Caleb Norris went from being uncertain about his career to becoming the city attorney of Maumelle and now mayor-elect.
He gives his wife, Ashley, a lot of the credit.
“My wife is my biggest influence. I met her around that time when I was in college [at the University of Central Arkansas]. She has been a tremendous support and more of an encourager,” he said. “Her ambition and my desire to want to be a better husband is really where I started taking things seriously in college. She’s been a tremendous support.”
Norris, 39, who had served on the Maumelle City Council for two years, said he originally expected a runoff in the three-person mayoral race, but Norris won with 52 percent of the vote. Mayor Mike Watson, who served for 12 years, didn’t run for re-election.
Norris said he’d been thinking about running for the office for some time.
“It was a very gradual process, as being city attorney, just seeing things I would do differently,” he said.
“The mayor had expressed early on after the last election that he didn’t know if he wanted to do another election. I talked to people for two years. Originally, I started off saying, ‘Not no, but heck, no.’ That softened up, obviously,” Norris said.
“I have found being city attorney a little awkward coming off the City Council, where you’re supposed to have opinions, and going [in as] city attorney,” where it was not his job to give a personal opinion, he said.
“I tend to be a pretty opinionated guy,” Norris said. “I wanted City Council members to know when I was giving an opinion that it was my legal opinion, not personal opinion.”
The California native came to Arkansas to live with his dad and attended school for a semester in Cabot, then headed back to California to graduate from high school.
“From there, I did a semester of community college before enlisting in the Marine Corps. It was bittersweet; I’d do it again for a first time but not for a second time,” he said, adding that he was discharged early because of being overweight.
“I was living in southern California and had no college, not a whole lot of opportunities, and my dad convinced me to move back to Arkansas,” he said.
Norris said he had a lot of moves in a short period of time — Little Rock to Sherwood to Conway.
His father was a car salesman, but although Norris worked in dealerships, he didn’t see a future in it.
“My dad may have loved the car business, but I wasn’t particularly fond of it,” Norris said. “I was in the car business and disillusioned with that.”
When he moved to Conway to work, things changed.
“At the time, I was living right across the street from UCA. I thought I’d give that college thing a try again … and ended up falling in love with learning, as cheesy as it is,” he said. “I definitely wasn’t that way in high school.
“I had always wanted to go to college, but it always seemed like something I’d do tomorrow.”
At UCA, he majored in philosophy and minored in economics; then he went to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law. It wasn’t totally out of the blue that Norris picked a law career.
“My first-ever job was in a law firm,” he said, working in a large fax-and-copier room and running faxes to and from attorneys. His mother was a legal assistant and later a paralegal in California.
“What really inspired me while at UCA — it was a way to educate myself about how to make change,” Norris said.
As soon as he graduated from UALR, he started running for a City Council seat and practicing law.
“I hung out my own shingle for a couple of months,” he said.
He won the City Council seat and became an attorney with the Arkansas Municipal League, working with multiple cities, for just over two years before becoming Maumelle’s first full-time city attorney. He’s been in that role for four years.
Norris said his biggest project has been rewriting the city’s sign ordinances.
“There’s a big case from a few years back, Reed v. Town of Gilbert. … Most of the ways cities regulate sign ordinances is unconstitutional. You’ll see more panhandlers out and about nowadays because you can’t prohibit people from panhandling anymore. So that has changed things,” he said.
“Probably the most enjoyable aspect I’ve had of being city attorney is working at the Police Department and serving as prosecutor in the Maumelle District Court,” Norris said. “That’s where I’m at today … at a desk in the Police Department, tucked away.
“I just enjoy working with the police officers, and they have their own culture and mentality. The mission is good and entertaining, and seeing the underbelly, if you will, is intriguing.”
As a city councilman, “my crowning achievement, as silly as it sounds, is getting City Council meetings video-recorded and posted online,” he said. “I’m a big-picture guy who likes to be open and inclusive in the decision-making process, and I think it’s a little bit of a change.”
Norris said he gets along “very well” with outgoing Mayor Mike Watson, but their personalities and philosophies are different.
“I’m more of a people person,” Norris said. “The current mayor was very much a workhorse, never secretive. Just the act of communicating and bringing people in was secondary.
“I think we can do a better job of communicating.”
The City Council has already approved hiring a communications coordinator for the city.
The focus will be not just on press releases, “but especially in social media. Maumelle has a very active community on social media, community-run groups and Facebook pages.”
Norris said incorrect information is sometimes circulated, “and we want to get the correct information and solicit their feedback on things. I’m a huge transparency guy.”
He said Watson’s expertise in surveying effectively propelled many city projects forward.
Watson, 61, said he thinks Norris is a good choice for his replacement.
“I think he’ll do a good job,” Watson said. “He’s going to do things differently from me; I’ve just got to know that. We’re from different generations. But I think he’ll do good things for the city of Maumelle.”
Watson said he and Norris plan to sit down together to “bring him up to speed on things in my brain.” However, Watson said that as city attorney the past four years, Norris has been involved in most of the city’s projects.
“The main thing I was concerned about was just an easy transition, and I think this will be,” Watson said.
Norris will have his own projects and goals.
“Maumelle has an interesting dynamic; it’s a new … city,” he said. “Some folks who moved out here 20 years ago, 30 years ago, when there were 5,000 people, thought they were moving to a small town. It’s growing. Some groups want the last house built to be theirs.”
Norris said the city’s population is listed at 17,182.
“We’re thinking we’re probably closer to 20,000 now,” he said.
Maumelle is poised for even more growth, Norris said.
“One of the biggest things is, we just had a big groundbreaking for Maumelle’s third entrance.” He said it will be a mile west of the Interstate 430-interchange. The groundbreaking was held at the intersection of White Oak Crossing and Short Marche Road.
It’s a project Watson worked on for his entire 12-year tenure.
“It actually started in 1996, with the first feasibility study,” Watson said. “If you had asked in ’07, will it not be built yet in 12 years, I would have told you no way,” he said, laughing. “It just takes longer than you think.”
Norris said the access is much needed.
“We’ve had a very linear egress and ingress — one road. That should help with traffic congestion but should also be a tremendous opportunity,” he said. “It opens up a big chunk of land. We’re hoping to get economic development that we can’t get when we’re pulling Maumelle numbers, the number of cars that go by a business. We’re hoping to get restaurants and retail and shopping.”
Norris ran for mayor on a six-point plan.
“My No. 1 issue is public safety,” he said. “We do good out here, and I think that’s one reason people move out here, … but there’s still room for improvement.”
His other goals are economic development; fiscal responsibility — “long-term financial planning, more deliberate”; implementing grassroots government, “less decisions coming out of City Hall unilaterally and more collaborative efforts”: modernizing the city, utilizing newer technologies in several areas, including communication; and last, but not least, beautifying Maumelle.
“It’s a beautiful community, but I think we could do more to preserve and enhance our natural aesthetics with some beautiful open spaces, trees,” he said, looking at ducks, geese and a swan on Lake Valencia by City Hall.
Norris has come a long way from not having a clear focus to becoming a city councilman, a city attorney and now mayor-elect.
“I didn’t have a direction,” he said. “Part of it has to do with going from a big city, where you feel inconsequential,” he said, and moving to a small town. “I sometimes tell people, I love the motto ‘The Natural State,’ but I like ‘The Land of Opportunity.’ There’s tremendous opportunity here.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.