Agenda Highlights 8/27/24
The Fort Smith Board of Directors meeting to be held 8-27-24 will start with a special meeting section so that The Board can vote on applying for federal grant funds available as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to be used for planning for active transportation safety improvements on Grand Avenue and a partial bike lane with sharrows along Park Avenue and Kinkead from North Greenwood to Albert Pike to Kinkead to Waldron. The grant would be for 80% of the projects with the City covering 20%. The total for the planning on Grand would be $300,000 with the City’s share being $60,000. The total for the project on Park would be $1,250,955 with the City’s share being $250,191. This issue was discussed and tabled at the 8/20/24 meeting.
Then the Board will have the study session session portion of the meeting. They will hear from Attorney Paul Calamita who has been working as legal counsel for the City in regards to the Consent Decree. Recent meetings with the Department of Justice have resulted in an offer to extend the time the City has to fulfill the requirements of the consent degree to January 2, 2037 and the DoJ has offered a choice of three different financial plans that all have that same extended end date. Only one of those options honors the sewer rate freezes from 2023-2025 and maximum sewer rate increases of 3.5% from 2026-2030 that the voters approved when they approved the 5/8% sales tax to go to consent decree sewer projects. The Board will discuss the DoJ’s proposed modifications to the consent decree. The City has until 9-30-24 to pick one of the proposed plans and submit any edits to the proposed modifications.
The Board will hear a presentation from Canopy Northwest Arkansas’s Executive Director Joanna Krause about that organization. Canopy Northwest Arkansas works with the US State Department to help resettle foreign refugees that have been vetted by the State Department and are then eligible to work in the US.
The Board will hear an update from the Future Fort Smith Committee and discuss the committee’s annual report on their goals for the year and the reports they received and discussed from each of the relevant City departments regarding each department’s progress and accomplishments and goals for the year in relation to the Future Fort Smith Comprehensive Plan.
Some of the top goals for the Future Fort Smith Committee this year include further website promotion of the City, creation of Visit Fort Smith guides and community How-To guides, removal of blight, street safety and traffic signal improvements, adequate staffing to fill City job vacancies, affordable utilities, coordination to address needs related to the growth resulting from the Foreign Military Sales project, development and implementation of the master plans for mobility including active transportation, planning for the park at the former Acme Brick site, support for services that reduce homelessness, the second police precinct, expanded amenities along the riverfront and at Chaffee, and making updates to the original Future Fort Smith Comprehensive plan to respond to “significant citywide development over the last 10 years” that has made some aspects of the plan outdated.
