Highfill adopts budget, speed limits, four-way stop

HIGHFILL — The city council at Highfill, on Jan. 9, adopted a 2018 budget and passed, on three readings and with an emergency clause, ordinances setting a 25 mph speed limit in the Silver Meadows subdivision and placing four-way stop signs at the corner of Vaughn and Mason Valley Roads.

Prior to the adoption of the ordinances, Vernon Reams, the city’s street supervisor, told the council he would need approximately $3,300 added to his budget for the year to pay for the stop signs and speed-limit signs. School-zone signs would also be needed for a section of Vaughn Road along the Northwest Arkansas Children’s Shelter. The school zone will be considered active 24 hours per day, seven days a week since children are always present at the shelter and attend school classes there.

When the council adopted the city’s 2018 budget, $3,300 was added to the street department for the signs. The new budget includes a cost-of-living increase for all but the mayor and the police department. Police department employees did not receive an increase because of the step increases already included in the department’s salary schedule.

Also adopted by the Highfill Council was a resolution to participate, without cost to Highfill, in an Arkansas Municipal League lawsuit against drug manufacturers, drug distributors and medical practitioners in connection with producing, distributing and prescribing opioid drugs and causing an opioid epidemic in Arkansas. Materials distributed to the council in connection with the resolution allege the opioid epidemic has caused municipalities great expense in dealing with people and drugs and that the cities are entitled to damages caused by the drug manufacturers, distributors and prescribers of opioid narcotics. The materials indicate that, in total, more than $75 billion is being sought in relief for damages caused by opioids in the U.S.