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Scattered thunderstorms this morning, then cloudy skies this afternoon. High 78F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..
Partly cloudy skies. Low 64F. Winds light and variable.
As the city gets close to the permanent 1-percent sales and use tax kicking in in June, the Searcy City Council began holding committee of the whole meetings this week to hear from the city’s department heads on their needs.
The first to speak Monday night was Searcy Sanitation Department Director Terry Rutherford, who told the council that what should be first on everyone’s list is more money for their employees. He said his department is hiring general labor employees for $11.50 per hour and commercial driver’s license drivers at $14.75. Concerns about starting pay also were brought up last September in the lead-up to the November special election in which voters made the eight-year one-cent tax permanent.
“As you all know, sanitation has had a very difficult time keeping employees, and this is the No. 1 thing on my list,” Rutherford said. “If I can get these guys some more money, in my opinion we will be able to retain better help instead of them going somewhere else.”
He said he believes $14.75 for CDL drivers needs to be $15.50 and the general labor pay needs to start at $13.
Council member Chris Howell asked Rutherford if he knew how much that would add to his budget. Rutherford said he has not yet done those figures because he has been out for a while.
Council member Tonia Hale asked Rutherford how many current openings he had, and he said “two.”
When asked by Council member David Morris how many general laborer positions he had open, Rutherford said “really none.” Both of the open positions are for CDL drivers.
Rutherford said he and Mayor Kyle Osborne talked about some dump truck companies in the community that are hiring CDL drivers at $21 and $22 an hour. He said while the city of Searcy has some good benefits, sometimes those looking for jobs don’t look at that but they do look at that $21 and $22 an hour starting pay.
Concerning equipment for sanitation, Rutherford said the department needs two 3-quarter-ton trucks. He said the department can get them on the state-bid plan for around $35,000.
Howell asked if these trucks would be replacing other trucks or be additional trucks. Rutherford said they would be two additional trucks or leaf trucks. Osborne said when the city purchased the trailers, it originally had calculated purchasing trucks.
As far as complaints about leaf pickup, Osborne said he was not saying there hasn’t been any complaints this year but for the first time in three years, he went from five a week to zero. He said city employees and council members have gotten calls about leaves being picked up in a certain place but he doesn’t get the calls in his office every day like he used to.
Rutherford said there has been some overtime since his department has been behind on leaf pickup. He said his employees said they have been making a lot of headway lately as a result of the overtime.
Next, he talked about tarps, saying the city has boom trucks that need tarps since that is a Arkansas Department of Transportation regulation. He said the DOT is cracking down and although no tickets have been issued yet, his employees have been stopped and told that it is very important that the department gets tarps on the boom trucks.
“We can do it for $1,700 a piece,” Rutherford said. “We need six trucks done, It would be about $10,200.” He added that he also needs three “tarping systems that are quite a bit more expensive for our roll-off trucks because they have arms. ... Those are $12,000 apiece for the three trucks, $36,000 [total]. It is a DOT deal.”
Rutherford said like he does every year, he wanted to address the need for 6- and 8-yard bins. He said if the city orders them, it will cost $50,983. “That will get us eight 6 yards and five 8 yards. The 8 yards are $3,662 each and the 6 yards are $3,045 each.”
Rutherford said plastic bins don’t have bin repair. “I just spent $7,000 on bin bottoms for bins that we still have in the system and repairs for metal on the side. These plastic have bolts extruded into the plastic and then they have the metal ears and they have a metal rod. So your metal is not close to the ground, so unless we get a fire ... .”
Rutherford said the last two orders were for plastic bins as the city is trying to phase the metal ones out. He said the department orders green ones so they don’t get discolored.
As far as garbage trucks go, Rutherford said the side-arm truck purchased as part of the eight-year plan for using the temporary 1-percent sales tax are “doing the best, and the last trucks we purchased are doing the worst.” He said the hydraulics and the metal on the beds are causing the most trouble.
Morris asked Rutherford about the grinder at the mulch center, which Rutherford said is 18 years old. He said it has a lot of hours on it and his department has done a lot of maintenance on it. He said there was a fire a week or so ago, so a wiring harness had to be ordered for it, running about $1,400.
Rutherford said the more expensive a piece of equipment is, the more it costs to maintain it. To change the oil on the grinder is about $1,200 to $1,500 dollars, he noted.
Code Enforcement Department Director Jeff Webb said his department is in need of some vehicles. It was noted that the city’s electrician is driving a 2007 vehicle. The newest vehicle is a 2018 and the other one is a 2012.
Webb said he would like to get the city’s name on a list for a vehicle, but it would probably be next year before the city could get one. Osborne said he believes there is $67,000 in the city’s vehicle budget.
Searcy Parks and Recreation Director Mike Parsons said keeping his employees is the primary concern “when we do get them.” He said right now he has a full staff to work on lots of projects, but would like to get a raise for one member of the staff who is used like a construction worker and mechanic, fixing the ice machines, refrigerators and freezers. Parsons said he actually had money in his budget to do that but just needed the council’s “blessing.”
Howell asked Parsons if he was hiring any seasonal workers for the summer, and Parsons said hopefully. He mentioned the large amounts of baseball and softball tournaments, with player numbers being “way up.” Parsons said soccer was doing very well also with participation.
Parsons said a lot of projects for the parks could be done better with more money. He mentioned restrooms and ball fields. He said his building maintenance budget was $13,000 and “that covers all of it.” He asked if that budget could be bumped up to about $35,000. The Berryhill Park restroom needs redoing, he said, as well as work on the pavilions.
Osborne said the city has several pavilions and “we don’t want them to fall on disrepair. They need paint. They need roofs. We are constantly having to replace bathroom fixtures because of vandalism. That’s usually a Monday morning project. Fences around Berryhill ... people run into them and bust them and they lay there for months before we can fix them. There are several projects in parks and rec.”
Osborne also said there is a worn-out backhoe that came from the street department that Parson said runs “sometimes.” Osborne said if funds are available, trying to find a good, used one would be good. Osborne said the price range would be anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000.
Morris asked if lights for Holiday of Lights were in good shape. Parsons said they are for the most part “and we have been blessed that the A&P [Searcy Advertising and Tourism Promotion Commission] has helped us out with that.”
City Engineer Mark Lane said engineering is in good shape and didn’t need anything, but the street department is in need of a new “mini-excavator.” He said the department has two excavators, but the smaller one used at the airport and for the Street Department is probably 15 years old and “it is worn out. It breaks down quite often, a lot of hydraulic problems.” Lane said a new one would be “less that $90,000.”
Lane said the department also has been talking for years about another skid steer on tracks to get into areas that are wetter. It would have a bush hog and mulching attachment to use to clear out vines and smaller trees. He said it would cost $124,000 for a Bobcat brand that the Street Department has “really good luck with.”
He said there are a lot of ditches in town that community service has had to deal with because the city can’t get to it because of the equipment. Lane said the street fund has about $3 million right now.
As far as hiring employees, Lane said most will say they want to drive a truck and that’s all they want to do, but “we’re not hiring truck drivers, we’re hiring people to get out and do the work. Everybody’s got to be willing to do whatever we need them to do. We’re paying around $15 [per hour] for the Street Department and a little better than that if you can operate the equipment.”
Searcy Municipal Airport Manager Roger Pearson said grants are basically covering most of the airports problems, but mentioned the need to replace a work truck that has 200,000 miles on it.
Calling the airport “the doorway of our city,” he also mentioned that he believes when the terminal was built in 2013, many furniture places donated recliners. There are seven “made with fake leather and all that fake leather is coming off, and they look terrible and they also need to be replaced.”
He talked about replacing them with something that will “stand the test of time.” To replace all seven of them with leather ones, according to an area furniture store’s estimate, would be $8,470. To replace the truck would be $33,009, under state contract, Pearson said. He said the airport has $199,000 in the bank, Pearson said.
City Clerk/Treasurer Jerry Morris was absent from the meeting. Osborne said the needs Pearson brought up would be a “Jerry question,” to see where the money would have to come from.
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