HOT SPRINGS — A group of residents with financial and business experience will be taking a look at Hot Springs’ books and helping set some priorities.
The Hot Springs Board of Directors has formed a Major Projects Citizen Task Force, which met for the first time last week to take a fresh look at plans for big projects sitting unfunded in the city’s queue and come up with ideas on how to make them happen.
The task force isn’t the first example of Hot Springs or Garland County putting the talents of its substantial retiree and business communities to good use.
Recently, the city received recommendations from a task force of residents that prioritized some public-safety issues and presented funding options to the Board of Directors.
Garland County also saw success with a group of about two dozen residents formed to study overcrowding problems at the jail. That committee broke into smaller groups and made recommendations on funding, location and other matters for a new jail, but also spread the word about the need for a new jail.
“Because they were community leaders and they were out talking to the community, it helped a lot,” County Judge Rick Davis said.
Two sales-tax referendums amounting to a 1 percent sales tax were passed Oct. 11 by a double-digit margin to pay for the construction, operations and maintenance of a new jail. A previous attempt at passing a sales-tax referendum to address various public-safety needs — including renovations at the jail — failed in 2008.
In Hot Springs, the city board put City Manager Lance Hudnell in charge of assembling the major-projects task force to consist of a dozen residents, including three bankers, several retired and current business executives, a certified public accountant, a transportation expert and a former utility executive.
“We got a mix of folks with deep roots in the community or people who are new to the community or in between,” Hudnell said.
“There are some members who have perspective of what else is happening in the community so we can coordinate the big picture moving forward and know what other projects might need funding down the pipe as well.”
The group’s members agreed that they wanted to examine city finances first to get a better understanding of what has held up the projects they’ll be looking into and what will make it hard to allocate funding.
Hudnell told the group at its inaugural meeting that one of the big issues the city is facing in terms of revenue is stagnant city sales-tax revenue. He said the city has had at most a 1 percentage point annual increase in sales-tax revenue since 2008.
Some of the matters on the back burner include publicsafety projects such as a new radio system, a solution to the police and fire department pension problems, and a new fire station.
Also on the list is the demolition of an old building at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts; completing Higdon Ferry Road; putting a new roof on City Hall; a trails system proposal; parking-deck improvements; and animal services projects, among others.
Hudnell told the task force that he’d like it to have something to report to the city board early next year, but with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up and other time constraints of the season, he would be willing to postpone an end date.
“The last thing we want to do is dictate to the board how to operate or what answers to come back with,” he said.
“We want their perspective, their ideas, their opinions and priorities. It’s not just about them — when they come back to us with their ideas, it gets our creative juices flowing too.”
Other Arkansas cities have also placed a priority on residents’ involvement and expertise when struggling with financial needs and solutions. The Conway City Council is considering recommendations from a task force of residents that began meeting in March.
Conway Mayor Tab Townsell said that task force was formed from a variety of residents who had some financial background or other skills that would help them consider city financial matters.
“Actually in this particular task force, we had to in a sense change our expectations because of the immensity of the task we gave them,” Townsell said.
“They came up with some valuable advice,” Townsell said. “They suggested first and foremost that we examine our wages and change our step-pay program.”
Townsell said Conway has placed a premium on residents’ input in the past as well. The city has also formed a parks and recreation advisory committee, a transportation advisory committee, a bike-plan task force and a tree board, he said.
The Hot Springs task force asked Hudnell to contact Conway officials for input on how its task forces perform and get tips on how to proceed.
“We want to learn whatever we can from their process,” said Oaklawn General Manager Eric Jackson, a task force member.
“We also want to save some time if they have recommendations for areas that might be dead ends or other areas that may be worth looking into.”
Hudnell, Davis and Townsell said they plan to continue using residents on future committees.
“It gets people involved, and that needs to happen more and more if we are going to change things,” Davis said. “It can’t be done all by the [county] judge or by the Quorum Court. We need to get all of their opinions and try to work through the issues together.”
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 10/31/2011