Highlights of the Fort Smith Board of Directors Meeting 8/3/21

The 8-3-21 Fort Smith Board of Directors regular business meeting was lead by Vice Mayor Rego in the absence of Mayor McGill (Director Dawson was also absent to attend a funeral).

The board voted to agree with the Community Development Advisory Commission recommendation for allocation of federal funds available from the CARES Act (all in favor but Catsavis). The funds were awarded to Next Step Homeless services, Arc River Valley, and CSCDC.

A couple of interesting questions were posed regarding how few applications were received for the potential grant money and that only one bid was received to do the construction on the transitional single family housing from Next Step. The directors seemed surprised at the lack of response and wondered about how the opportunities were advertised and if there were a lot of special barriers to participation in the bidding.

An interesting tidbit of tangentially related information that was presented at the meeting was that Next Step is seriously considering moving out of its current downtown location and into the building on Towson that was previously Brownwood. They are in talks with the owner of the Towson property.

The agreement to pay Future School of Fort Smith’s Riverside Rides $1300 per month to rent bicycles near the riverfront bike park and trails out of the funds previously budgeted for the defunct Zagster contract was approved (all in favor but Catsavis).

The issue that was originally on the agenda regarding the Kelley Ball Fields was removed from this meeting’s agenda and neither discussed nor voted on.

The donation of the property to the city of the new Stonecrest dog park was approved. The land was donated by ERC and the city will not be responsible for maintenance of the park. Director Morton pointed out the new park being smaller and less conveniently located for many than the Massard one that is going to be eliminated by the airport runway expansion and inquired about possible future plans to build an additional more centrally located park. Parks Department Director Rheinhart responded that that is being planned on for the future.

There was a LOT of discussion about a water and sewer line extension on Riverfront drive to the point that it was decided to table the two consent agenda items concerning that extension until the next meeting instead of voting on them at this one.

After the conclusion of the official voting part of the agenda, during the Officials Forum portion of the meeting, Director Good received clarification from Director of Development Services Maggie Rice about how solar energy installations are included in our Unified Development Ordinance and Director Settle asked Administrator Geffken about how the current labor shortage is affecting the city’s abilities to hire and retain employees. Geffken expressed that the city is being affected by the hiring situation and the impact is greatest in the lowest paying positions, especially part-time and seasonal parks maintenance positions like mowing. The city is having a very hard time finding people to fill those job openings. The main potential solutions proposed to be explored in the future to deal with the problem were outsourcing the parks maintenance to private companies or increasing pay offered to attract workers.