Kyle Kellams: A man who needs no rehearsal — Michael Tilley from Talk Business & Politics. Welcome, Michael.
Michael Tilley: I don't think I probably could use some rehearsal, but I'm too old in the tooth now to start a new trick, so let's go.
Kellams: Are you too old in the tooth to see a change in the form of government in Fort Smith?
Tilley: I don't know. I've been watching city government for around 30 years, and this issue pops up every once in a while. But this time around seems to be a little bit more momentum, more energy behind it. There's a citizen petition that began earlier this year. They need 2,608 valid signatures of registered voters by late July, early August. They have around 2,000 now, although I noticed yesterday or this morning there's a petition organizer on social media suggesting they have close to 3,000. They should be able to get enough by that late July, early August deadline.
Fort Smith now has a council-manager form of government. We have seven board members who hire and fire the city administrator. The city administrator runs the day-to-day business. It's one of only three or four city governments in Arkansas like that. Most have the mayor-council form of government. I think most of the cities here in Northwest Arkansas have that, although I think Siloam Springs still has a council-manager form. It's just a difference of opinion on which one is better. The latest evidence from the National Council of Municipal Government Associations shows there are more council-manager forms of government than mayor-council around the country. But in Arkansas, there are more mayor-council. It's just a matter of opinion.
The board has received in recent weeks and months some pressure to place this question on the November 2026 ballot — just not require the citizens to collect the signatures, go through the verification process and that kind of thing — because state law does allow the board to just place it on the ballot. That question came up at this Tuesday's board meeting. In fact, there were two agenda items — one for the 2026 ballot and one for the 2027 ballot. No matter which ballot it goes on, if it's successful, the election for the new form of government couldn't happen until 2028. That was where we were Tuesday.
I'm going to editorialize here a little bit, because it just really is not editorializing — it's just the way it was. That Tuesday meeting was very testy, frankly embarrassing, in which citizens and board members discussed the matter and often did so in a way that was less than kind. Folks are really worked up about this, and it has become, unfortunately, a narrative of personal attacks against anyone with a different opinion. No matter how well intentioned that person can be, they're either a good person or not a good person depending on which form of government they choose. It's very unfortunate. I've been covering city government for a while, and I'm struggling to remember a meeting in which I hoped no one from the outside world was watching. It wasn't the city's best moment.
The two votes failed. The vote for the 2026 ballot had three for, three against and one abstention. So it failed. The agenda item for the 2027 ballot didn't even get a second, so there was no vote — that failed too. However, Director Christina Catsavis, who pushed for the 2026 vote — I did a follow-up story with her the next day. She intends to bring that back. I don't know how she's whipped up an extra vote because it'll need a fourth vote, but she intends to bring it back for a board vote. The issue is not over, and it's not over because the folks pushing the petition are still moving. It looks like they're going to have more than enough time to collect the signatures they need. I'll be surprised if there is not an item on the 2026 ballot giving the citizens of Fort Smith a vote on whether they want to keep or change their form of government.
Kellams: Commercial traffic out of Fort Smith Regional is up in the latest report. These are the numbers for April. That's continued good news.
Tilley: It is good news, and it builds on some gains that were seen in 2025. In April the numbers were up a little over 4,500 enplanements, up about 1.4%. Through the first four months of the year, the numbers are up not quite 1% — about 0.6%. It's been a struggle at the airport. They were doing well. There were some significant gains in 2018 and 2019. And then we had that COVID year of 2020 and it just plummeted — not just Fort Smith, it shut everything down. The 2025 enplanement numbers are down almost 35% compared with those in 2019 prior to COVID. That was up around 95,000 or 96,000. Hopefully it'll come back. One of the hits on Fort Smith is that a year or two after COVID, Delta pulled out. They used to have service to Atlanta. Right now the only service is with American Airlines back and forth to DFW.
Fort Smith Regional Airport Director Andrew Meyer said they are hoping, and he's somewhat confident, they'll get a fourth flight during the summer with American back and forth to DFW. So that should help. The other thing they're doing is they're still investing in the airport. Meyer called it a summer of progress. They're investing about $13.5 million in rehab work and new construction on runways and taxiways, and building a maintenance shed to separate some of the facilities — primarily for snow and inclement weather removal equipment and chemicals. That's taken on a little bit of added significance now that the foreign pilot training mission is co-located at the air base there on the airport. They have an FAA mandate to keep the runways clean. Every commercial airport does, but with the military mission, it's even more so. Good news so far — we hope that trend continues. It began to pick back up in 2025, and we hope that continues on through 2026.
Kellams: Good news if you want to buy a home in the Fort Smith Metro — there seem to be more available than this time last year. Bad news, it's going to cost you a little bit more than last year.
Tilley: Yeah, it will cost a little more. The good news is that the first two months of 2026, Fort Smith Metro home sales were up 8%. That followed a 2025 decline in which home sales numbers were down 8.2%. So if it continues — two months, as I've said before, is not a trend, but it's a good start. The value of those homes sold in the metro were up more than 9%. The numbers account for 434 homes sold in January and February in the metro, and the value of those home sales was $107 million — up 9.4%. The average home sales price for the first two months was $246,000, almost $247,000 — up 1.4%. That's good news if you're a home seller, not necessarily a home buyer. Maybe the only negative is that days on market broke 100. They were at 105, the average days on market — up from 93 in the same period of 2025. Sebastian County accounts for about 43% of the homes sold in the metro. Those numbers were up 2%. And in Crawford County, which makes up about 22% of homes sold in the metro, their numbers were up 9.2%. So good first start. Hopefully in about two or three weeks we'll pick up the March and April numbers and have the first four months of a comparison.
Kellams: Finally, it's this time of year when we get some population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. That was the case again this year. What did the numbers tell us?
Tilley: We don't often give Barling a lot of love on these reports. They're just right here co-located with Fort Smith. But they continue to have the highest percentage of growth. Barling, by way of reminder, acquired a lot of property when Fort Chaffee was closed and created that Chaffee Crossing area. So some of the growth is in their city limits. Their population growth was up almost 14% between July 1, 2020 and July 1, 2025. I did a five-year look for that period. The city of Fort Smith for the same period had 1.9%, almost 2%, growth.
In this report I looked at cities with a population of 5,000 or more in the Fort Smith metro. Barling had 13.8% growth. Van Buren was at 5.6%. And again, this is between July 2020 and July 2025. Alma was at 4.1%, Poteau at 4%, Sallisaw at 3%. Poteau and Sallisaw are both Oklahoma towns — and yes, they are in the Fort Smith metro. Greenwood was at 2.7% and Fort Smith again at 1.9%.
There were some negative comments from folks on social media about Fort Smith's lower percentage growth compared to those other cities. But I would be remiss if I didn't remind folks that there's the law of large numbers to consider. The higher the number, the more it takes for a higher percentage growth than with a lower number. So that's not an apples-to-apples comparison. I am somewhat surprised — well, I shouldn't be surprised at anything I see on social media — but I am surprised that some people viewed that as some kind of failure on the part of Fort Smith leadership that the city had 1.9% growth in that period. The Fort Smith metro didn't grow as much as some of the areas around Central Arkansas and certainly not as much as Northwest Arkansas, but growth is growth. I'm sure the business community and civic leadership will take it.
Kellams: Michael Tilley is with Talk Business & Politics. You can read about all of this and so much more at talkbusiness.net. Michael, thanks for your time.
Tilley: As usual, thank you for letting us have the opportunity.
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