.
McCollum also mentioned that the fire department annually presents fire safety and prevention information to every student in the Batesville School District in grades K-3, including coloring books, stickers, and plastic fire helmets. He said business owners donate to this outreach program, which was recently hosted as part of Fire Prevention Month.
Also on Thursday night, his crew will participate in the annual Tip-A-Hero fundraiser at Colton’s. Emergency responders from various departments are invited to help wait tables and accept tips to benefit the local Special Olympics.
In addition, the fire department will be on Main Street for the upcoming Fun and Safe Halloween trick-or-treating event on Oct. 31.
* Savannah Warren addressed the council, asking for a streetlight near her place of employment, the Ozark Foothills Literacy Project, located at 184 N. 5th St. behind the Merchants & Planters Bank building.
Warren said there is a street light nearby, but it is blocked by trees, and another one located at the old Gray’s Hospital does not give as much light as one might think.
She said the literacy program, which offers basic adult English education and ESL (English as a Second Language) classes to the public for free, would like to host more events, but it is not safe to do so at night.
The mayor asked the council members to visit the area at night so they could decide if a new streetlight was warranted.
* James Scales also came to the council and gave an update on some activities in the downtown area. The activities coming up include a cleanup effort along Poke Bayou and North Central Avenue on Nov. 7. There is also a gaming event for ages 16-21 the weekend after Halloween. There will be four of those a year, although he anticipates hosting events for adults as well (including one that will be held on Black Friday weekend).
* The council approved a resolution amending the city zoning map at the end of Dogwood Drive East (which dead-ends and backs up to Home Depot) from Commercial-1 (C-1) to Residential-2 (R-2). The city planning commission met on Oct. 7 and approved the amended zoning plan, which would provide a buffer between the retail and residential areas.
The council also rezoned this area at the request of John Ramsey and White River Independent Living, LLC. The R-2 classification is general or multiple-family residential, such as duplexes.
The council also rezoned the property at 150 W. Chestnut St. at the request of Bryan Kimmer from R-2 to C-1 in order to facilitate a development facing North Central Avenue. Code Enforcement Officer Chad McClure said there is a potential developer purchasing the lot. An unnamed retailer is considering purchasing one block on North Central Avenue from West Chestnut to West Carter streets, but this company also needs the two lots at 150 W. Chestnut to complete the development, McClure said.
Finally, the council approved the rezoning inside the Ball 2nd Addition, for property facing North St. Louis Street, backing up to Cedarwood Drive, from R-1 (single-family homes) to C-1. This is the area near the intersection with Main Street (near Wee Wee’s Used Cars).
McClure when the city abolished the C-2 designation more than 10 years ago, some areas were assigned either commercial or residential zoning. This area was meant to be zoned C-1 but “fell through the cracks,” McClure said.
Council members were told that it came to the planning commission’s attention that the C-1 zoning was never entered onto the official zoning map.
For all three rezoning ordinances, the council suspended the rules and waived the second and third readings, then adopted the ordinances.
* The city levied taxes for the year 2024 payable in 2025. Five mills will go to the city general fund and 1 mill to the firefighters’ pension fund, for a total of 6 mills.
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