Kellams: Let's discuss some more recent history. The news of the week with Michael Tilley from Talk Business & Politics. Welcome back, Michael.
Tilley: Well, thank you for having me. There was a long time growing up and I could not say autumnal, but I think I've got it down now.
Kellams: Some people would tell me that there's no reason to say autumnal, that you should just say autumn.
Tilley: Yeah, there you go.
Kellams: All right, all right. Recent history. City board meeting in Fort Smith on the 18th.
Tilley: Yeah. Well, it was interesting. I'll just leave it at that. I've been covering city governments and public bodies, airport commissions, water commissions, quorum courts, you name it, for almost 30 years. More than I probably should admit. But I've never seen anything like what happened in Fort Smith board meeting on Aug. 18.
They were talking about approving this resolution for a change of government question to be placed on the ballot, of course, to set it up even further. Prior to that, the city clerk, Sherri Gard, had already approved enough signatures from a citizens initiative to place the item on a ballot. And so the previous two board votes on this were 4-3 against. So they were bringing it up for a third time, I guess, just to put it on the ballot. At the time, some of the supporters of the measure wanted the board to approve it in case there was a legal challenge to the signatures, whatever. So it was on the board agenda.
And in the middle of this tense board discussion, Director André Good called for a recess. And a recess is entirely appropriate.
Kellams: Mhm.
Tilley: However, to call for a recess when there is a pending motion on the floor, there has to be a second and then there has to be a board vote. But that didn't happen. The director called for recess. Mayor McGill gaveled one into place, and so they went off. So that was the first problem. The second problem was that immediately some board members began to kind of gather up and start talking.
Kellams: Uh oh.
Tilley: Yeah. So here's the issue. The city denies. Well, first of all, the city would eventually acknowledge that that motion, that the way they went into recess was not proper. So that's the answer to that. Then they've promised not to do that again. But they deny that any private conversations were held during the recess. Statement from city attorney that said, quote, we are not aware that any board members violated the reference communications prohibitions, excuse me, almost as bad as autumnal, but that no members violated the reference communication prohibitions during the meeting recess.
Well, that denial is all the city needs, because there were clearly private discussions immediately after the recess call. So, Kyle, I guess we, the public, are left to believe they were sharing recipes, maybe getting advice on their fantasy football picks or, hey, maybe they were talking about how much they should contribute to their local public radio station.
Kellams: There you go.
Tilley: But they were not. The city said they were not talking about the motion on the floor because that would be illegal. So they were not talking about that.
So anyway, we put that story out and we also included some comments from two attorneys with experience in Freedom of Information Act and media law. They both agreed that it would take a board member, somebody fessing up to the fact that they were, what they were discussing. But one of them, Matt Ketcham, a Fort Smith attorney, his quote was, it's never a good look. You're probably never going to be able to prove what they discussed. But again, it's just a bad look. I talked to John Tull, an attorney in Little Rock. His quote was, just the optics of it is concerning, whether there's a violation or not.
So we put that story out. It's got a lot of traffic. The city administration has pushed back against it with an email to the board of directors that was full of rhetorical fallacies. Bless their heart. But hopefully they'll learn and they'll not do that again. But again, I haven't seen that in 30-something years. I hope not to see it again. The public deserves to know what the public body is discussing.
Kellams: Last week, I think it was just last week, I mentioned that if you go to a party and you didn't know anyone, you wanted to start a conversation, just bring up Flock cameras. You took my advice.
Tilley: Yeah. Well, so the goal with the story, it wasn't any effort to have an in-depth report on Flock cameras. It was just, I wanted to provide kind of a base set of information about the city's use of Flock cameras and other camera systems. We did include comments from those who support and oppose the system, but the goal was simply, hey, folks, here's what the city is doing with Flock cameras.
So we learned a few things. One, I learned that Fort Smith Police Chief Danny Baker acknowledged that they are reevaluating their budget in terms of Flock systems. And what they do going forward. Do they expand it? So that was interesting.
We also learned that the city has 44 cameras integrated into their Flock system. 21 of those are the real controversial, the automated license plate readers, so 21 of the cameras have that built in. The other cameras are live feed cameras, live view cameras. We also learned that the city did have 10 additional Flock cameras in its budget that have not been purchased. And that's part of the reevaluating that. So right now the plan is to not buy those additional Flock cameras. But we'll see.
We also learned that the Flock cameras and that license plate reader program was approved. The budget for that was approved in 2023. It was interesting. Director Neal Martin was quick to note on social media that he was the lone vote against buying the Flock cameras.
We also learned the top three reasons given by other agencies. One of the controversies is that agencies, law enforcement, federal, state, local, share all the information that they collect. So we learned that the top three reasons that the city receives for other agencies searching their system are for drugs and narcotics, wanted persons, arrest warrant type stuff and motor vehicle theft. So those are the top three reasons they get solicited for some of their Flock camera information.
What I found stunning was that the city's cameras are searched an average of 3,388 times per week. And the lookups, what they call the lookups on the license plate reader systems, the lookups happen an average of almost 110,000 times per week. So yeah, I even double checked that to make sure I hadn't. There wasn't an extra number in there, but it's almost 110,000 per week.
And then finally, there are a lot of things we learned, but I guess finally, the most important is that the city of Fort Smith, as part of their system, if someone selects, because someone has to select why they're wanting the city information, if someone selects the purpose as immigration or border control, they deny that request. Okay, so I thought that was interesting.
So look, I suspect the use of Flock cameras or other type camera systems will be an agenda item on a future board meeting. So I don't think this is the last story we're going to write about the topic.
Kellams: Gotcha. The Butterfield stage didn't have a license plate, I don't think. But there's going to be a monument to this legendary historic stagecoach and its route in downtown Fort Smith.
Tilley: Yep. I know we've talked about it a while, but I kind of got confirmation last week that they've got all the, previously we didn't know all the pieces were going to come together. We know that now. And look, I don't have to tell you, Kyle, one of the joys of being a reporter is the opportunity to document the process when people are doing something really cool. Now, beg forgiveness from the journalism purists out there who believe you shouldn't get excited about that kind of thing, but it is a cool deal and it will have a positive impact.
This Butterfield stagecoach, it ran a little over 3,500 miles. It began up in St. Louis. It ran through Arkansas. And Fort Smith was a key stop on that. And it was in downtown Fort Smith in the 200 block, the old John Rogers Hotel, which is not there anymore. But you had these connections from Memphis and St. Louis that came in and combined at Fort Smith before heading west through what was Oklahoma territory, but on west to California.
And so Jim Spears earlier this year said, hey, let's put up a monument to this there in the 200 block. So Mr. Spears, who we unfortunately lost in early May to cancer, passed that task on to Phil White, who has been involved in many downtown projects. And Phil White recently said, it's happening. He credited a lot of folks. I'm going to run through here real quick. Mid-South Automation, they're cutting steel. Forsgren, constructing the base. First National Bank paid for the steel. Engineers Jason Myers and Josh Mickle donated their services. Holmes Erection is donating their services for steel placement. Russ Basham, who Phil White called the steel artist, is welding parts of the monument. Trey White with HSA Engineering is helping with electrical engineering.
It's a long list of people who are donating materials, money or their services, and he valued that at between $200,000 and $225,000. So it's not insignificant. So it looks like it's going to happen. And it's going to add to the list of monuments in downtown Fort Smith. We've got the large Bass Reeves monument, which is going to be directly across the road, Garrison Avenue. We got the Darby statue on the east end of Garrison. You got several historic statues in Gateway Park at Garrison and Rogers avenues. You've got the Native American lawman down at the U.S. Marshals Museum. So Fort Smith's going to mess around, and they're going to have a good collection of statues if they're not careful.
Kellams: Well, it'll be a nice collection for visitors to see. Business travel looks like was a little down. So that means the hospitality tax for Van Buren, Fort Smith slightly down year to year.
Tilley: Yeah, yeah. And it's not a surprise. We're seeing this nationwide. The Fort Smith hospitality tax revenue, which is a 3% hotel tax, is down 4.3% in the first six months of the year. And this is really coming off of, after COVID, 2021, 2022, the tourism numbers shot up. People had been confined and they wanted to get out. And so I think what we're seeing in Fort Smith and Van Buren, several factors. One of those is somewhat of a return to normal. The 2025 collections in Fort Smith were down almost 6% from an amazing, almost $1.3 million in 2024. So a little bit of return to normal, one might argue.
Van Buren, their hospitality tax collections are down 3.5% in the first six months. Their hotel tax was down 3.1%. Their prepared food tax was down 3.8%. So pretty much in the same range. Like I said, we're seeing this nationwide pullback in tourism. Folks are taking fewer trips. They're taking shorter trips in terms of distance. With fuel and energy prices and other costs higher, people are eating out less often at restaurants. And when they do, the data shows that that average ticket is lower.
So it's not a surprise that we're seeing decline locally. Hopefully at some point it levels out. That's kind of what you want to see. It levels out and there's a slow trend back toward growth. But right now there's not anything to panic about, or there's nothing surprising about these numbers.
Kellams: All right. Michael Tilley is with Talk Business & Politics. More details about all of this and more at talkbusiness.net. Michael, enjoy your last weekend of August. We'll talk to you next week.
Tilley: Hey, I always look forward to it. Thanks.
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