Hope City Board

The Hope City Board met on Tuesday, March 3.

Following the Pledge and approval of the minutes, the board was visited by Josh Williams with the Hempstead County Bicentennial Committee. He presented the board with the Hope Bicentennial sign that will be presented to the City. The signs are being made for each of the fifteen townships within Hempstead County,  and they are hoping to be installed in April. The Southwell Co. of Corpus Christi will be creating the signs, the signs will be black and aluminum. The Bicentennial Committee wanted to give the board enough time think of possible places to place the sign. Steve Montgomery thanked Williams for getting it put together.

The Arkansas Municipal League is asking that all municipalities support their “Be Local Be Heard” campaign. A video showing support for the campaign was presented to the board with City Manager Catherine Cook being presented in the video. The campaign is to support local control over state control with local decision making, being able to address unique needs of our community, and to help create laws that work for us. For more information on the campaign please visit https://www.belocalbeheard.com/.

The Municipal League also requested that all cities in Arkansas support an amendment to the Arkansas Constitution to continue with the one-half percent sales, and use the sales tax to help with state highways, bridges, county roads, bridges, city streets, and other surface transportation. The citizens will be able to vote on this during the November election. Trevor Coffee made a motion to support the resolution with a second made by Mark Ross. All members present voted “Aye.”

Cook gave an update on the 2020 Census. Darrell Allen and Dorsey Askew have installed 21 signs throughout Hope. The City is encouraging citizens to please fill out the census information. There are computers at the library, for those who wish to fill it out online. Information will be sent out to everyone in Hope, they will be in English and Spanish and should be sent out next week.

Updates on other city projects consisted of; AT&T and CenturyLink are hoping to finished with their work on 6th Street by the end of March. The City is also in the process of closing out on the playground grant from 2019, and looking into future projects. The meeting then adjourned.