Good morning morning doing this morning all right here we go good morning to everybody my name is Debbie senson I’ve been in touch with quite a few of you through email and today I’m so glad you’re here a lot of you have walked in and because of that
You will not have receive my email information so there is extra information on your table and on the table back here today what we’re going to do is I’m going to introduce the are you the co anymore of the POA anyway Tom Judson we have John Flynn who is the
Third illustrious mayor of bista and Selena Selena Lee from the ACC we are going to discuss all of the amenities here in bisa and after the three have spoken we will have a chall uh for question and answering on which many people do have questions and then I’m going to give a
Brief history of bisca and we have a raffle at the very end of the program and the raffle will be for some really informative books about B Vista did everyone get a pink raffle ticket everybody got one okay s now forever hold your peace anyway thank you
So much for being here and I’m going to turn this over to Tom we’ve been doing these meetings for many many years and uh it is 100% volunteer run which is outstanding Deb and her crew raise your hand if you’re a volunteer I’m going end there we [Applause] go okay so before I get started I wanted to introduce you to uh Mary and Shel please
Raise your hand they are members of Our member resources department so we where you uh signed up for water got your activity cards stuff like that if you have any questions for them they’re going to be here after the meeting so you can Corner them uh they only like
Hard questions no easy questions they only like really hard challenging question okay so um grab this sheet this is uh the uh uh explanation sheet of the difference between the POA the city and the AC so I’m going to give you kind of the brief intro and then we’re each
Going to speak uh for our respective departments for most of you you’ve lived in a community where the city was in charge of um the police and the fire and the roads but they were also random Park they were in charge of the water Department all that all those different
That’s what a lot of communities are like we’re very different we call it the three-legged stool and we all work very well together so the first leg of the stool is the city and we have uh mayor Flynn here who’s in charge of the city and he’s an elected official and he’s in
Charge of police fire the streets a lot of other stuff but those are the main things also uh we’re going to go on far right side we have the ACC um and Selena is in charge of making sure that all of our homes are beautiful and that someone next to you doesn’t uh
Park an RV for a year or paint your home bubblegum pink and all of a sudden it looks really obnoxious so she’s going to describe what she does i’ really give a very basic explanation and then the POA and I’m in charge of the POA and we’re the fund
Department okay so since we’re talking about the fun apartment I want you to grab this place in the play and we’re going to talk about the different amenities that the POA has now we started one of the reasons we started doing this me is because it was very frustrating because I’ve run into
Property owners who had lived here 10 and 15 years and they didn’t know about all the amenities that we have maybe they lived on the east side and they’re like we didn’t know you had a gun range yeah so let’s start from your brand new Property Owners let’s talk about all the
Wonderful things you can do because this is an amenities Rich an amenities based community and we want to make sure you go out and enjoy yourself because we are the fun Department all right so we’re going to start on the west side on the far left of your of your map and you’ll
See the gun range out there okay so right now the gun range is closed for renovations um we’re working towards that if you watched the last work session of the board you actually received an update um uh we have another board meeting coming this Thursday and I’ll give another update regarding the
Gun range so we’re making some major Renovations the pistol and rifle side the ski and trap range are still open they’re very active uh so I encourage you to go out and uh use that facility it’s a really really nice facility and make sure you say hi to car out there
He’s an outstanding guy he’s been with us since the dawn of time I think um all right we’re going to move over to Highlands so Highlands is one of our 18 home golf courses we also have a pub and Pizzeria over there so it’s a great place to go congrate it’s got an
Outstanding deck that you can sit outside when it’s nice and warm and have your lunch or have a cocktail and look at on the on leg and everything it’s a great place if you haven’t been out there it’s a great place to get pizza and also sit outside and enjoy
Time and that’s where we I’m sorry I didn’t introduce Syd she is the queen of fun because she’s in charge of when we do um trivia or music Bingo or all these different events she’s the one that makes sure that those events go off without a hit so um if you have any
Ideas maybe from your community and you used to do some special thing share the idea with her and maybe it’ll work and she’ll incorporate it we love stealing ideas okay Branchwood so Branchwood is a hub of activity we have um our second largest fitness facility there uh we
Have an indoor pool it’s our only indoor pool uh we have a mile and a half walking trail and on that walking trail is a disc golf course and that disc golf course was rated in the top 10 for the state so you like doing that it’s a
Great place uh if you like hiking uh go down on that trail but it’s a heck of a hill up if you walked up there once you get to the bottom you’re like oh my God this a it’s a hill coming up also there are six pickle ball courts over there
Who’s in the pickle ball it’s really really really popular couple years ago we only had two pickle ball courts we’re now up to 10 plus we have two that we can use at bbrc all right um let’s go over to Lake Point um so the POA manages all of our
Restaurants Lake Point is really our our Crown Jewel it’s got the best view the lake it’s a great place to go at that same location we have the wine bar um and in the building next to that we have the marina at the marina you can rent a
Boat slip you can rent a boat and it’s very affordable you can rent a kayak lock is our largest lake at the base of Lock lman Dam is one of our larger Parks uh and if you go around that there’s a um uh 3,000 ft trail that you can walk
Around and you’ll notice that there are four Fish Hatchery lakes or ponds there that’s where we’re growing our own fish because fishing is very important to our community the fourth one isn’t done yet it’s almost done it’s a real big one so if you walk around there uh my wife
Alison and I walked the dogs just uh just earlier this week and then we went up on the dam uh and it’s one of the best views in the community because you can see the water on one side and you can see the Green Valley you can see
Scottdale on the other so if you uh want to go on a walk is a great place to go all right we’re going to go um North and you’ll see Scottdale another 18 home golf course we have a pub in there another nice patio area that overlooks
Real high up looks down very nice place uh great place to play golf and great place to have a nice beer while watching the watching the golf course uh going just a touch south and east you’ll see the beach so we may be hundreds and hundreds of miles away from the ocean
But we have a beach here and it’s one of our most used amenities in our community uh so it’s a great Sand Beach uh they just uh brought in sh I how many I got 15 tons of sand we just got deliver or something like that we replenish it
Every year um at that location we have a little um a little Hut there and we sell every form of sugar for the kids we just want to Wi them up anday their teeth as much as possible so we sell ice cream and candy bar all that fun stuff but
They really have a good time there’s also a playground there where you can go on a um zip line and so forth there’s a there’s a pavilion you can rent a beach volleyball court so just a great place and that’s you no also um rent
Kayaks uh we have this uh next to the beach we have this uh we’ll have we have a swim line installed every year so make sure that no boats come in to where the kids are swimming and they put out this little Lily Pad so the kids swim out
Jump on the lily pad jump off go back and forth they have a great time so uh bring your kids or grandkids uh to that location they’ll really enjoy it all right we’re going to move to the to the right just a little bit east and
You’ll see tan Creek so um Tandy Creek um driving range is there that is currently under renovation major renovation we’re pouring the the New Foundation uh early next early this coming week um and that’ll open soon sometime whenever sometimes issues happen and that didn’t happen um uh but it’ll be a hub of
Activity last year at this location we did 65,000 buckets of balls so it is a huge a lot of people uh use the facility so um also at that same location have tangard Creek Nature Trail if you’re going to go on one heke you have a
Family coming in town you got to go on one hike you go to T Creek see the waterfall is beautiful you can make the the hike as long or as short as you want it but it’s a great place and we also have a pavilion there nice grass area
Where where people play Frisbee so it’s a great location um all right let’s uh go North to where we are right here we’re at the the country club so this this building the architect for this building was was EA Jones who uh was a protege of Frank l
R so if you look at the architecture of this building is really quite beautiful uh we’ve had Architects come into this building and they’re all like looking at they’re all doing that kind of thing but um it’s really a beautiful building um it’s our second uh you know no our third
We talk about the pizza place we talking about Lake Point and this is um another restaurant we have great view you can see that when it greens up it’s beautiful uh we have a large Pro Shop in here this is an awardwinning Pro Shop um it’s beautiful also if you come to any
Of the board meetings uh or any of the committee meetings uh they’re actually up the stairs and down at the end of that hallway is our boardroom all those meetings are open to our membership we encourage you to come we have a nice sitting area where you can listen in you
Can come and com make comments to the board and so forth or the Committees um or you can do what most people do is you watch them live stream and in the come here own home we’re fine with either we just want everybody to be involved um and uh in addition to the
Restaurant the Pro Shop uh we have a beautiful 18old Golf Course um last year uh all the golf courses combined did 203,000 rounds of golf back in 2019 we did 135,000 rounds of golf so you’ve gained about 70,000 rounds of golf in just a few years so if you’re into golf
This is place place to be with 5 18 whole golf courses and two n home golf courses we’re going to go straight South uh where it says bbrc another Hub of activity uh so we have BR bbrc which is our largest community center fitness center so forth is 21,000 ft building it
Was just recently renovated so just open 3 or 4 months ago uh if you haven’t been there they offer a lot of classes my wife Allison takes a spin class every Monday morning so it’s good stuff also AC cross from street from that is our Tennis Center we have eight tennis
Courts so and a tennis pro shop we have a pool our largest pool complex it’s only open during the season and then we have Kingsdale Clubhouse uh now that Clubhouse we have an 18-hole golf course and then a 9-hole golf course and we’re renovating that building right
Now we just had our first tour uh on Tuesday and that’ll be the Po’s fourth restaurant it’s going to be called bb65 uh 65 stands for the year that the POA was founded and that’s going to be a barbecue place and we hoping to open hope to open that up during the
Summertime all right we’re going to go all the way to the east side or the far right of your of your map and you’re going to see that we have metfield over there metfield we have an 18-hole golf course in the N9 Hole Golf Course over in that location also our second largest
Pool is there uh there’s a kids Skills Park so if the kids want to learn how to mountain bike in a safe environment we have a kids Skills Park so a lot of stuff going on on that area also at metfield you can get on the Razorback Greenway at that location now
The Razorback Greenway if you’re not aware of it is a 10t wide concrete path that is dedicated to you know non-motorized you know you can’t get on a motorcycle or anything like that you can go from that field 40 mil South all the way to
Fville uh so it is a great resource and it starts right in our backyard um that of the trail is just heavily used and if you know where Casey’s is on the main Highway uh Casey’s and in the bike shop and ganos is there that park right in
That area the tree The Treehouse park right in that area the uh the wal Family Foundation is going to extend the greenway there also so be able to jump on at that location and go all the way out they already anticipate it’s going to be so heavily used instead of 10t
Wider to make that area 12T wide um and all those Trails cost the POA nothing we have to maintain them but the initial investment cost the POA nothing it’s all a gift of the B Family Foundation okay so uh let’s go to uh blowing Springs um bottom right
Corner if you want to call it that uh so blowing Springs that’s our RV park we have a 6 5 slip RV park we have primitive camping which is camping on the ground which is great for you if you’re into them um not for
Me um we also have tiny cabins uh so you can rent a cabin it’s a great way to get with nature and then we have the gear Garden my favorite uh it is our version of an outdoor Geer Garden it is right next to the Razer back Greenway and the
Seasonal grand opening for that is going to be towards theil we Go and from the sky anybody remember Muppets in the pigs in space and they’re always wondering where the where the voice com from there you go that’s how my mind works so um so that’s going to be opening up we’re going to have a three-day celebration to open for the
Season now some people will come to me and and they’ll say well well you know last week it was wonderful why didn’t you open up and we can’t because we can’t open for one weekend and then be closed for three weekends and then back open first of all it’s impossible to
Find employees that could work on that schedule second of all the beer will go bad that’s really that’s and uh state law we can’t move the beer around so we can’t like take it from one location and move it to another location so it doesn’t go back so once it’s there there
So we have to wait until April hopefully we’ll get a great weekend uh when we open up um want to talk about the activity card uh if you have not purchased an activity card we strongly encourage you to do so the activity card cost you $30 a year per person okay with that
Activity card you are going to get free access to the gym facilities free good price um pools Beach you get three rounds of golf at Britney nine Hole Golf Course on the east side for the golfers free range balls as many as you want uh free access
To the gun range all that stuff when you go to the um skate trap you do have to paid for targets that’s a hard cost and you get 10% off all your food purchases at at the restaurants no discounts on the boo cuz you’re going to buy it Anyways um so all of that for $30 if you’re a family if you buy two activity cards you can get up to five free for the kids as long as they’re under 18 sorry about that um also want to recognize uh bbtv uh is here filming TV that’s our local TV station
Um so I’m going to turn it over to the mayor short and go off back and start coughing Um thank you uh I really appreciate being asked to be here glad so many of you showed up I’ll tell you a little bit about what happens with the city we’re over fire police streets Community Development which is getting permits that sort of thing the library and U what I call
Intergovernmental relations we have quite a bit of activity in the region Regional groups that work together and the county and working with the state that kind of thing so I’ll tell you a little bit about what’s been going on with some of our buildings we have a new
Public safety building on the west side and it’s on for Boulevard it has the police and the the dispatch and uh the court and it’s a really nice building I predict in the next 30 Years the city will not build a building that big and that nice so uh it’s uh like I
Say it’s brand new and it’s been a great Improvement our police were really at an underpowered location and the court there has City Council meetings and city council work sessions that has Planning Commission and they have court there twice a month so if you get in trouble as you’re sitting there
You think well at least I’m in a nice brand new pretty cour but that’s just for misdemeanors if you get in big trouble you have to Look anyway um the other thing that just was completed is the fire uh training Tower and uh that is um carile drive it’s if you take 71 north and it’s on the left hand side right before you leave the city and uh that’s brand new and that way when our firemen
Are being trained uh they don’t have to leave the city so they’re still nearby before we had to go uh sometimes far away for training to put people out of pocket so it’s a lot more efficient this way also gives us a better ISO rating which can affect your uh insurance cost
And your own insurance um then City Hall and U fire station number one we have a rehab underway with that and I have a little uh picture here you can look at later if you like it uh shows where the where the city hall uh is basically this is where
The police were and they left and so the uh fire living quarters are being built right now it’s two stories are going to sleep on the first floor and live during the day on the second floor so that’s what they’re doing there then we’re going to build a
New city hall and fire station right in front of that on the left hand side and we’re changing it from three Bays to five bays and the two new bays are taller and longer because new fire trucks are bigger this is a our original fire station so it’s quite old then
Where City Hall is it’s close to Lan Community development’s going to move in there so all of that happen a little at a time it’ll take a year and a half or two years something in that range so the beauty of that is we have a 5-year-old
Street building which is new it’s over on Forest Hills and the police building was built to be good for 30 years so then I think this would be good for 20 or 30 so after all that’s done it’ll really help our Capital expenditures we won’t have any more buildings we need to
Do once in a while at maybe at a fire station so uh that’s a short summary of what’s happening with the buildings and uh I did want to just briefly mention we had an election on March 5 for police pension and uh it passed so I really
Appreciate that want to thank the voters for passing that we’ve had really good luck in the city with people being supportive of the police and the fire all the First Responders and I think that has a lot to do it’s we’re one of the safest cities
In Arkansas and one of the safest cities really in the US for our size and I think the attitude of the people and their support for First Responders has a lot to do with that so I really appreciate that I wanted to be sure to mention that let’s talk about bridges
For a minute uh we have a bridge over on Mercy way and that was just completed recently and it’s uh really nice compared to the older Bridge it has a big uh bike lane which is part of the razor back Greenway we need to get the greenway across the
Sugar Creek and did that successfully but what’s really cool about that bridge is it cost $7 million and the city paid less than 100,000 and the reason for that is we have a Federal grant which pays 80% of it and then the Walton Foundation very generously agreed to pay the other 20%
Because of the trail being involved and the bike trail going across the bridge so uh really pleased about that you know one thing I noticed just to digress for a minute I’ve been mayor a little bit over a year and things in the city take a
Long time so the prior mayor kind of got some things going and then they were completed when I was mayor like the uh public safety building the mercy way Bridge so I feel like the new mayor deserves credit for everything that gets completed during this seems logical anyway on the U continuing down
The bridges we had a bridge uh on Creek that AR the Arkansas Department of Transportation recently completed in the first year I was mayor I got more comments on why is this bridge taking so long than any other to but the good news is uh the city didn’t have to pay
Anything for it so I’m trying to look at right side and they did complete the tanard Creek Bridge and now they’re working on the little sugar Creek Bridge which is right outside my office and I can attest is quite noisy at times but that’s scheduled to be
Completed this year so I think we’re going to be in a really good and that’s also been done by hard do so I think we’re going to be in a really good shape uh from a bridge point of view after all that completed want to mention a few upcoming things that are
Happening uh we’re working on a development code and Zing reform and that’s going to be done in um early 2025 we about a year to go on that we have some outside Consultants out Tulsa and that seems like kind of a policy wonky kind of thing it’s really important for
The city and that you know to get all that straighten around so I’m pretty happy about that it’s been overdo for a while on Trails you know the Reser back Greenways mention goes across the bridge and the shortterm plan is to extend it um down the street and it’ll cross under
71 uh on by Reen road so right behind Fat Tire over there is a park called a bluebird or Bluebird Trail and and that’s where the Razer back Greenway will will end for a while the eval plan is to have it go all the way to the Missouri line second thing is
We had to Spur off the razor back Greenway which is quite popular it goes out to metfield and it’s being extended it’s going to go down continue down common well and then hang it right under foger and go down there for a mile or so so
All of that is uh uh Walton Family Foundation also and you know Tom mentioned how generous they’ve been with the trails and whatnot and just in B Vista the amount Walton pation is uh it’s kind of a moving Target keeps going up but the amount they PID for Trails
Just in bista is $19 million so that’s had a big effect on the POA in the city obviously their generosity has been very crucial for us the other thing that’s happened you know we we have over 100 miles of soft surface trails and there’s the back 40 on the
East side and the little sugar Trails on the west side and we have seven places on the trails where they’re kind of making extensions or enhancements a lot of it is more user friendly stuff we making shorter Loops uh for people and uh so they’re continuing to improve those Trails as well
So I want to mention a few upcoming events in the near term on Saturday march3 there’s something called 6 and 60 and it’s at 10:00 a.m. it’s in the Allen’s parking lot on 71 and what it is is it’s picking up litter they do that every year they’ve
Done it for several years and the 660 refers to 6 miles along 71 and 60 minutes so they get a lot of people out there it’s over 100 people and they’re able to clean up the whole highway it’s just kind of neat a lot of the volunteer
Things they have going on in B Vista that’s one example uh second thing is there’s a tree give away on April 12 you have to sign up ahead of time online and you get a free tree and that’s from indirectly from the Walton Foundation as
Well and uh so you want to look at B you want to go on this website anyway it’s Bist a.g. goov that’s a City website and uh there’s a lot of information about different things on there uh citywide garage sale is April 26 and 27 that’s
Deal where they have a garage sale and you can sign up and then your house will be pinpointed on the list so since you just moved and you figured out you we shouldn’t have move this stuff while we bring this be good timing anyway and then Friday May 3 is an open
House with the new fire training tower that I mentioned before and a lot of people like to go to those fire open houses it’s uh it’s really pretty impressive all the things that that you can do for that training Tower so sometimes that’s interesting so just
Briefly I’ll tell you what some of my thoughts are some of my future goals uh we to increase the number of houses that are on sewer right now we have 3,700 on sewer by 11, septic and that’s going to be a gradual thing but uh that’s something I’d like to see
Increase on that second thing is the PVE roads because uh fist is got so popular and uh Builders of building houses and more obscure locations we actually have four 14 mil of roads that aren’t paved that have new houses on them that’s justed have new houses on them and the
Other year it was 14 miles and I had the street department do 2 miles of it I thought we you know start shipping away at it and the other day the street department told me uh it’s 14 miles again because paid 2 miles but there’s two more miles of roads that had nothing
On it so I wasn’t surprised at that I was warning that might be a problem we want to hack away at that the other is uh increased connectivity meaning uh walking and biking so you know we have a lot of cool places to go for a walk and we have a
Lot of cool trails to ride a bike on but we want to improve a little bit on being able to use it to get from point A to point B you know to actually walk places we have 250 Mi or 550 Mi of roads and 5 miles of sidewalk so we’re ready pretty
Low on on the walking so uh and uh but we’re start starting to gradually improve that and uh prin instance is a sidewalk on on all the new Bridges I mentioned so now you have walkability a few places where you didn’t before so that’s another thing we’d like to hack
Away on so I would like to mention a couple different things fista television does live stream the City Council meetings the Planning Commission meetings you could watch them live stream if you’d like and uh also something lot of times people don’t mention we have 30 different churches in B Vista so uh this
You’re not in heaven yet but you’re almost there anyway uh so that’s pretty much all I have uh for you today and I appreciate your attention and I’d like to turn it over to Le who heads of the ACC it’s ni to see everybody um like
They said my name is Selena and I’m the administrator for the ACC office um which stands for architectural control committee um but we keep it ACC simple um we in our office we regulate or enforce the protected covenants of elista and those are attached to your Deeds that’s where our enforcement comes
From um you’re going to hear so many different things about the ACC office I in good bad in between but I encourage you to come see us I have a wonderful staff they’re very fun and can answer a lot of questions for you and direct you
In the correct place um we also have um plaques of your property of your home they’ll show you where your home is where your septic is and those are free you just come in tell us your address and we’ll get it for you um anything you
Do exterior to your home as far as if you repaint if you regr if you reside you put in a shed or a fence or anything like that we um do require a permit but what we look at at is location and and what it’s going to look like whereas the
City their building department that requires a permit as well they look at it as building coats that’s going to be built properly properly excuse me um and the location as well as far as their ordinances so um yeah I don’t really have a lot to say mine’s usually short sweet but oh
Yes I forget all the time so we do have have um what we call did you knows and this is just kind of a little snippet paragraphs of the most questions that we get and this will help you know like what we’re looking for what we enforce
The answers to those questions um and then you can also go to our website where we have everything on our website but this is a um either on table or on the back table over here and it’s just very good little umut of information and um phone numbers stuff like that so
Um oh yes in the um there’s some of you have candy on the table that’s from the ACC that also gives you a little Sni of different things that we different of our rules and regulations as well so other than that I’m G to turn it back over to
Tom I’m not cing anymore this is all that is time year so questions for you whether it’s for the POA the ACC or the city yes ma’ coule one at a time I have okay um I get the emails from the POA and it has stuff
For um B Vista and then for the city what I would like to see is from the city I guess or I don’t know who does it but all the places that are under construction we we had friends in town and wanted to go see the veterans
Um memorial wall and it was closed I had no clue so why didn’t you put something like that into the newsletter and and then all the construction that’s going on all this other stuff so that unfortunately what the the newsletter is already extremely long and so it gets
Really in my opinion it would be an information overload um also the the uh because you have hold on let me finish also the wall of honor is not part of the POA it’s not part of the city’s Mark they’re their own entity so uh and uh so
Here quick pop pop quiz you ready for this one what city owns Lake bista well we’ll consider it but okay uh more questions are they hiring at beer garden well I’m personally the official taste tester yes we we are always hiring um for the for the gear Garden for the
Restaurants and so forth but uh if you’re looking for a position uh so I describe to you how to get to the boardroom as you’re going to the boardroom is also the HR so Human Resources so if you’re interested another question yes sir yeah um I don’t
Know if it’s true but I heard some rumors of some financial budget concerns with the POA in addition to hiring freeze going on right now so I don’t believe anything on Facebook they’re very creative um no we’re in great financial shape uh you can uh go on our
Website you can find 15 years of audit and financials keyword audited by professional finances were in great shape that answer your question is there a hiring frees right now or nope NOP this is spring we are we are uh we’ll even hire him I don’t even know
You no no this is not we’re going to be uh we’re going to be adding a lot of seasonal staff now we’re not on a higher increase please please don’t go on Facebook or if you do take the information for a grand salt um I saw
There the other day so um we just did a presentation uh about the um uat to the gun range and that’s going to cost us about $300,000 and Facebook was all in a tisle over it was going to cost $3 million and you’re going to be financially bankrupt and like it’s
No so take it as a grain of salt it’s worthless information in my op yes sir when G and J that’s a great question you know what at this point I’m not going to comment um we’re getting closer but uh there’s so many moving parts and uh um permitting can be a
Challenge at times so um I’m not when I can get you give the community that information I will uh but right now we’re still in the planning base to make sure we’re all saying you know we’re heading the right direction watch the um last work session meeting uh for the
Board it’s available on our website so if you want I everybody I’d encourage everybody to go on the Po’s website which is B vista.com uh we have the 15 years of uh audited financials um we have about 7 years worth of videos of our board meetings
Our Comm manyi meetings and so forth so watch the most recent one that you’ll get all the facts what about fiber does bista have any control over cable companies out here I from what I understand I live on a fairly new Street I’ve only been here
Seven months so my house is brand new and uh I’ve talked to several 18 and everything and they’re telling me we’re 99% coverage out here and I’m the 1% recognize my house and I said I I don’t understand why uh I’ve talked to the regional manager for cops that came
Out and uh he doesn’t even know the answer to it far as when I’m going to get fiber to my house is there way we can find that out to B Vista on my street that uh that is actually a very timely question and uh this is the
Reason why that they there’s some grant money floating around actually I knew Broadband was a big issue and so I got on all these committees having with Broadband it’s a pretty complicated topic but the bottom line is the federal government has a lot of grant money and uh they’re tending to
Throw it at rural areas and they don’t consider us rural now in your case you have a new house but there’s plenty of people in Bist with existing homes that have spotty service and the two people we have bottom line is the two people we have is Cox and
AT&T and even if you have like 20 houses in a cluster um it’s not uh economically uh attractive to them to give to give service but the reason I said your questions very timely is right now there is a uh a map online and for the next 30 days uh citizens can
Go and look at the map and see what it says our coverage is you know it’ll say whether it’s good bad mediocre whatever but the danger is if it says it’s good and it’s not and then you can put in what they call a challenge and say hey wait a
Minute the government’s idea is they’re going to have this map this happening all over the country and then they’re going to put it out and then you have 30 days or so to say hey that’s wrong and uh and once it’s done it’s done that’s
What they’re going to go for I hope it’s mostly accurate but uh uh so I’d encourage everybody to if anybody who has Fine coverage I wouldn’t worry about it if you have spotty coverage it would be good to go look on there and see what
They say now if it’s in your case a brand new house that they may not say anything I don’t know how that works but but it’s a complicated issue the answer is it’s a complicated issue and it’s a big struggle and there the federal government is claiming I think by the year
2030 that literally everybody in the whole us will be covered I’m I guess you can say I’m a SK yeah what’s what’s the website John yeah I’m trying to think what that would be on top my head actually um yeah yeah just I guess I do a Google search on it
And if you give me your email info I can contact info I can get back to you with that in the there you’re theun guy why you are you in control of the water serves here why we in well it wouldn’t be fun water uh so uh if you go on our
Website look at the decoration your Declaration was the original founding document now that founding document actually created one document created all the policy for all the structure for the POA the ACC and if you live in one of the Town associations that created those that also it’s actually the basis
For that and if you read through that document you’ll see that we were originally founded as a amenity based community and also um it assigned the water department to the PO so uh I in my opinion we’re doing an outstanding job run very efficiently I don’t think any
City could do any better than this that’s my opinion so we’re in charge of the and uh to change that legally would be near impossible sorry different question is Branch going to get a bigger parking lot yeah we’re trying we’re working on that um I’m I’m trying to secure some additional
Land uh uh because we need water so we are putting in some temporary parking areas so we actually expanded that parking lot in 2017 18 uh and we got to do it again so uh that’s a good problem to have is that we have a lot of people using those amenity
So we’re aware of the problem and we’re working at we’re in the highlands area obviously but how do you propose an enhancement to Services um this may be for for the mayor but a sidewalk between the Highlands Golf Course and Branchwood I think would be used a lot and very beneficial for the
Community uh yeah we we’ actually you propos something like that well actually so it has been proposed it’s actually in one of the long range plans uh that uh that was put together by the wal Family Foundation we’ve been trying to get them to do that um so and that long range
Plan is I think it’s still available on the city’s website I think so um but that’s a long run and that’s a lot of money and and that’s I I think that’s going to be the main answer I’m going to give you right now is it’s a long run
And it’s a lot of money uh the good news is is that they they’re focusing a lot of attention on uh you know the extending the greenway uh next to Allen which is going to be outstanding um also on the east side they’re going to take
Uh the greenway and go north of troger so it’s going to currently stopped at nfield it’s going to go north so they’re doing a lot of stuff uh and we have 100 miles of of soft service TR so not exactly the answer you wanted but okay it looks like you can request an
Activity card online but where do you go to get the picture taken for the card uh you just your cell phone oh just yeah is that right yes thank you than you and if you have any questions those two can help you Tom will you explain about the cost
To go to yoga classes and the zba classes so um getting into the um bvrc to go into the fitness area is no charge but if you’re going to take an additional additional class like the spin class I reference that my wife takes or a yoga or something like that
Um there’s going to be an additional charge for and basically that’s the pay these was that the restaurant what’s going in there and when is it going to open so uh uh we had a tour on Tuesday of King uh Kingsdale and all the renovations uh the restaurant that’s
Going to go in there is going to be called bb65 it’s going to be run by the POA uh it’ll be open this summer it’ll be a farbe May what a barbecue place all right turn back over Selena came up with the information for you if you go to the
Fcc.gov and you search for Broadband you will be able to find the information that you need okay now what I’m going to do is I’m to give you about a dime tour of the history of B Vista we are an unusual city um Bel Vista started in
1915 there was a family called The Baker family who came up from bville and they had the privilege to be able to Dam Little Sugar Creek and make Lake Bell Vista and they decided after two years they were going to have just a summer Resort they decided after two years it
Was too much work so they sold to three gentlemen Three Brothers called the line barter brothers and the line barter Brothers came up from Texas and their goal is to take B Vista keep it at a thre Monon Resort but add lots of amenities so one of the first things
They had a nine-hole golf course which was multi-purpose because it was also a landing strip for the airplanes they opened the sunset hotel which was a wonderful Hotel up on the west side of 71 and the unusual was the fact that it had private bathrooms in all the rooms they also opened
Wonderland cave some of you may have heard about the Wonderland cave the Wonderland cave was a a natural cave that was open for big band music um it wasn’t Tommy dorsy coming here but it was big band music and they have a lot of meetings and that type of thing after
The larders owned Bella Vista and expanded all the they had a dance Pavilion right by the lake in 1952 they sold to a gentleman named eel Keith and eel Keith kept bista until 1964 and in 1864 a gentleman named John Cooper Senor and the Cooper Corporation
Came in and said we love the 3mon resort but we want to open it up to a 12mon resort and we’d like to have a lot of retirees with lots of amenities so as of 1964 65 the John Cooper Corporation came into bista and the imagination if you think about 36,000 Acres of
Trees and they built the Seven Lakes they built the seven golf courses this was the first one um he hired e Jones to come in and and design this building along with the Cooper Chapel which I’m sure many of you have seen um and E Jones the School of Architecture is
Named after him down at the University uh in fville as the expansion developed with B Vista the amenities were added on so we had the different um the golf courses we have the Lakes but we also have the walking trails and what have you and then in
2006 the residents here in gista said oh let’s become a city so January 1st on 2007 we became a city and that’s where we had our first mayor and like I said John is our third mayor um and we are now I’ve been here 19 years and we were
90% retirees and now we’re at about 30 1% so the young families have moved up and in and we welcome all of you for all the all ages and we have a lot of information here about groups if you want to volunteer get on the website
Definitely get on the POA website um it really helps there’s an e newsletter so it’s a golf newsletter it’s activity newsletter but it’s very informative and I get on Facebook and people say well I didn’t know about this and I didn’t know about that but if you really get on and
Look at the websites it’s very very informative now we’re going to have a drawing um Selen why don’t you hand me this we have five history books that we’re going to be handing out and um Sydney is going to help hand out with things today um I’m going to draw five
Tickets and then after the drawing we’ll also if anybody wants to stick around for lunch we’ve got got two or three of us that are going to stick around and would like to have you join us for lunch if you want to have any questions and
What have you Tom will be here are you going to stick around a little bit afterwards okay Selena so if there’s any questions if you have you we definitely one yes ma’am I do have a question because you just brought it up with a lot with the comparison of retirees and
Younger people are there any plans to create um more buildings Comm buildings within bista um let me turn that over to the fun Man um I wouldn’t say there’s exact plans uh there have been some people may have heard uh it was in the news that uh some Walt related entities that bought some property of B Vista and most people know they’ve been Buy property around the city for a while so I do believe
There’s going to be in the future uh more commercial development you know my attitude is I think the challenge is that it’s good to have some commercial increase your tax Spas but to preserve the lakes and trees and the nice atmosphere also is a challenge and then a growing area it’s
Just naturally a challenge all of Northwest Arkansas is growing you know they say we’re getting 35 new people a day Northwest Arkansas and uh I saw a breakdown of that statistic and one part of that is that there’s six more births than deaths a day it’s not all 29 people
Coming in and six is just a birth rate so uh it’s uh it it certainly is a growing area and you could you know people have been here while I’ve seen a lot of changes in fentonville and Rogers and whatnot so uh yeah I think we’ll have more commercial development that we
Have right now okay does that answer your question sort of sort of anyway also I want to remind everybody we have a great museum here it is on 1885 bellista way we have Representatives here today but if you really want to learn about the history of El Vista and we aren’t
Just a regular City that grew up we are a village that grew up into a city we have a tremendous amount of history and it’s really fun we’re open Wednesday to Sunday from 1 to five okay now I’m going to draw some tickets I have five tickets and the first ticket is 384
23 1 231 there we go we have 384 239 239 right here okay the last three numbers are two 2 three three there we go the last three numbers are 2 4 1 241 good and the last ticket is number 200 the last three numbers are
200 got it great anyway well I’ll stick around a while answer any questions for you we thank you all so much and we want you to know how welcome you all are we have lots of information on the ticket or on the table up here and if you need to have
Reference to this meeting it will be on the bellista community TV website for newcomers meeting so pass it along and send it to your friends thank you so [Applause] much
