story by Aric Mitchell, special to The City Wire
Civic involvement and undoing a 2015 budget item were front-and-center at the Fort Smith Board of Directors Jan. 20 regular meeting. A full house packed the Fort Smith Schools Service Center with two common refrains directed at city leaders: Live within your means and be more responsible with the general fund.
The evening began with the board approving an ordinance to set the 1% sales and use tax for streets and drainage to a special election. Should voters choose to approve the 1% renewal, the city would ask for 5% to go from streets and drainage to the trails system.
While many spoke in favor of developing trails and bikeways, some urged the city to reconsider the funding method. Jerry Fleming with S.O.S. Fort Smith (Save Our Streets), spoke against moving 5% to the trails system.
“We are 100% in favor of a renewal of the 1% sales tax for streets and drainage. We are 100% in favor of the proposed trails system upon condition that no trails funding is taken from the 1% streets and drainage tax fund,” he said.
Fleming offered two alternative proposals: the first, a separate 1/8% sales tax with a five-year limit that would go completely to the trails system. (He estimates the proposal would raise $12.5 million during the five-year period. Numbers were based on data provided by city administration.)
The second proposal would be “that the board, in a public Board of Directors meeting, go on record agreeing to spend no less than 40 percent out of the 1% sales tax for residential streets and drainage and neighborhood drainage projects during the 10-year term of the tax.”
Fleming continued: “All of you know that diverting street overlays and reconstruction will result in even greater cost to rebuild failing systems. You all know that our current levels of overlaying or reconstruction of asphalt streets at six to eight miles annually is woefully short of the 18 miles or more annually needed, as any engineer will tell you, to just maintain the entire system. You all know that any diversion of the 1% sales tax is the equivalent of kicking the can down the road, and that when the can stops, a major tax increase will be necessary to rebuild our street systems that have deteriorated.”
NO HIKE FOR ALCOHOL PERMIT FEES
Also Tuesday night, the board killed a motion to hike permitting fees on Fort Smith businesses that sell alcohol. The adjustments were expected to raise an additional $60,000 and were to be used to fund pay increases for city employees. Six business owners spoke against it. One said the city was treating its alcohol-permitted businesses like “low-hanging fruit.” Another criticized donating $84,000 from the general fund to the Steel Horse Motorcycle Rally while upping fees on business owners. Another pointed out the city's motorcycle rally contribution would be coming from the same fund that was incapable of funding police and fire pensions past 2019.
Business owner Melissa Woodall addressed her feelings on the issue.
“If the government is going to be involved with business, it needs to be to support it,” Woodall said. “To help make it easier to do business. To make it better for business owners, especially with the liquor industry. It is disproportionately small businesses, locally owned businesses, that are going to get hit with this. And it’s a big increase all at once. It’s not fair to target just one industry either. We need the [city] raises. We need to make that happen. But we need to find another place to cut or another source of revenue.”
Ultimately, the motion died with Director Mike Lorenz admitting it was “one of those things that may have been thrown out during budget time that sounded like a great idea and an easy way to raise some money. ... But when you look and see what the effect is of maxing out all the fees to raise $60,000, you’ve accomplished nothing except for hurting small businesses.”
Finally, in a narrow 4-3 vote, the board voted to provide $84,000 in aid to help organize the Steel Horse Rally, a Bikes, Blues, and BBQ-styled event slated for May 1, 2015. Directors Tracy Pennartz, Keith Lau, and Andre Good, voted against the ordinance while directors Lorenz, George Catsavis, Kevin Settle, and Don Hutchings, voted to affirm it.