Kyle Kellams: We’re beginning our Friday, as we often do, with Michael Tilley from Talk Business & Politics. Michael, happy Friday.
Michael Tilley: Well, thanks again. Those are my two favorite words — happy and Friday.
Kellams: Let’s slide into this week’s conversation, shall we?
Tilley: Oh, that’s too easy.
Kellams: So, we’ve got some slides that are going into Parrot Island Water Park. But it’s going to be at a cost.
Tilley: Yeah, well, we don’t know if they’re going to go in.
Kellams: That’s a good point.
Tilley: I’ll make another point — I think their budget’s a little underwater at this point. But no, these controversial slides were originally set to cost the city of Fort Smith $2.1 million. Now, if they’re fully installed, that price could balloon to $6.3 million.
So, how did we get here?
Back a couple of years ago, the city and Sebastian County — who are partners on Parrot Island Water Park, which they built in 2015 — initially agreed to split a $4.2 million cost for these slides. Then the county backed out, and a lot of folks, myself included, thought, okay, it’s not going to happen. The city probably won’t pay the whole cost. But then there was this contentious 4–3 vote by the city board to pay for the whole thing.
Remember, Kyle, this is during the same time when the city board hadn’t figured out yet how they were going to pay for the consent decree work. So, it was pretty controversial at the time — and I guess it still is.
But the unknown this whole time was how much it was going to cost to install. The city agreed to the deal without having a fixed cost on the installation. That’s what we were hit with Tuesday at the city board meeting. Acting City Administrator Jeff Dingman — and I want to say, there’s been a lot of people blaming Jeff about this, but he inherited this issue. This deal was made when he was not the head guy.
The acquisition part of the assembly of these slides left the city with only $650,000 out of that $4.2 million budget they approved. The installation bid came in at $2.8 million — that was the budget buster.
It’s unclear what the city will do next. Director Kevin Settle, who’s been the most vocal proponent of the slides, was not at Tuesday’s meeting and hasn’t responded to our calls or texts. We’ll see if he responds, because the big question now is: what’s next?
Directors George Catsavis and Christina Catsavis, who opposed it from the start, want the city to sell the slides and try to recover as much of the $3.5 million the city’s already spent.
There’s a lot of downside to this, but one thing I worry about is that there’s a vocal group of folks who don’t believe the city should invest in any quality-of-life amenities other than just basic parks — and some even oppose that. I’m afraid this botched deal will mean that any new thing comes up, like this indoor sports facility, there will just be pressure not to approve it.
This has definitely had the community buzzing — a lot of traffic on social media and on our website. The story’s not over. We’re going to keep pushing to find out what the next steps may be.
Kellams: Last week we talked about the applicants to be city administrator for Fort Smith. The application period hadn’t closed yet. Now it has — 43 applicants want this job.
Tilley: Yeah. Last week we said there were 38 or 39 applicants, and very few had any experience relevant to the city of Fort Smith. Not much has changed. Of those 43, there are only two — one being Acting City Administrator Jeff Dingman — who have any experience in a city the size of Fort Smith.
I had a conversation Tuesday with Director Lee Kemp, the Fort Smith board liaison in this search. If you remember, the city board said they weren’t going to use a search firm. They’d just go through the city’s human resources department, post the job on various websites, and see what they get. Sometimes you get what you pay for.
I asked Kemp if he was happy about the quality of candidates, and he wasn’t. His statement was, “No, I wish we’d have gotten more candidates.” But he pointed out, “We didn’t spend a lot of money either.”
The city’s HR department will now compile who they think are qualified, screen them, and decide who needs to be interviewed. Kemp didn’t rule out the board saying, “Look, this isn’t good enough. We need to hire an executive recruitment firm.”
It’s very disappointing, just as a city resident, which I am in Fort Smith, to see that out of 43 applicants, only two have relevant experience.
Kellams: It’s probably not disappointing to see that the Central Business Improvement District — the CBID — is partnering with Main Street Fort Smith, two groups that kind of have the same goals and are now working together.
Tilley: You hit it. It’s the same goals. What they’ve done is both groups are going to pay for a full-time person who will be a Main Street Fort Smith employee, but most of that person’s pay will come through the Central Business Improvement District, which is somewhat of an autonomous government body that has jurisdiction over parts of downtown Fort Smith.
But the groups got to talking several months ago, and it’s that kind of, “Hey, we’re interested in this.” “Well, so are we.” “We’re going to be doing this.” “Well, that’s something we’d like to do.” And so, as sometimes happens, people who have similar goals get together and figure out ways to work together.
So part of what this person will do — it’s the Downtown Growth and Grant Specialist — they will help both Main Street and the CBID. As you noted, they’re both interested in downtown Fort Smith. How do we get grants? How do we look at different programs? How do we get funding for those programs? So this person’s going to help them do that.
One of the things that Amanda Hager, who’s director of Main Street Fort Smith, wanted to do — and hopefully this will help them do — is create and launch the small business incubator program where they connect property owners with entrepreneurs. Give those entrepreneurs a low-cost place to test their brick-and-mortar ideas, so to speak. That could launch sometime next year, maybe early next year, and hopefully this person will help them get that off the ground and find funding for that.
The other thing that’s interesting about both this position and the incubator program is they’re not reinventing the wheel. They’re able to look at other Main Street programs around the country and take best practices from different cities. Hopefully their goal is to pull those together and see what they can do in downtown Fort Smith.
So both groups have agreed to this, and now they’re in the process of trying to find a person for that. Hopefully they’ll find the right person and start to make more things happen.
Kyle Kellams: Fort Smith Public School District says it wants to right-size the district. What that means, I guess, is that there could be two elementary schools that are closed, and those students consolidated into other elementary schools.
Tilley: Yes. Yes. This has been going on for a while, and I was taken aback a little bit by this latest round. I had kind of thought they had leveled out, so to speak. But now they’re looking at Carnall and Spradling Elementary. Both of them are older buildings. Carnall was built in 1962, Spradling was built in 1969. I shouldn’t say older because they’re as old as I am, but for example, Carnall has 151 students, Spradling has 282.
The school district’s already closed Howard and Trusty elementary. This is a function — there are a lot of factors — but maybe one of the more interesting factors is that the district is on track to lose upwards of around 1,000 students, maybe a little less, from the past several years.
And the larger story here, and I think it’s one we’re going to start hearing more of, if we haven’t already, from around the state, is the loss of students at public schools to charter schools. Now that through the LEARNS Act we’ve made it easier to start these charter schools and use taxpayer money for that, that’s going to deplete enrollment. You’re not growing the number of students; you’re just adding more schools they can go to. The basic math tells you somebody’s going to lose, and it’s going to be some of these public schools around the state.
We’re going to have a follow-up story, I think, on that topic. But I think that’s what they’re facing at the Fort Smith School District.
On back to the slides real quick — one of the things that I think we should propose is that they change the name of the water park from Parrot Island to Albatross Island. That’s the one thing we’re going to suggest.
Kellams: Okay. All right. You can read about all that except that suggestion — that’s the first I’ve heard of that suggestion. I didn’t see that at Talk Business, but everything else at TalkBusiness.net.
Tilley: You’re welcome, sir.
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