Highlights of the Fort Smith Board of Directors Meeting 3/15/22

The Fort Smith Board of Directors meeting held 3-15-22 was lead by Vice Mayor Rego in Mayor McGill’s absence. The meeting started with the issue concerning the creation of the new Sales Tax Review Committee. Director Martin proposed an amendment to the plan for the committee to also include in the ordinance that the committee is responsible for creating a quarterly report to present to the Board of Directors. The amendment passed unanimously then the Board voted unanimously to create the Sales Tax Review Committee.

The Board voted unanimously to approve the resolution reinforcing the part of the municipal code that says that private property owners are responsible for mowing their own rights of way and easements. Though the code has technically been in effect, in practice, the city has not been enforcing it and has been instead driving mowers around the entire city and mowing all the rights of way regardless of whose responsibility they really are. Discontinuing that mowing of private property will save the city money and help the Streets Department to make better use of their resources and employees. Streets Department Director Matt Meeker clarified that the city will continue to mow rights of way and drainage areas where specialized equipment is required even if they are privately owned. Building Services Director Jimmie Deer added that the Neighborhood Services division has a plan in place to begin notifying affected property owners.

The Board voted unanimously to support the Fort Smith Regional Airport‘s application for a million dollar Small Community Air Service grant and pledging up to $100,000 of city funds to provide about half of the matching “community support” requirement that the airport is not allowed to pay themselves. The airport’s longer term goal is to re-establish eastern service, but the short term plan is to use the money to subsidize air service to have American Airlines add a Fort Smith to Chicago route or possibly an American Airlines route the American Airlines hub in Charlotte, or maybe even Delta flights to Atlanta. As to what specific expansion is added, Director Geffken said “At this point, if we could just expand our services, we would be happy”. Director Dawson spoke on the loss of the second major carrier hurting the city. She said “anything the Board can do to help stimulate getting carriers back” is going to have an economic impact much higher than the $100,000 investment. Director Morton praised Fort Smith’s airport as one of the “most efficient and convenient airports anywhere” and said that investing in this would be “$100,000 well-spent in this case”. He expressed his hope that flights to Charlotte would be the added route citing the large number of flights from that hub’s new airport. Director Martin mentioned noticing that expenditures are down and tax revenue is up making now a time with good flexibility to cover the expense. Director Settle encouraged Administration to work with the airport and encourage them to consider recruiting smaller or low- cost carriers like Southwest or Frontier. Deputy Administrator Dingman reminded that no city funds will be required until the grant is awarded and the new service begins.

The Board voted unanimously to move forward with the grant submission to the Arkansas Economic Development Commission for a 1300 ft expansion of the runway to be able to accommodate widebody aircraft. As a part of a plan for the State and the City to work together to fund the runway expansion, this grant would cover the first $5 million of the $17 million cost of the expansion. Director Morton mentioned the Fort Smith airport being a particularly good choice for cargo planes especially and that the expansion would be a further improvement on that.

The Board voted unanimously to approve the contract with Pickett Industries for $3,992,277 to construct the new A-6 cell at the landfill. There was discussion of the cost coming in for just under the $4 million budgeted for the project and less than the $4.5 million estimate. The bid from Pickett is dramatically less than the other two bids submitted by local companies that were for $7.8 or $7.9 million. Dingman praised Pickett’s specialized experience in landfill construction and that they“know what they’re doing”.

Inspired by the contract for the landfill cell construction being such an expensive contract and still included as part of the consent agenda at the meeting, Director Morton mentioned a desire to have items over a certain dollar amount threshold (he proposed $2 million) always be voted on as regular individual agenda items instead of just included in the consent agenda (the part of the meeting where multiple items are all voted on at once, a time saving measure typically for fairly routine items that are expected to pass with little need for presentations or discussion and little controversy).

In the officials forum section of the meeting Director Morton proposed that discussion with the Planning Commission concerning policies on mini-storage locations, especially large ones in busy commercial areas, be added to a study session. He also proposed a study session item concerning possibly limiting zoning changes to developments with a clear concrete plan that is likely to be enacted soon. He expressed concern that a couple of fairly recent zoning change issues have been hotly contentious, yet after the zoning change requested was obtained the development did not happen and the property ended up just being for sale after all, wasting the time of the very busy Planning Commission and the Board as well as creating public uproar for no reason. Both proposals were seconded and will be added to future study session agendas.

Shannon Reith was appointed to the Fire Code Board of Appeals and Adjustments. Jackie Flake was appointed to the Housing Authority. Jose Martinez was appointed to the Plumbing Advisory Board.

There will be no Board of Directors meeting next week for Spring Break.