The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department wants a seat on the search committee tasked with finding someone to lead the long-range transportation planning agency for central Arkansas.
The request came Wednesday from Jessie Jones, the department's representative on the Metroplan board of directors, at the board's monthly meeting in Little Rock. It came after the nine members of the search committee were announced. The board will vote next month on whether to add Jones, the Highway Department's division engineer for transportation planning and policy.
The search committee was created to find a successor to longtime Executive Director Jim McKenzie. McKenzie and his top deputy, Richard Magee, are retiring at the end of the year. Together, they represent 70 years of experience with the agency.
The size of the search committee was decided at a board retreat last month, with members agreeing with a consultant's recommendation that it have no more than nine members from the agency's 33-member board.
The committee includes the four members of the board's executive committee: Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher, president; Ward Mayor Art Brooke, vice president; Bryant Mayor Jill Dabbs, secretary; and County Judge Jim Baker of Faulkner County, treasurer.
The executive committee met Wednesday morning before the board meeting and agreed to add to the committee Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola, North Little Rock Mayor Joe Smith, County Judge Barry Hyde of Pulaski County, County Judge Jeff Arey of Saline County, and Mayflower Mayor Randy Holland, the board's previous president.
The committee's makeup was "trying to balance the little guys and the big guys, the cities and the counties," McKenzie said after the meeting.
Jones raised the issue of Highway Department representation near the end of the board meeting and noted that she had previously expressed interest in participating. At that point, she renewed her request.
McKenzie replied that hiring an executive director "is not a transportation issue. The department and the transit authority [Rock Region Metro] are special members under our bylaws on transportation issues only."
Metroplan was formed as a regional coordinating agency in the 1950s, took on the title as a council of local governments, and since 1972 has been the federally designated metropolitan planning agency for the region.
Its monthly agenda typically separates transportation items from its regular business.
The representatives of the highway and transit agencies are eligible to vote on the transportation items. Because of that, Jones, as the Highway Department's representative, will not have a vote in the final decision on the next executive director.
But Jones said that transportation items are often the biggest on the board's agenda every month, and the department, as well as Rock Region Metro, are signatories to many of the agreements the board must have with the federal government.
Having a seat on the search committee would help the department in "making sure we all have an executive director that would work well and understand" the department's role on the board, she said.
Smith, the North Little Rock mayor, sided with Jones.
"I'll have to agree with Jessie," he said. "The biggest part of what our director does and his staff is work with the Highway Department. I don't know that I have a problem with it. What's the difference between nine and 10? I'd stand down if you wanted me to get the Highway Department a seat at the table."
Stodola questioned whether board rules would allow a change without suspending those rules.
"Anybody on this board can offer advice, suggestions as the committee narrows down the list of people to be considered, but I thought we had a meeting up in Heber Springs and we voted on this, did we not?" he said.
"It's a process question. I'm not sure how you get to that issue if we already had a meeting where there was a process for making that decision."
Hyde said he agreed with Jones and didn't think adding another member to the committee would make it unmanageable.
"There's not a lot of difference between nine and 10, especially if you're going to have a couple of absences every time," Hyde said. "The Highway Department should be at the table to refer to that relationship and establish that pipeline of communication."
The board voted unanimously on Smith's motion to consider a resolution at next month's meeting that would add the Highway Department representative to the search committee.
Metro on 04/28/2016