This is Ozarks at Large for Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, more than halfway through October. I know someone who might have a slight problem with that, and it is Michael Tilley from Talk Business & Politics.
Kellams: Michael, does it feel like it should be mid-October to you?
Tilley: Yeah, that’s the issue. It’s 80, upper 80s, low 90s in the middle of October. I didn’t know I’d move to the Sahara Desert all of a sudden.
Kellams: Well, I think by Monday we’re looking at 50 or so. So it’s going to be autumn.
Tilley: I’ll believe it when I feel it.
Kellams: Fair enough. Here’s something we should believe. The Fort Smith police chief is going to retire, not all that far from now.
Tilley: No. He announced, Chief Danny Baker announced this Wednesday that he was going to retire June 1, 2027. He said that part of the reason he announced it early is he wanted to ensure what he called a professional transition and to continue to position the department for continued success.
So he’s been there a while. I had talked to him before he made this announcement and he kind of talked about the struggles of the job. It’s a high-profile job. They got 200-something-plus officers, a city of over 90,000 in a large metro area. It can be a lot.
But I do need to warn your listeners that I’m about to say some nice things about a public servant, a police chief. And I know that I’m probably violating any number of journalism rules by doing that, but when he retires, he’ll have been in law enforcement for 30 years.
He took over the job as interim in March of 2019. And he was promoted to chief in September of that year. The department, I think anybody that was paying attention to the time will understand when I say that the department was in a mess when he took over. And he talked about this in some early interviews he did with us and some other media outlets. He talked about his goal was to move the department from, quote, “a warrior to a guardian mentality.”
And kind of put yourself back, turn the calendar on your mental notes and go back to 2019, 2020 and think about what was happening with policing at the time. It was a difficult period nationwide, not just in Fort Smith.
And he talked, in fact, in an interview he did with us. He said, “After a while, you should be able to see what doesn’t work.” And he was talking about some of this policing where people were getting arrested or killed or injured really through no fault of their own, just overaggressive policing tactics. And he said, “We have to look at ourself.” Quote, “You stop looking at yourself like an occupying force and start looking for solutions and bring success to the community instead.”
So again, the department was a mess when he took over. He had a cadre of officers who were not fans of community policing, kind of the bust-heads-and-ask-questions-later kind of folks. But he has turned it around.
One thing he did that really kind of proved to everybody that he was serious and it really helped with the turnaround is some of the George Floyd protesters, some of that spilled over. And there was a large group arrived in Fort Smith. And he had the choice between going out there and containing it or finding another alternative.
And what he did is, this is complicated, I’m oversimplifying, but he essentially had his officers pull back, gave them their space. He even spent his money, I think in department money. Rented a couple of those shaved ice and cold treat trucks, had him there and he was buying shaved ice for the protesters, giving them water, working with them.
And that really set the tone. I think people then realized like, “Oh, this is a different police chief.” He’s not just saying he’s focused on community. He’s showing it.
So hopefully, and he’s been very transparent. That department was very not transparent. I mean, it was hard to get any information out of him. He is completely reversed that. So hopefully when they hire another chief, they will try to find someone who will continue his focus on community policing and being transparent. Not just, and when I say transparent, not just with the media, but with all community organizations and all individuals, really.
Kellams: So you mentioned being transparent and information about what’s coming up. I want to segue into our next topic of conversation, and that is Mercy and what they plan to do for health care in Fort Smith and the metro. Learned a little bit more this week.
Tilley: Yeah. We learned, you’re right. We learned some more. And I think, I don’t know if this was Mercy’s intent, but I think that the news that they put out can put some people a little more at ease in the community.
But Ryan Gehrig, the president of Mercy Fort Smith Communities, put out a pretty lengthy, what he called an update and said that they’ve hired more than 640, what he called caregivers, in the region in recent years, with more than 200 of those from Baptist Health, which has cut services and a lot of staff since March. In fact, that’s really the reason for the update.
Just as a reminder, Little Rock Baptist Health, which has a large hospital operation in Fort Smith, one in Van Buren also, they’ve cut, at least that we know of, more than 260 hospital staff, nurses, physicians since late March. Some of the services they’ve cut include labor and delivery, pharmacy, radiology, obstetric, even some facilities maintenance. And so Baptist is really a shell of itself over there now. And so there’s been obvious concerns about health care access.
But in Gehrig’s note, he said that they’ve welcomed 69 new doctors in various fields, including oncology, cardiology, sports medicine, women’s, children’s services, and they expect to add another 42 during the next 12 months.
He said they’ve also added 77 advanced practice providers. Those are the folks that, I’ve had a few of those and I don’t want to, well, I probably shouldn’t say it. They’re pretty good people. I like them sometimes just as good as the doctors. But they’ve added 77 in recent years, expect to add 12 more in the next few months, that they’ve committed more than 43 million toward efforts to expand even more access to increased health care services in the area.
And look, they have a lot of clinics too, that they reach us over in Booneville and eastern Oklahoma, down south of us over in Franklin County. So they have a wide network in the Fort Smith metro. And they’re even working with other institutions to train doctors. For example, they have 81 residency slots with the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine here in Fort Smith.
So it’s a good note and it’s really a good thing what Mercy is doing, but it’s still unfortunate at Fort Smith no longer has two strong hospital systems, I think. I’m not sure that’s going to come back. Maybe Congress and the Arkansas Legislature will get off their asses and do something to make smart decisions about health care, especially in rural Arkansas. But I think until they do, health care access, not just in Arkansas, but around the country and not just in Fort Smith metro area, it’s going to be difficult for these hospital systems.
So I said all that to say, it was really good to get this update from Mercy and from Mr. Gehrig about what they’re trying to do to make the situation better.
Kellams: A couple weeks ago, we talked about Fort Smith Fire Department explaining the dire need to get raises for firefighters. It seems like everyone kind of agrees with that. The problem is finding the money. There was a proposal to raise alcohol tax in Fort Smith, but apparently that didn’t gain much traction.
Tilley: Yeah. That’s, in that first rolled out, city of Fort Smith City Administrator Jeff Dingman put that in a memo. And look, I’m not the brightest guy in the world, but my first thought was suggesting a tax increase a few weeks before an election may not be popular with members of an elected board. And turns out it wasn’t.
But just a little background on details. The city now has a 5% tax on alcoholic beverages, a drink tax. State law allows cities, local governments to go up to 10%, according to the city. That would have raised about 500,000 to help support a pretty steep pay raise request from Fort Smith Fire Chief Darrell Clark and Sam Schleiff, who’s the firefighter union. They’re asking for, like I said, a 14% increase. It’s about 1.6 million a year needed to cover that.
Eventually the city, in Dingman’s note, he said, “Look, we’ve come up a way to fund 10.7% increase, but we’re going to need a 375,000 if we get to 14%.” So that’s why they proposed the alcohol tax.
But during the study session, it did not take long for the board members to like, “Yeah, no.” And Christina and Director Neal Martin and a few others, in no uncertain terms, told Dingman, “Look, go find the money, find it without a tax increase, bring that pay raise plan back to us at the first regular voting meeting in November. We’re going to approve a 14% pay raise. You just need to go figure out how to make it happen.”
Kellams: I think if I was told that, I would go get a non-higher-taxed alcohol drink to prepare me to find that money.
Tilley: Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I might figure out what the tax is on a whole damn bottle of alcohol. But so here we go in early November. We’ll see where that goes.
Kellams: All right. Finally, we’ve been keeping track of this breach of some computing systems with the city of Fort Smith. What’s new on that?
Tilley: Well, I’m not going to spend too much time on this. What’s new is that, so we first learned of this on Aug. 16. There was a massive computer system attack on the city system, citywide, I should say. So about a month later in mid-September, the city told us that it looked like the attack started in the Fort Smith Police Department, some unauthorized modem or computer. So that was kind of what we were working under.
And then about a month later, a few days ago, we learned that no, it wasn’t the FSPD, the police department. It originated in the city’s broader network, whatever that means. So they were very specific initially and now they’re not so specific.
We’re also told, or I guess we learned, because in Sept. 15, we were told that the investigation is nearing a conclusion, and the city has always said, “We can’t talk about details until the investigation is over.” Well, we just learned again in this recent announcement that apparently it’s not over, that it’s continuing. So two months later, and a month later after they told us the investigation was about over, it’s still going on.
So at some point, Kyle. Well, and we also learned that they’ve hired this law firm, Mullen Coughlin, as outside counsel primarily for breach notification compliance, which I’ve learned more than I want to about that. But it’s a lot. And it could be potentially one of those big uh-oh matters for the city.
But look, we’re going to soon learn more about this investigation, about what happened. The real story, or most of it, will eventually come out. It may be later this year, maybe later next year, but we’ll eventually get more info and we’ll learn then how much the city has been telling us, was that good information or were they just trying to get us off track?
And look, to their defense, they’ve got insurance companies and law firms probably telling them to shut up and not saying anything until they get a clear handle on it. So, but at some point it’s going to come out and we’re going to try our best to stay on top of it.
Kellams: And you’ll find out about it at talkbusiness.net, where you can find out about everything we talked about and so much more from around the state. Michael, thank you so much for your time. Enjoy your weekend.
Tilley: Hey, I always appreciate the time, and you try to do the same.
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