Kyle Kellams: It is the second Friday of 2026, but it’s our first Friday opportunity to talk with Michael Tilley from Talk Business & Politics. Michael, happy New Year.
Michael Tilley: Well happy New Year. It’s always good to be back. I know it. It’s just another week or two. But it is that crazy hump of getting into a new calendar. You have to write six instead of five, and you’re another year further away from when you graduated high school. Just really good, good fun feeling time.
Kellams: Well, I’m glad that we can renew our conversations. We are going to start this week with a couple of, I guess, closures from the end of the year and the first of the year deaths of some prominent Fort Smith businessmen, John Taylor and Buddy Coleman.
Tilley: Yeah. John, that hurt a lot of people. I bet that if a professional researcher pulled together some detailed research on the most influential folks in Fort Smith history, John Taylor would be on the short list, and I think maybe Buddy Coleman, too, who we’ll talk about.
He was a — and that’s the other thing about John. A lot of people knew him, but I don’t think a lot of people knew his impact. He was an accountant, financial advisor. I think a lot of people knew him. He was on TV on Channel Five, gave financial advice. When I was a business editor at the Times Record in the morning news, he had a financial column with us that ran every Sunday. But he was part of that very small group of folks to see the vision for this medical school that’s here in Fort Smith now, the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education. He and a few other folks had the vision for it and they made it happen. Sometimes visionaries don’t stick around to see their vision become reality. But I talked to Kyle Parker, who’s president and CEO of the school, and he reflected that they decided — Jim Walcott was the other guy who also has passed away since — they both said we have this money from the sale of Sparks Hospital, let’s do something that moves the needle. Let’s do something big. And so they did.
One of the things they did: John Taylor worked for Sterne Agee Group at the time. And Parker said he used his — Parker called it his powder — to convince Sterne Agee. They loaned them a jet. And so they took this private jet around to the country to see these different medical schools and how they operated. And that was a key part of getting that going. But you never heard stories like that. But he was also chairman of the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith Foundation, member of the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce, just a very influential businessman. One of the stories I like is, how you kind of learn more about him and who he was. He spoke at the May 2015 UAFS commencement, and he told the graduates that they need to define and disrupt. And he said if you don’t define yourself, that makes it more difficult to determine what’s the best direction for your life. And then in that life, then you also have to find areas to disrupt, but in a constructive manner, like he did with building that school. The tendency was just to set up some scholarships, do something easy and be done with it. But he and some others were disruptive about it. They said, no, let’s do the hard thing instead. And he also told students that in life, quote, “you only get to keep what you give away.” And so I thought that was pretty, pretty good.
So we lost him, and that’s a big loss. I attended his funeral, and it was a large church here in Fort Smith, and it was packed. I mean every seat, and there were people up in the loft — very well respected.
Kellams: And Buddy Coleman?
Tilley: Yes, Buddy was interesting. I think part-time preacher and philosopher. But he started — kind of a joke — he started a little housing development company, and then just here a year ago it sold for more than a billion dollars. So I think he kind of knew how to put some boards together. Very influential. ERC Properties, Rausch Coleman Homes, which is now based in Fayetteville. They sold early last year to Lennar Homes for more than a billion. At the time, Rausch Coleman Homes was the 21st largest home builder in the country. They were building more than 5,000 homes a year.
I talked to Rod Coleman, that’s Buddy’s son, and I asked Rod, I said, this guy, he graduated high school in 1953, graduated college in 1961, was trying to build homes in the late 50s just to make a few dollars so he could pay for school and support his family. Do you think he ever imagined where this would go? And Rod said he didn’t think so. He said he was just a poor boy from Barling that just had the work ethic to make things happen. But think about that. You’ve built your first home. What if somebody walked up to you — because Rod said the businesses he created have built more than 75,000 units in nine states in their history — and said, hey, that’s pretty good. Now you just have to build 74,999 more. But anyway, two, Buddy and John, two very huge legacies, huge benefits to Fort Smith and northwest Arkansas, obviously through Rausch Coleman Homes. And I just wanted to make a note of their passing.
Kellams: Well, late in 2025, we got the latest sales tax revenue reports for Fort Smith for November. And they were down compared year to year.
Tilley: Yeah, they were down. Although I’ve kind of learned a little bit more about this, and I think we may do some different reporting and I’ll get to that. But yes, the city’s share of the Sebastian County sales tax was almost $2 million, $1.98 million. It was down 1.4%. The year to date for January through November is $22.4 million. That’s down just 0.1%. And again that’s up against 2024, which was some pretty healthy numbers. The city’s one-percent sales tax that’s used for streets and for some consent decree work generated almost $2.4 million. That was down 3%. That tax has generated over $27 million, down 0.03%. So it’s almost effectively flat against 2024. Like I said, those are some pretty good numbers.
But the thing I learned though — and I think I had known this, but sometimes in my old man brain you have to be reminded of what you were previously told — the city receives this thing called gross receipts. And those sales tax gross receipts were $5.3 million. That was better than $5.1 million in November 2024 and better than November 2023 and better than November 2022. So that’s a good number. And the gross receipts reflect the total sales tax, and then what the city gets is after their rebates, any errors in calculation, that type of thing. And so if you look at the gross receipts, the top, top line, the city has done pretty well. And that’s a positive reflection of consumer spending and overall economic activity in the region.
Kellams: At the first of the year maybe some people take catalogue of what they did in 2025. Did I do all the exercise I want? Did I read all the books I want? Did I save all the money I want? Well, if you’re the city of Fort Smith and you said you wanted to reduce the number of leaks in the city, you look back, you got to be happy with the 1995 or the 2025 performance.
Tilley: Yeah, you knocked that out of the park. It’s not my job to do public relations for the city, but folks love to give the city hell about things they don’t like, and then they have little or nothing to say about stuff the city gets right. So let’s talk about something they got right. Back in 2022 the water leaks were just out of control. There were over 2,500 water leaks at the end of 2022, which was 43% more than 2021. So the city board got serious, gave the city staff, Public Works, some tools and some guidance to get that knocked down.
And so at the end of December, the active leaks just numbered 78, which was down almost 90% compared to the beginning of the year. So the question now is, they geared up five different work crews to address these leaks. So the question now is going to be when do they reallocate those work crews. Because they have other stuff to do. They have old lead pipes and other types of pipes they need to fix. They can help do some of this consent decree work. So the city’s going to have a good problem here in the near future. We’ve got the leaks knocked out of the way. Now what do we do with these people and this equipment? How do we redirect them and address some other water and sewer system issues?
Kellams: More than 1,900 leaks fixed in the calendar year. That’s more than five a day.
Tilley: Five point three a day. I mean that’s hoofing it. And Matt Meeker — he came on to direct this either the first of the year or a few months into the year. He’s been given credit. He made a lot of changes in the workflow. He conducted an audit also. Part of this reduction is they found that they had fixed some of the leaks already, but they just hadn’t been taken out of the system. There were some clerical things. So he addressed that. He, for example, told work crews, look here are your projects tomorrow. Don’t even worry about coming to the yard. We’ll have the equipment there. You go to the place and work. So he instituted some time-saving measures. Again, we love to give our city governments and county governments hell for what they don’t do right. But let’s pat them on the back for this one.
Kellams: Well, let’s hope we talk about many more successes of all kinds in 2026. You can read about all of this and much more at TalkBusiness.net. Michael Tilley, great to have you back.
Tilley: Well, as always, you’re welcome. I appreciate you having me back.
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