Blevins City Council meets

BLEVINS – The Blevins City Council was called to order by the Mayor on January 6th at 7:00 pm. The board members: Barbara Patterson, Kim Torres, Jon Howell and Eric Smith were present. Councilman Cassidy was absent. An opening prayer was offered by Barbara Patterson. The previous meeting minutes were read by the new Recorder/Treasurer, Lisa Arbor and accepted. The financial report was presented, and the council approved the report. There were two water adjustments that were the result of meter reading errors.

Old Business: There were two guests from OWN Engineering in attendance. OWN Engineering was instrumental in helping the city navigate the process of securing funding for the Sewer System project. There was discussion of how the project is to move forward with the first step being to accept the funding. This will allow notices for open for bids, in a state newspaper as required by Arkansas law. There was discussion of getting the Sewer System in compliance with Act 925 with regard to the cost of operating and maintenance, loan repayment, debt service requirements. More details will be forth coming and there will be a special public meeting regarding the details in the future.

The City was officially notified by ARDOT, Arkansas State Aid Street Fund that they did get funding for the asphalt overlay project. This project is 100% funded by the State.
ARDOT will begin the process of the scope of work for approval by the council and then it will go out for bids. There is no exact timeline of events as of this writing.

New measures will be implemented to improve communication between the various parties involved with water meter reading, lock outs and billing to help prevent future billing errors and to clean up record keeping.

New business: Several bids were considered for a Managed I. T. service provider. This will include hosting the city’s new, cityofblevinsar.gov domain, and new .gov email addresses. These measures with additional services will ensure that City of Blevins will be in compliance with the upcoming cybersecurity requirements for municipalities. TXKTECH, out of Texarkana will be the provider.

The 2026 budget was discussed for approval but there is some additional data that needs to be input and there were some technical issues with sorting of the data. This will be worked out and finalized during a Special Called Meeting on Wednesday, January 14, at 7:00 pm in Blevins City Hall.

Additional discussion was had for the continuing Water Operator class requirements for Kenny Hill as well as having Jim Jordan begin training for our back-up water operator.

This would work towards Jim become our water operator when Kenny Hill retires.
There was a brief discussion of future water meter upgrades with 100% funding for remote meter reading capabilities. The mayor will be seeking that funding.
The meeting was adjourned. Next regular scheduled meeting will be February 3rd at 7:00 pm.