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The Mountain Home City Council will consider destroying decades of old city records, buying 96 smart water meters without competitive bidding and giving a second reading to the city’s rewritten food truck rules when it meets Thursday.
The Council meets at 5 p.m. in the Council Chambers of the Municipal Building at 720 Hickory St. The meeting is open to the public and is streamed on Facebook and YouTube by XL7-TV.
Four items are listed under new business, along with routine matters including committee reports, bank reconciliations and approval of the minutes from the Council’s Aug. 20 meeting.
Paul Neal will open the meeting with a quarterly update on the Baxter Day Service Center.
Mayor Hillrey Adams will then present a resolution authorizing the destruction of certain city records. The resolution relies on Arkansas Code Annotated 14-59-114, which allows the destruction of certain accounting records after a set period of time and after those records have been audited.
An attached list identifies records held by the city’s administration, treasury, building inspection, human resources and street departments. The entries range from 1999 through 2019 and include year-end reports, contracts, bids, invoices, payroll and bank records, business licenses, building permits and personnel files.
If the resolution is adopted, a city employee overseeing the destruction and one Council member would sign an affidavit documenting what was destroyed, the time period the records cover and the method used. The Council’s approval and the affidavit would be recorded in the meeting minutes.
Public Works Director Steve Hill will present a resolution waiving competitive bidding so the Water and Sewer Department can buy 96 Ally smart water meters from Core & Main of North Little Rock for $55,861.15.
The resolution states that Core & Main is the sole dealer for the Ally meters and that the proprietary nature and limited availability of the equipment make public bidding impractical. Arkansas Code Annotated 14-58-303 allows a city to waive the bidding requirement in those circumstances.
The night’s final item is the second reading of an ordinance regulating mobile vendors, food trucks and food truck courts. It would repeal and replace Ordinance No. 2020-25 and Ordinance No. 2020-48, the two measures that currently govern food trucks and mobile food courts in the city.
The proposal has been through two public workshops and multiple revisions since it first came before the Council in July. Adams, City Clerk Scott Liles and Code Enforcement Officer Todd Pease are listed as presenters.
The version in Thursday’s packet keeps the current 30-day limit on how long a truck may stay at one property. It adds a new requirement that a truck vacate that property for at least three days before it can return, something the existing ordinance does not address.
An earlier draft would have removed the time limit entirely and let trucks stay as long as the property owner allowed. Several Council members and city staff pushed back on that idea during the Aug. 20 meeting, including Council members Wayne Almond and Philip Frame, Pease and Adams.
The proposal also draws a line between two kinds of vendors. Food trucks would sell food and drinks, plus merchandise branded for the truck itself, while mobile vendors would sell everything else. Only food trucks could operate in a food truck court.
Other provisions would require trucks to stay road ready with current licensing, registration and working tires. Equipment would have to be mounted on the vehicle rather than resting on the ground, with exceptions for generators and up to two folding tables for items such as napkins and condiments.
Permanent porches, decks and storage buildings would be prohibited, and awnings would have to detach for travel. Trucks could use a wooden step box at the service window no taller than 36 inches with no more than two steps.
Seating would remain off limits at standalone trucks but would be allowed inside food truck courts. Courts could operate only in areas zoned Commercial C-1, C-2 or C-2A, and none could sit within 50 feet of an existing restaurant.
Annual license fees would stay at $150 for each truck or mobile vending unit and $50 for each space in a food truck court. Violations would be a misdemeanor carrying a fine of up to $300 a day, with each day counting as a separate offense.
An ordinance must be read three times before the Council can adopt it, though the Council routinely votes to suspend that rule and read items by title only. As written, the ordinance would take effect Oct. 4.
The meeting will close with a period for comments before adjournment.
