KELLAMS: And let's start this first Friday of September with Michael Tilley from Talk Business and Politics. He's on his phone in his office in Fort Smith. Michael, does the approach of autumn and September mean that there is less news?
TILLEY: No. The whole summer, that myth of the summer cycle being a slow news cycle—whoever came up with that is dead wrong.
KELLAMS: Well, let's jump right in. We talk about water a lot, and water is on the minds of at least some of the Fort Smith city directors. Right?
TILLEY: Right. The city of Fort Smith just finally found a way to address its consent decree problem—the federal consent decree. The feds told the city of Fort Smith they had to fix their sewer system. Voters back in May approved a package for that.
Just when you think you're finished with big-ticket items, now we’re learning—although this is not new, it has been brewing for a couple of decades—recently we’ve got more detail on well over $600 million in infrastructure needs for the Fort Smith water system.
Most of that is for this 48-inch transmission line from Lake Fort Smith, which is in north Crawford County, to run down to the city of Fort Smith. There are already two transmission lines, but they're old, smaller, and come in the same area. So there are redundancy and adequacy issues they need to address. That's going to be close to $400 million.
They also have Lake Fort Smith Water Treatment Plant improvements. Right now they're limited in how much capacity—how many millions of gallons a day—they can push through the treatment plant. They have estimates: if they push another 15 million gallons a day, it will cost X. If they push 30 million gallons a day more, it’ll cost significantly more than that original X.
Just those two items—the transmission line and the Lake Fort Smith water treatment plant improvements—are just under $600 million, around $585 million in today’s dollars. If they start a year or two from now, that will not likely be the same amount.
We've also been talking about water leaks that the city has been addressing the past four or five years. They've put millions into that. The number of water leaks was over 2,500 at the end of 2022. As of June 2025, they’re down to 643 known water leaks. They should get kudos, a pat on the back, but it’s still a problem.
There’s a lot coming at the Fort Smith Board of Directors. Director Christina Catsavis is sometimes frustrated. With so much coming at you, she wants to step back and take a holistic look at all of the water infrastructure needs. She’s frustrated with the cost—$600 million can seem impossible when revenue for years is between $20 million and $30 million, barely covering costs and debt covenants. She’s tired of what she called a “piecemeal approach.”
Mayor George McGill agreed that the city needs to ensure adequate water capacity. At the same meeting Tuesday, Director André Good also agreed, but said the city staff hasn’t been pushing this piecemeal. These aren’t surprises. When he first arrived on the board in 2008, they were presented with the need for a transmission line, water treatment plant improvements, and other water infrastructure. But past boards kept kicking the can down the road.
On the water issues, he said:
“They’ve been put on the back burner because previous board members didn’t want to make the necessary agreements to raise rates or do whatever was necessary to make sure that money was there to do these projects.”
So two directors are saying the same thing. One is saying, if we don’t have the political will and aren’t bold enough to make hard decisions, people 10 years from now will say, “Why are you throwing all of this at us piecemeal?” It’s the same reason Fort Smith got in trouble with the sewer system. The feds had to step in because boards kept delaying the necessary work.
I think this is going to be the next big elephant on the agenda.
KELLAMS: How to eat a $585 million elephant. That’s expensive. Speaking of expensive. Eventually, perhaps, there will be an I-49 that goes from Kansas City down to Texarkana, but it’s not completed yet. There could be an incremental step to getting a connection between Fort Smith and Y-City taking place.
TILLEY: Yes, Interstate 49. This will maybe give you a picture of the frustration and how long people have been waiting. When I worked at the chamber a thousand years ago in the mid to late 1990s—the Fort Smith Chamber of Commerce—we worked with Baker Engineering Firm and they came up with the preliminary route for I-49 between Fort Smith, really Alma, on down to Texarkana. The route has been technically there for a long time.
ArDOT, the state officials—it’s not their fault, it’s a money issue—are just now getting around to do the more detailed study of the route so they can start drafting plans. Where do we put the on-ramps? Where do we put bridges? That’s what is happening with about a 50- to 55-mile area between Fort Smith and Greenwood on down to Y-City.
Y-City is important because you hit 270 there and can go straight to Hot Springs. It’s a good break, but there’s a lot to do.
Jared Wiley, the Arkansas Department of Transportation director, says there are about 154 miles of the I-49 route still to be built in Arkansas. About 140 of those miles are between Fort Smith and Texarkana.
We got a preliminary estimate from ArDOT that the cost to build this 50- to 55-mile segment is anywhere from $1.5 billion to $2 billion in today’s dollars. By way of comparison, back in early 2022, I received an estimate from the highway department to build all of I-49 from Fort Smith to the Texas state line, and at that time it was $4.1 billion. I don’t know that $4.1 billion is a good number anymore.
Bottom line: progress made. Hopefully we won’t have to wait another 10 or 15 years for real money—$1.5 billion to $2 billion, or whatever it’s going to cost—to build that out. But Arkansas is not a rich state when it comes to infrastructure support.
KELLAMS: Looking toward the future, the city of Van Buren has an updated Parks and Recreation master plan. What’s in it?
TILLEY: Several things. They reaffirmed what the original plan was. They had over 1,300 survey responses. They had several public meetings and input sessions. People are the same all over the world—it seems folks want more outdoor stuff. Hiking, parks were the number one thing. People wanted better access to swimming pools, better pools, playgrounds, that type of thing.
There was also more detail—not new, but more detail—that residents want a community center with a gym, indoor courts, indoor pool, maybe an aquatic facility. This updated report showed a conceptual plan for a nearly 62,000-square-foot center. It would have classrooms, pickleball courts—that’s the big thing—basketball and volleyball courts, and a community room for up to 450 people.
Very nice facility, but the cost is over $34 million. That’s a big-ticket item for Van Buren.
Bottom line: it’s good to see Van Buren stay on top of this. That city is a big part of the population growth in the Fort Smith metro. It makes sense that Mayor Hurst and other leaders want to ensure they stay on top of quality-of-life amenity developments. Maybe that’s the reason they are having better population growth in terms of percentage, or maybe that’s what will keep folks moving there. It’s good to see they don’t just develop a plan in 2023 and never update it. They’re keeping it updated.
KELLAMS: And finally, State Sen. Gary Stubblefield, a Republican from Branch, passed away in the past week. What do we remember him for?
TILLEY: He was definitely a local guy. He came up through school boards, quorum courts. He didn’t just come onto the scene when he was first elected to the Arkansas House in 2010. He was then elected to the Arkansas Senate.
He was very conservative—anti-abortion, anti-immigration. He was certainly part of that deep-red aspect of Arkansas’s political spectrum. But he did have an independent streak.
For example, he led the push up until his untimely death—at his political peril—against Gov. Sarah Sanders. She wanted to build a 3,000-bed prison in Franklin County, which is in his district. He went public with the pressure that Governor Sanders was placing on legislators to get in line and support the prison. He pushed back on the funding bills to support it. He stepped out.
There will be a special election for this seat. Nothing is certain in politics and norms are no longer norms, but it’s likely this election could be a single-issue mandate among a constituency passionately opposed to a prison.
It’s unfortunate that he passed away so early. The older I get, the more 74 sounds young. Condolences to his family. We’ll be watching the follow-up in terms of this special election process and outcome.
KELLAMS: All right. You can read about all of this at TalkBusiness.net. Michael, thank you very much. By the way, do you have a prediction for Saturday at War Memorial Stadium?
TILLEY: No. But if the Razorbacks don’t win, there’ll be a lot of folks that don’t even need to go back to Fayetteville.
KELLAMS: All right, Michael, have a great weekend.
TILLEY: Yes, sir.
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