Council approves buying cruisers, safety equipment

BELLA VISTA — Ordinances and resolutions passed Monday night by the Bella Vista City Council will clear the way for new equipment for the city’s police and fire departments, hot mix and slurry for its streets and corrugated culverts to help with drainage.

Also, the city’s Tree Advisory Board got a couple of new members during the meeting held at the District Courtroom.

The City Council jumped into the regular session agenda by hearing a positive January financial report. While each council member received a full report in their meeting packets, Mayor Peter Christie provided a brief overview of the report that was published last week.

“In a nutshell, our total sales tax revenue was $ 239,000 above the budget, and our total operating revenues are $49,000 above the budget,” he said. “On the expenses side, we’re $ 346,000 under plan at the moment, and we have cash on hand of $11 million. So we’re doing extremely well, as always. The auditors should be in sometime this week, or the beginning of next week, so they can begin their annual review of our financials.”

The first resolution presented to be voted on was an old business item regarding the purchase of four 2022 Dodge Charger police cruisers in an amount not to exceed $228,088 for the Bella Vista Police Department.

According to the resolution, the purchases would have been made from Superior Automotive Group of Siloam Springs, pursuant to a state contract. But at the last minute there were no 2022 models to be found.

“At the 11th hour Chief ( James) Graves had been told by Superior that they were not able to obtain 2022 vehicles,” said Christie. “They could only get vehicles that were brand new but 2021 vehicles. As a result, there had to be some more investigation, so we tabled this.”

Before moving on to a new ordinance that would authorize the purchase of the 2021 models, the City Council had to get rid of the old resolution.

“The way for us to remove this resolution from the agenda is for us to table it indefinitely,” Christie said. “It will just sit out there and won’t be addressed again.”

After voting unanimously to table the resolution indefinitely, the council members voted to unanimously approve the new ordinance, which authorizes the purchase of the three 2021 models from Superior in the total amount of $87,027.

The next ordinance on the agenda would waive the requirements of formal competitive bidding and authorize the purchase of corrugated metal drainage culverts based on price and availability by informal price quotes through calendar year 2022.

The ordinance would allow Mike Button, the city’s street superintendent, to purchase the replacement corrugated culverts without having to go through the competitive bid process.

“There is money in the budget for these culverts,” Christie said. “As we heard from Superintendent Button at the work session, he needs the flexibility to be able to purchase these, especially these days when the steel seems to be so expensive.”

The ordinance passed by a 6-0 count.

The City Council then addressed a resolution approving the mayor’s appointments of Cheryl Hall, Mike Abb and Chuck Woods to positions on the Tree Advisory Board for three- year terms ending May 1, 2025.

Before voting unanimously to approve the appointments, council member John Flynn said, “I just wanted to mention that people say, ‘ Well what do we need a tree board for?’ I noticed recently when we were giving out trees that came from the Walton Foundation we gave out 200 trees. We started at 8 a.m., and they were all gone by 8:30 a.m. There were a number of people from the tree board there helping to load them up and what not.”

The next item on the agenda was a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into a contract in an amount not to exceed $ 147,976.68 with Stryker Medical, pursuant to a National Association of State Procurement Officials Cooperative Purchasing Agreement, for the purchase of four LIFEPAK 15 V4 cardiac monitors for use by the fire department.

During the City Council’s work session held on April 18, Bella Vista Fire Department Chief Steve Sims described the monitors as equipment “we use on the ambulance pretty much 90% of the time,” adding, “We use them to look at someone’s heart rate, check their blood pressure and pulse ox (oxygen level), and it reads carbon monoxide in the bloodstream. They’re also used for cardiac pacing and defibrillation or if someone’s in cardiac arrest or their heart’s not beating right.”

Christie said, “This money is in the budget and, as Chief Sims has mentioned, this product normally has about a 10-year life and they are now replacing some that have hit the 10- year mark with this newer product.”

Sims said while the department is upgrading to the newer monitors, the ones being replaced will still be used as backups.

The resolution was approved by a unanimous vote.

The final item on the agenda was a resolution awarding bid and authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into a contract with APAC Central Paving in an amount not to exceed $ 2,361,898 for asphalt street resurfacing ( hot mix overlay) and further authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into a contract with Vance Brothers, Inc., in an amount not to exceed $1,080,446.64 for slurry street resurfacing.

“This money is a combination of money that is in the 2022 budget plus $ 1.3 million from the ARPA [American Rescue Plan Act] money that we approved earlier (in the year) as being set aside,” said the mayor. “I do draw your attention to the superintendent’s results from opening the bids. It was a bit of a shocker. We saw the slurry go up 34%, and Mike had thought it would be about the same for asphalt. But asphalt actually went up 71% … thanks to the oil situation we’re facing. However, I think we would all agree that we can’t just stop doing streets for a year, we have to stay on top of them to stop further deterioration.”

The increases do mean the city won’t be able to take care of as many miles of streets as previously projected.

“What did that do to the proposed number of miles that we were going to do?” asked council member Jerry Snow.

“We had to cut back mileage on Trafalgar and Hampstead, unfortunately,” said Christie.

Council man Larry Wilms added, “I think we knew there was some risk because we weren’t sure about how predictable the rate was for the asphalt paving.”

“That’s exactly right,” said the mayor.

The next work session for the City Council is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. May 16. The next regular session will be at 6:30 p.m. May 23. Both sessions will be held at the District Courtroom.