Kellams: It is Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, and this is Ozarks at Large. I'm Kyle Kellams. In about 15 minutes, the latest conversation about Ozarks history with Jared Phillips. He'll talk with Ozarks at Large's Matthew Moore about the role sports has played in the region. And in our second half hour, Ozarks at Large's Sophia Nourani gives us a preview of this year's Arkansas Tiny Desk concert in Little Rock, taking place later this month. That's all ahead.
Right now, we'll start this first Friday of October with Michael Tilley from Talk Business & Politics. Good Friday, Michael.
Tilley: Well, thank you. And I want to give a quick plug. I know you didn't pay me for this, or at least I haven't seen a check yet, but your listeners, just want to encourage them to dial in on Mondays or at least go track it down when you and the folks at the university talk about Arkansas history. That's just one I want to get a bucket of popcorn and curl up and listen to. Well, do good work.
Kellams: Well, hats off to Randy Dixon, who does all the research. And then he comes in and I do what I do, which is talk.
Tilley: Well, the governor, I'll do it. He's the governor I didn't know we had for 11 days was a pretty good story.
Kellams: Yeah. Bob Riley, that was a fun one on last Monday. We'll have David Pryor featured on Monday's show. That will arrive on Monday. When do some F-35s from Singapore arrive in Fort Smith?
Tilley: Well, we're not sure yet. We do know when some German F-35s will arrive. In fact, the first German F-35 rolled off the production floor down in Fort Worth at Lockheed's plant in Fort Worth.
I guess I should back up a little bit. The foreign pilot training center is based at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith. So the F-35s that are sold to U.S. allies, part of the contract requires their pilots to be trained in the U.S., and that is now at Fort Smith. So that was made official back in 2023.
So anyway, the German planes are going to be here. The first two German pilots are set to arrive in Fort Smith in December, we've been told. And then all eight of the German F-35s are expected to be Ebbing by April 2027.
Right now we have eight planes from Poland and eight planes from Finland, so there are 16 out there at the base now. Pretty soon then when the Germans get here, it'll be 24. I've joked with some folks that pretty soon we're going to wake up and there'll be a large active military base tucked into the middle of the city. Look like a cross between United Nations and a NATO exercise if we're not careful.
But I also couldn't help but think of if my Grandpa Evans were still alive, a World War II veteran who saw frontline action, I'd love to call him and say, "Hey, Grandpa, they're going to be German military planes from the German Luftwaffe arrived in Fort Smith, if you want to come on down." But so, time does make some changes.
But we do know, so to answer your question, we do know when the Germans are getting here. We originally told that the F-35s from Singapore were going to be here later this year, and the F-16s from Singapore would arrive in the summer of 2027.
Now, Singapore is different from the other countries because they will be based here. They'll have more of a permanent presence. I probably shouldn't use the word permanent, but they're going to have more of a presence here, a longer-term presence, than the other primarily NATO allies, because they've been based for many years now at Luke Air Force Base out west, so they're moving that to Fort Smith. They're going to have their own part of the base, their own campus within Ebbing.
The most recent announcement from the military is that it would cost around $353 million to build out the facilities for Singapore. One of the questions I had recently directed toward the 33rd Fighter Wing, which is overseeing all of this, was that was still a good budget. They didn't get back to me on that.
And that window, again, to answer your question, that window that we thought the Singapore folks were coming in, so about the same time as the Germans. So that's why we did a follow-up story. And that's when we learned that the F-35 from Singapore, it's uncertain. But if they were to come in about the same time as the Germans, there would be, I mean, there could be 24, there could be over 30 F-35s out here flying around.
And I know there are a handful of folks who don't like the noise, but there are some idiots like me who, I've been a plane person my whole life, and it's just I kind of geek out on it when they roar by.
Kellams: You can keep up with the updates at talkbusiness.net. Speaking of updates, we have an update on sales tax for Fort Smith: flat, but above expectations.
Tilley: Yeah, above expectations. And I'm not sure how they set their estimates. That's their internal thing. But the city's share of the Sebastian County 1% tax was a little over 2.2 million. That was almost flat. It was up about 0.8% compared with August 2025. It was up almost 7% from the budget estimate.
Now the first eight reporting months of the year, the tax has generated almost 17 million. That's up almost 4% compared to the same period in 2025. And that's running a little above the rate of inflation. So it potentially shows some growth there.
The reason we keep up with that tax, and there's one other tax I'll talk about in a second, but the reason we keep up with that tax is that portions from that fund much of the city's general fund budget, which funds police, fire, other essential services. And we've been watching that close. Until 2024, that tax had posted year-over-year gains for five years. But the 2024 revenue was down almost 1% and the 2025 revenue was almost flat against that. So it was down like 0.02%.
Now, the other tax that we keep up with, we keep up with it because it helps fund a lot of the federally mandated system work in the city. That tax generated almost 2.6 million, down about 0.7%. But in the first eight reporting months of the year, the tax has generated 20.1 million, up almost 3%. So the August numbers were not great, but year to date, they're still trending pretty good.
One interesting tidbit. The Bass Pro Shops opened right in Fort Smith in April. I think May was the first full month. And the folks who were promoting it said it would generate sales. And so far, they've been proven true. The net sales receipts from sporting goods were almost 25% higher in August in the same period in 2025. So the only change in the sporting goods sector in Fort Smith is Bass Pro Shops. So that's either a significant portion of it or all of it.
So I think the only downside, and you can't determine this from the numbers because the state's pretty particular with how they report sales tax numbers, the only potential downside to that is where is that money coming from, inside, outside the area? Is that new money or is it taking from other sporting goods stores in the city? That's something you just can't determine unless the state officials would turn over detailed tax collection data.
Kellams: Parrot Island, the water park in Fort Smith, is closed for the season. But yet there is a story at talkbusiness.net.
Tilley: Yeah, I think the only island that you'd find more drama and maybe a little humor is Gilligan's Island. And a lot of people would say that's not even funny.
So we've learned that Parrot Island Waterpark, their general manager is, well, I should say an employee at Parrot Island is facing theft allegations. And on that same day, the Sebastian County prosecuting attorney, Dan Shue, sought a special prosecutor to investigate it.
We also learned that American Resort Management, which manages the park, they've said they want out of the contract. They're not going to manage it in 2027. So they've managed it ever since it opened, which is back in 2017.
And part of the issue with the park, the ongoing drama, of course, is the city of Fort Smith deciding to spend what was just going to be 2.1 million initially to add five new waterslides. That's now morphed into over 6 million. So that's been pretty controversial.
There's also been concerns about financial records at the park. The records have been submitted or reviewed through Forvis. It's an accounting company. Those results have been delivered to the Fort Smith Audit Advisory Committee. There's nothing in the audit. What Forvis did was just look for any red flags. It wasn't an audit audit. And they didn't find anything, but apparently some other folks came forward and they've learned of some potential theft, mismanagement. I don't know if it's going to end up being embezzlement, but it's under investigation, so we'll learn at some point.
But I think the interesting thing, the city of Fort Smith was already interviewing two other management firms. And now that American Resort Management has pulled out, we know definitely there'll be another management company, and it's likely to be one of the two. The city has not announced yet. But they'll have to do it soon because these companies have to start gearing up. The park doesn't open until May '27, roughly, but there's a lot of work for whatever company takes that on. So hopefully we'll get an answer soon.
Kellams: But we do expect the lazy river and everything to be open in spring 2027?
Tilley: Well, Kyle, when it comes to Parrot Island, I'm not going to assume anything anymore. But ideally, yes. I mean, that's a great asset. I think a lot of people are kind of like me. We kind of have a simple mind about it, so to speak. But it's a great asset. It draws a lot of people. It has an ancillary effect that people go into restaurants and doing other shopping while they're in town.
But the city board could probably make some better decisions about it and maybe it could be managed better. So I would hate for some of the negative things to result in that, what's a pretty good piece of infrastructure, tourism infrastructure, being left unused.
Kellams: Finally, the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine welcomed the class of 2030.
Tilley: Yeah. Makes me feel a little old, and it did make me feel old. This is the 10th white coat ceremony they've had. They've had over 1,600 medical students go through the events since 2017. And yeah, like I said, it made me feel old. I was at the first white ceremony, which seems like it happened just a couple months ago. But here we are.
They've also held a similar white coat ceremony for their physical therapy students. And there have been 290 that have gone through that.
But my takeaway from that story, the press release they sent and the story we followed up on, was it's clear that the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education and that underlying Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, it's been a big deal for the region, if not the state. I know the Fort Smith metro is not likely to have another big manufacturing operation like Whirlpool return. But this college has definitely filled a big part of that economic loss.
And even since that first class of students back in 2017, ACHE has added more academic programs. They've added a doctor of physical therapy, doctor of medical science there, and I'm not going to list them all. They're going to add a physician associate program slated to begin in 2028. And they're not doing that all because it looks cool on their website. I mean, there's demand for this. There's demand to fill these positions in the health care industry from top to bottom.
So this story to me was more about the impact of this college than just that this is their 10th white coat ceremony.
Kellams: A success story.
Tilley: Yes. Yeah. We like to do those every once in a while, get away from the water park problems and talk about successes.
Kellams: Well, you and I, next Friday, we'll talk about the success the Razorbacks have had against Texas A&M. We'll do this again. You can find out about everything at talkbusiness.net. Michael Tilley, thank you so much.
Tilley: You're welcome.
Kellams: It's always nice to get a little input of optimism on a Friday.
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