- I'm going to call to order this meeting of Monroe County Board of Commissioners work session.
- It is Thursday, March 27th. I'll note for the record that Commissioner Madera and myself are
- present and Commissioner Jones is not present today. We have an item on our published agenda
- regarding karst farm athletic complex improvements and dirt.
- Well, and I have here Greg Nettleton from Stormwater. He was on a site visit yesterday.
- We had Lisa Ridge, we had Erica there from Stormwater, we had our engineers, we had our
- vendor for things for the soil that is being removed from fields 9, 11, and 12. We have more
- soil than we anticipated because we have to get down to the clay, so we have a hard surface for
- the carpet. And we are out of places to put that soil at karst farm park. We have stashed it
- everywhere, but we are out. And it was suggested that there is room between karst farm park and
- the highway garage. There's a field there. I think sent you an email that says that she has
- no problems with depositing the soil over there. So we're asking the commissioner's approval to
- deposit soil over there permanently pending approval from planning and stormwater. And Greg's
- here if you have a stormwater question about that. It will be feathered out. The design will be
- made.
- It will be approved by hopefully stormwater. And we'll go about our business. But it's your
- property.
- And if not, we're going to have to truck it somewhere, which I don't have the money to do.
- And it is, it's good soil. So I assume that if we needed it for something, we could.
- I mean, I don't know your definition of good soil.
- Meaning, meaning not.
- It's not contaminated.
- No.
- There you go.
- It has a little clay in it and whatnot. I wouldn't put it on an athletic field.
- I hear that. All right. So, so they're all in favor of using that space.
- Do you have any questions?
- No, it's the most expeditious and affordable way of dealing with this.
- So with it, I don't, you know, I don't know.
- I do have another topic after we talk about this same, same subject.
- Mr. Cockrell, do we need to do a vote on this?
- I don't, but I would just let you know that I've asked them to let me know when they know the
- volume
- and things like that to see if that, and I also think I'll talk to Richard to see if there may
- be other, other areas where we need soil.
- Keeping in mind that you'll have to truck it then, and that costs money.
- No, of course, but we've got these things at a highway department that can move soil.
- And I speak for the highway department.
- I got you.
- Okay, back to you.
- Do you need a vote, Jeff?
- What did you say?
- I think that if they say you can do it, I'm not sure they need a
- Yes.
- Yes, I'm a yes.
- I also have something that's related.
- Okay.
- Is field 12 is the farthest back field.
- There's a railroad, and then there's a farm field that the airport owns.
- And unbeknownst to us, they're having horrible erosion problems.
- And this last rain that happened about a few weeks ago with the snow and the melt and all that
- stuff,
- we had a sediment flow, okay, that we did not anticipate.
- So our engineer is now designing a soil sediment basin catcher.
- And we're redoing our ditch and doing everything we can do on our end,
- because we cannot have soil on our new turf.
- Okay. And at the same time, the airport is also doing a erosion mitigation plan.
- But unfortunately, it all wiped out during that last storm.
- Hopefully, they'll keep up on that.
- But the park board met last night, and this was all due respect.
- They have voted to pay for all this because we want to protect our investment.
- But they also asked me to ask you, in the airport,
- if you wanted to donate any funds, since they believe this wasn't our fault.
- And we did not calculate this in our-- we will go over budget.
- But they're going to cover it, because they want to keep the project moving.
- But they said, please just ask respectfully.
- Here's what I'm thinking, since Jeff's here and he regularly attends airport board meetings.
- I think this is something the airport board-- and maybe if we could get Mr. Nels or Ms. Penna,
- somebody there with you to talk through the situation and what the airport board can do
- purchase-wise to stop this, because I'm not sure their mitigation plan is really all about we can't
- let the sentiment into Carson Park. I don't think that's their goal. It's not their goal.
- I'm going to tell you that right now. So what we need to do is have that discussion
- at an airport board meeting. What do you think?
- I think that the airport board has authority over the airport land, and so I think if it's coming
- from the airport board, it should be discussed with them. And so probably I would touch base
- with Carlos first. Oh, yes. Yeah. I would wait to talk to him this morning. He doesn't sound to be
- the healthiest fellow in the world. Oh, it's no rush. Yeah. So yeah, I think having a conversation
- with the airport board, maybe even a conversation with Carlos first to kind of understand what
- they're doing out there with their -- my memory is that we're not really touching a lot of those
- fields, which sounds like where it's coming. We're kind of -- aviation, airway-based. But I'm
- wondering if our stormwater department could come up with some short-term assistance in terms of
- advice. Okay. This fencing will help you. This berm will help you. Certainly. We'd be more than
- happy
- to work with them on advice. Yeah, I think that would be really useful. And if you could say like,
- oh, it's going to cost you like 10 grand to do this, but this will help until we get this basin in,
- or whatever the answer is. Y'all work together great. Just I think you should work on this together.
- Oh, we will. The park board just wanted me to mention it to you.
- I appreciate that. And I think you're smart to ask that question because it is -- this is an issue,
- and I'm going to get off track here for a second, but so please forgive me in advance. But this is
- the issue that we have in Monroe County. We have drainage areas that are not draining well. We --
- because of development, because -- and now we have a legislature that wants to tell us
- that we shouldn't be addressing stormwater at all, because my gosh, it just doesn't matter.
- It can't be that bad, can it? Well, this is an example. I mean, but this could be somebody's
- home. It could be somebody's basement. Please leave us alone, legislature. Anyway, I digress,
- as always. So I think that stormwater parks and airport can come up with a really good solution.
- But we're always here if there's something we can do to help. We don't have any money,
- but if we can help with anything else, let us know. Absolutely fine. And the park board does
- appreciate everything the commissioners have done in the past and in the future. So it was a
- respectful request. Oh, it's -- I'm -- kudos to them. Tell them I said thank you for asking.
- I will. Yeah, yeah. But Jeff will be a big help for you as well, because he can get something
- on the agenda since he attends those meetings. And that will be very useful for you, I think.
- You can still do more than stormwater thoughts and prayers. Okay.
- Do you need anything else? Thank you for letting us use your property for soil deposits,
- permanent soil deposits. And if someone asks you, because I guess someone just asked me just a few
- minutes ago, they'll notice there is a soil deposit at Carson Farm Park that looks really big and
- long. And they wonder, like, what are you doing? Well, we're stationed everywhere we can find.
- But we're going to probably turn that into an ADA path. So, you know, it looks like -- I'm not sure.
- It looks like a really big hill and mound. But once we start to do this and we can get the right
- grade at some point, we will make an ADA up to that parking lot. So it's all good in the end. It
- just looks bizarre. Just don't come back in the next couple years and say we need to buy soil.
- That's all I'm going to ask. We've never been -- I don't think we've ever done that.
- And the place that we're going to put the soil, we've used before,
- like 10 years ago. It's been really low. Oh, why am I here? Well, actually, it's the same topic.
- And I won't be here forever. And one request that soccer parents and athletic parents make
- continually is a second exit out of Carson Farm Park. And the only logical place to go is from
- Carson Farm Park, somewhere on the Fairgrounds Highway Department, to that road. No one wants to
- do that in that group that I just said. But someday, because probably Joanne may know that
- on a Saturday, you could get stuck there for 45 minutes. Oh, yeah. But anyway, I digress,
- and you might want to think about it for the next 10 years. Thank you. That's going to help. Yeah,
- so we'll work on that. Using the kind of the access to the garage that your people use,
- because there's one that comes off the, what is it, Enright Road there? You said people. What
- people?
- Your staff. Our staff. There's a driveway that comes up and goes kind of behind
- fields one and two, and it just kind of ends at that garage. Is that what that?
- Do you mean west, not field one and two, like field 12, field 11?
- Just north, yeah, just north of fields one and two, there's a kind of a gravel drive that seems
- to go back to where it goes right back to the parking lot to your maintenance. Yeah, but see,
- you're, you're, you're loading off on the same road. Okay.
- And it goes, well, anywho, but here in here, here's, here's the engineers configure this.
- Yeah, exactly. Mr. Ayers was here earlier, I would say have a little chit chat with him about
- whether that is a possibility, but I do, you know, in terms of, well, there's already a driveway
- cut,
- but I'm not familiar with where you're talking about. I know what you're talking about,
- but basically you're dropping off on the same road. Yeah, it would be the same road, but it would
- also.
- Maybe it would be an exit point. People in the back of the park want to exit
- westerly. Right, right, right. Toward Ellensville. Right, but if it's 45 minutes or get
- out of Kershaw Park, I think they'll just, right? If their other option is to sit for 45 minutes
- so they can go west, I think they would just take whatever exit was available.
- We have one. Right, yeah. Now, I'll just tell you this before this comes up.
- The Fair Board has been very gracious in letting us go through their property for tournaments
- and maybe some big Saturday days. We don't want to wear our welcome out
- because once we go onto their property, people could drive all over their buildings and stuff.
- So we're grateful for all that they have given us, but that's not a permanent solution.
- And I think that I know that we allow the Fair Board access during this winter when they had the
- lights where they're accessing through the highway, kind of go on the back way.
- So it sounds like we may have something that we can negotiate with, if you will.
- Let's work on that. It's just a problem that's been coming up and it won't go away.
- So it'll get even better because we're going to be so packed. So not a bad problem to have.
- Do you need anything else? I think that's all I can think of.
- No, I think we're good. Thank you.
- Thank you. Thank you all.
- Thank you. Thanks for being here. Mr. Cockrell.
- I have two kind of updates. One is I'm pleased to say that we have executed the deeds for
- the center, properties themselves, and those properties east of College Avenue in that area
- to the Capital Improvement Board. They have been signed, not recorded. I have them in my office
- because we needed the Capital Improvement Board to sign off on the sales disclosure form
- and they did that yesterday, but I didn't get back before 4 p.m. to get those recorded. So
- happy to say that that is moving. The other thing is at Tuesday night's council meeting,
- we had made a request to them to help to fund a study by Baker Tilly involving the beam blossom
- Steinsville fire protection and the council did approve that
- contract for that to be on your agenda the next week. Okay, thank you.
- All right, good. We're good. Done. All right, excellent. With that, we adjourned. Our next
- meeting is April 3rd right here in the NetYahoo room. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Katz. Thank
- you, TSD. Get well soon, Greg, and we're out.
- (upbeat orchestral music)
- ("Pomp and Circumstance")