For voters in Fayetteville, there's an item on the ballot to extend the current millage rate for the public school district. What could easily be glossed over in an already crowded ballot is garnering a lot of attention this election season, with the help of some yard signs with the phrase "Rethink Ramay" in big, bold letters.
The group behind the signs is the Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association, led by Dot Neely.
"I came aboard with Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association in 2008, when the association had received a grant to do a green infrastructure planning pilot project."
During her time with FNHA, Neely has been involved in plenty of projects. That pilot project she mentions was a GIS-based mapping project that helped to lay the groundwork for the Northwest Arkansas Open Space Plan. The group also played a role in helping to conserve the land on the east side of Mount Sequoyah, the Brooks-Hummel Natural Area and portions of Mount Kessler, too.
"Overall, in the years since FNHA was founded, we've helped preserve and protect over 500 acres."
Neely says that after 20-plus years of work, the Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association was prepared to close up shop.
"And then this issue with the new Ramay on the North Ashe Woods hillside came up. And that just got the fire going again for preservation of our natural spaces. And one of the folks said, you know, my dad always said, if you want the view, buy it. And, you know, this was just a wake-up call."
Ozarks at Large has reported extensively on the site in question. You can find that reporting at our website to learn more. Since the site was approved by both the school district and the city council, FNHA has attempted to stop the process, including an offer to buy the land from the school district. The school district declined and said the land is not for sale.
The Rethink Ramay project is the latest in this line. John Mulford is the superintendent of Fayetteville Public Schools. He says he wasn't exactly surprised by the campaign.
"So we've known for several months now that there's at least a contingent within our community that does not want to see that site developed. And, as far as their campaign, Rethink Ramay, probably a few weeks ago, when they started putting signs out, that came to our attention, but we expected there would be some sort of organized opposition."
The goal of the opposition is laid out clearly on the sign: Vote against the millage. Every school district in Arkansas has a minimum of 25 mills assessed to real and personal property.
“It's one mill for every $1,000 of assessed value.”
In Fayetteville, where the millage rate is 45 mills, that means that someone with $100,000 in assessed value would pay $4,500 annually in property taxes. The rate of 20 mills above the minimum — 45 mills total — was voted on in Fayetteville back in 2010. Both Mulford and Neely point out that the millage rate on the ballot is not a new rate, simply an extension of the rate that is in place until 2050, and extending it until 2056.
So why the extension if we're looking nearly 30 years down the road? Mulford says it's a matter of financing.
"Some people want to focus just on the Ramay project, but this is bigger than Ramay. It's a 10-year master facility plan. And so what's in all these things are sequential. So what comes next after the new Ramay is a magnet high school or a choice high school, which gives parents in our community a smaller high school option within the district. Something that a lot of people have talked about for a long time. And so that's next. But Ramay has to happen first."
He says the key to keeping everything on time is the millage extension, which provides the school district that bonding capacity. Neely says that the Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association got together back in October with the idea to encourage residents to vote against the millage extension to send a message to the school district.
"We just felt like that they aren't understanding the implications of the massive disturbance that they are going to cause on that hillside."
Once the signs started going up, she says, she began hearing from others in the community.
"We were finding that the general public had no real awareness that this was going to happen. And most anyone that you would ask here, just on the street, 'Hey, do you know about this?' They were just incredulous that anybody would try to do something of that large a scale on the slope."
Mulford says he doesn't view this specific action as being opposed to the public school system.
"I think they really do care about Fayetteville Public Schools — this isn't an anti-Fayetteville Public Schools thing. It's really they just don't care for the site, I think primarily because they want to see it preserved. But I do want to say that those who are taking this stance generally are supporters of our district."
He also says there's been some misinformation about what could happen if the millage extension is rejected.
"There are some people that think, if this millage request doesn't pass, that we're going to have to cut teacher salaries and all that kind of stuff, which is not accurate. I told you earlier, the mills are in place until 2050."
Is success for your group anything less than a vote against this millage extension?
"Success for our group would be for the school district to be willing to look at other sites with as much commitment as they've demonstrated toward this one particular site."
Mulford makes it clear that the rejection of the extension will not prevent Ramay from being built on the new site. It would just delay the project two years.
"The biggest question is often, why this location? And that is not just a simple answer because there's a lot that went into it, but the short version of it is that there's just not a lot of land available in Fayetteville, especially in the part that we need it to be in, to be within this feeder pattern and to align with what our parents said they wanted, which was schools as close to where they live as possible and reduce east-west travel to the greatest extent possible. And so that was kind of the big feedback. So when you look in this feeder pattern, the only way to get that is to be out on the eastern edge of — really outside of Fayetteville city limits even. That's the only way to get that. And even there, there's no property for sale that meets our needs. So we'd have to go find it. And that really puts families traveling a long distance for most families, going the opposite direction of where they work. Would we like flat land? Sure we would. Not a lot of flat land in Fayetteville."
Early voting is already underway in Arkansas, with Election Day being March 3.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
