Kyle Kellams: It's time to learn much more about many things that happened in the news this week. We're going to turn to our friend Michael Tilley with Talk Business & Politics. Michael, how are you?
Michael Tilley: I'm doing well. How's the world up there?
Kellams: Well, you know, I wouldn't mind if we had a 24-hour period of no rain.
Tilley: Well, I hear you, but I'm a farm boy, and we need this rain. We're still behind, even with what we've had.
Kellams: All right. I have not been diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder, but I do not do well when it's cloudy for 175 days in a row. I don't do well with estimations either.
Tilley: Or exaggeration.
Kellams: Well, no, I do very well with those.
Tilley: Yeah, that's true.
Kellams: Let's talk about something that's not exaggerated but is up — and that's Fort Smith sales tax revenue through the April report. Nice little number, up 4%.
Tilley: Yeah, it is, and it continues to be a good number. Last year the sales tax revenue was down in Fort Smith — not much, but down a little bit. The Fort Smith share of the 1% Sebastian County tax was almost $2.2 million. That was up a little over 1%, and it was up above the budget estimate for the first four reporting months of the year. The revenue, like you said, is $8.3 million, up 4%. That's important. The city's share of that countywide tax provides money for their general fund budget, which much of that budget pays for police, fire and other essential city services. The city's 1% tax used to be called the street tax but now partially funds our federally mandated sewer system work. That tax collected almost $2.6 million in April. Up about 0.7% — for the first four reporting months of the year it's collected a little over $10 million, up 3% for the year.
So a good trend. Just for reporting months — I probably shouldn't say it's a good trend — but we'll kind of see as we get into the summer months how it holds up. I was looking at it from a historical perspective. There are some people who on social media are a little critical of the tax revenue because it hasn't been as robust maybe as some cities in Arkansas. But I got to looking back, and last year the city's 1% tax collected $29.5 million. If you go back to 2021, which is kind of the first year after COVID, the tax collected $26.6 million. That's almost an 11% growth rate, or a little more than $2.8 million a year since 2021. That's not bad. I suspect there are probably a lot of cities in the state, in the nation, who would take that kind of growth.
Kellams: You know, I think that the Acme Company from the Roadrunner cartoons exists because — if you remember, Wile E. Coyote would ask for something and it would get there seconds later. It feels like this Butterfield Trail monument is going to be delivered by Acme. It wasn't that long ago the idea was first proposed.
Tilley: Yeah, that's a great way to put it. It's back in February that Jim Spears — who unfortunately recently passed away — came to the Central Business Improvement District meeting. It's a group that manages downtown Fort Smith improvements. He suggested that they raise money or lead an effort to create this Butterfield Stagecoach line monument in downtown Fort Smith. Judge Spears was first of all a leader in the effort to bring the Marshals Museum to Fort Smith. He was a leader in the effort to create this very large monument to Bass Reeves in downtown Fort Smith. He's been involved — I'm not going to try to list all of the things he's been involved with. But he spoke to the CBID, he carried a lot of weight, he'd been there, done that kind of thing. And so Phil White, who's a member of the CBID, said, "Okay, we'll do this." And me being the cynical reporter, thought, well, two or three years, we'll probably get this done.
Well, it looks like they're going to have this monument in place by the end of the summer, maybe early fall, but definitely this year. Phil White recently reported that the project is probably going to end up being a $200,000 project, but he thinks he's raised almost all of that. At last report they needed about $20,000 to pay for steelwork, but they think they're going to be able to raise that also. And what they're planning on creating is a life-size, 36-foot-long image of a stagecoach with horses and a driver — a rider up top; I'm not sure what the correct term is — cut out of a large piece of steel. It'll be located on the north side of the 200 block of Garrison Avenue, which is near where the stagecoach stopped on its route through Fort Smith.
The Butterfield Line was the main mail line. It stretched a little over 3,500 miles — from St. Louis all the way through Arkansas and Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona — and I think it ended up in Southern California. That's the way mail used to travel. I often think, you know, if it was left up to me for the West to have been won, it never would have been. I know they took it in stages, but anyway, the point is they're going to pull this off. Unless something weird goes off the rails, they're going to have this monument up here in downtown Fort Smith.
Kellams: If we were counting on the Butterfield stage to deliver all the packets to potential candidates in Fort Smith for civic elections, it might take two stages, because a lot of people are showing interest in running.
Tilley: Look, I've been covering city elections for a couple of decades at least. I have never known there to be more than 20 candidate packets to have been picked up. The positions on the Fort Smith municipal ballot this year are mayor and the city director at-large positions 5, 6 and 7. So four positions. Fort Smith Mayor George McGill has said he's not running for reelection, so it's an open seat. Director Christina Catsavis is not running for her position 5 seat, so that's going to be open. So you have at least two open seats.
I talked to Sherri Gard, the city clerk, this week, and as of Wednesday there have been seven mayor candidate packets picked up, five packets for city director position 5, six packets for city director position 6 and two for city director position 7. And we still have a ways to go. The packets don't have to be returned until July 29 through August 5. So I suspect 20 will not be the final number. The ballot — that first ballot — may take up two or three screens for voters in November. And when you have that many people on a ballot for those positions, it also sets up the likelihood of runoff elections. So it'll be an interesting year. I think also driving the interest this year is there's this push by a group of citizens for a change of government. So that could be on the ballot. It's going to be a hell of a horse race this year.
Kellams: Well, wait — if you're running for mayor and then the government change gets on the ballot and there is a change of city government, what does that do to the person who's the newly elected mayor? Do we know?
Tilley: Well, let's say that question of change of form of government gets on the November 2026 ballot and voters approve it. The election for those new officers doesn't happen until 2028. So if you're elected mayor in this round, you could, I guess, have an advantage going into those new elections for the new form of government. But you're not just automatically the mayor in the new form of government.
Kellams: Finally, there's another story in your very important series about the water infrastructure woes of Fort Smith. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. What does this sixth story tell us?
Tilley: Got to be careful how I say this. To the frustrations of some consultants and city engineers — part of the story, I note that the numerous interviews I've conducted with city engineers, staff, private sector engineers and consultants kind of points to four reasons why the city has for several decades not invested millions of dollars to update and modernize the water system. Those reasons kind of come into four categories. There's a lack of political will. Also, the city board and city staff have been focused on this consent decree work — this federal consent decree work to fix the sewer system — and that funding for that work has now been secured, so maybe the city can move on to other projects. Another reason: some have suggested that top city administration has not really pressed the board enough to fix the water system needs. And then the fourth big category: there's been a lot of distractions. There's the historic flooding in 2019, there's COVID-19, there's been significant road utilities work that they've had to partner with the Arkansas Department of Transportation on. Just a lot of other factors. But that doesn't mean the system waits for that.
They are projected up to $600 million — kind of at a minimum — that's needed: new water lines from water treatment plants, water treatment plant upgrades, aging distribution lines that need to be fixed, new water meters, new fire hydrants. Almost every part of the system is aging. I polled the city board — the seven city board members — about what they thought would be needed. Only four of them responded, and I think the summary of their response is they're not for raising new revenues. They want to cut costs or find ways to maybe get federal grants, state grants. That is — I don't want to say it's a kicking-the-can-down-the-road approach — but it's just not the aggressive approach that the city engineers and other folks are saying that we need.
I interviewed Jimmie Johnson, deputy director of engineering, several months ago, and he told the board: the water utilities were tired of operating in a crisis mode. And I talked to Lance McAvoy, director of utilities. I said, "The board thinks we just need to cut costs." And he said, "We can't." His quote was, "We've already cut too much on a system that is as old as it is." And he said, "At some point we're spending more to maintain the system than we would spend to modernize it." So this sixth story — maybe the final story — just points to the conflict between the city engineers and consultants who say, "Y'all need to" — and they've been saying this since the early '90s, Kyle; this isn't just something they started talking about a few years ago — "we've got to do something to fix our water and sewer system." And the city's political leadership is just either not willing to pull the trigger on that. There's no happy ending to this story. It's just where we are.
Kellams: We will follow this and these other stories at talkbusiness.net. Michael, hope the rain continues to fuel the crops. We'll talk to you next week.
Tilley: All right. You're welcome.
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