Council Turns Over New Leaf

New Members To Replace Experienced Aldermen

Martin Schoppmeyer, from left, Sarah Marsh and Alan Long, all newly elected Fayetteville City Council members, listen Dec. 18 as utilities director David Jurgens speaks during orientation for new council members at the city administration building in Fayetteville.
Martin Schoppmeyer, from left, Sarah Marsh and Alan Long, all newly elected Fayetteville City Council members, listen Dec. 18 as utilities director David Jurgens speaks during orientation for new council members at the city administration building in Fayetteville.

— The City Council lost 24 years of combined experience this week.

At A Glance

Council Appointments

Current aldermen approved the following appointments this week to the City Council’s five standing committees:

Equipment

-Rhonda Adams

-Adella Gray

-Matthew Petty

-Martin Schoppmeyer

Nominating

-Alan Long

-Sarah Marsh

-Matthew Petty

-Martin Schoppmeyer

Ordinance Review

-Alan Long

-Sarah Marsh

-Matthew Petty

-Martin Schoppmeyer

Street Committee

-Rhonda Adams

-Adella Gray

-Matthew Petty

-Justin Tennant

Water, Sewer and Solid Waste

-Mark Kinion

-Alan Long

-Sarah Marsh

-Martin Schoppmeyer

The following aldermen will serve as City Council liaisons to various boards and committees in 2013:

Active Transportation Advisory Committee

-Alan Long

Advertising and Promotion Commission

-Matthew Petty

-Justin Tennant

Audit Committee

-Adella Gray

Environmental Action Committee

-Sarah Marsh

Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission

-Matthew Petty

Town and Gown Advisory Committee

-Mark Kinion

Washington County Regional Ambulance Authority

-Martin Schoppmeyer

Source: City Of Fayetteville

Brenda Boudreaux, Ward 1 alderwoman, Bobby Ferrell, Ward 3 alderman, and Sarah Lewis, Ward 4 alderwoman, attended their final council meeting Tuesday and will step down at the end of the year.

Their departure presents challenges and opportunities for the remaining five members and for three new faces on the city’s legislative body.

Adella Gray, Ward 1 alderwoman, with six years of experience, and Matthew Petty, Ward 2 alderman, who was first elected in 2008, will become the council’s senior members. Mark Kinion, Ward 2 alderman, Justin Tennant, Ward 3 alderman, and Rhonda Adams, Ward 4 alderwoman, have two years. The outgoing aldermen’s replacements, Sarah Marsh, Ward 1, Martin Schoppmeyer, Ward 3, and Alan Long, Ward 4, will be sworn in for four-year terms Jan. 3.

“I really hate that we’re losing so much great experience,” Tennant said. “Many times we would be dealing with a problem, and Brenda or Bobby would point out something that was done in, say, 2005. They sometimes helped us to not make the same mistake again, or do something that had been done before. You can’t substitute that experience.”

Boudreaux has served on the council for12 years. She and Ferrell were both raised in Fayetteville. Both are 1966 graduates of Fayetteville High School. Boudreaux’s father, Hubert Burch, was a local attorney and Boudreaux ran an architecture and drafting firm before joining the council.

“She probably knows every street, every development in this city,” Ferrell said. “The institutional knowledge she has and has retained of this community, we will miss.”

Looking back on her time on the council, Boudreaux said she is most proud of helping develop the Hillside-Hilltop Overlay District, which requires heightened development standards in areas of town with a more than 15 percent slope.

She was also a regular advocate for animal welfare issues. In 2007, Boudreaux proposed a number of changes to the city code requiring pet owners to keep dogs in 10-foot-by-10-foot pens rather than chained in their yards and increased fees at the Fayetteville Animal Shelter to encourage spay and neuter surgeries. More recently, Boudreaux proposed a trap-neuter-return program aimed at controlling the feral cat population.

Like any long-tenured council member, Boudreaux has sat through her share of controversies, including a 2002 ordinance prohibiting late-night racing at the former Thunder Valley Speedway; a 2004 ordinance prohibiting smoking in most workplaces; the tax-increment financing district that helped pay for the demolition of the Mountain Inn hotel; and the great urban chicken debate of 2008.

“That’s one thing I won’t miss: that gut-wrenching decision-making that you know is going to affect people one way or the other,” Boudreaux said. “That and the long meetings.”

Lewis credited Boudreaux for not being afraid to take on difficult issues.

“She was very willing to speak up about things that weren’t always popular,” Lewis said. “She’s a very good leader in that way.”

Ferrell is one of 11 children. His father, Bill “Groundhog” Ferrell, was an athletic trainer for the University of Arkansas. Ferrell served 19 months in Vietnam with the U.S. Navy’s construction battalion. He enrolled at the University of Arkansas two days after returning to Fayetteville in 1969. Ferrell is a former manager for external affairs at Southwestern Bell and a one-time president and chief executive officer of the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce.

He came to be regarded as the council’s fiercest budget hawk during his eight years in office, and he was often critical of using reserve money to balance the city’s annual budget.

“We have a wants list and a needs list, and we need to take care of our needs list first,” Ferrell has said. “I don’t like government in people’s lives any more than necessary.”

Ferrell said he takes pride, in a way, for being on the losing side of plenty of 7-1 council votes.

“If I think something’s right, or I think something’s wrong and I fall on my sword, I make no apology,” he said.

He will be remembered by many for his signature cackle, usually delivered after a sharp one-liner.

“A little bit of levity is welcome sometimes,” Ferrell told incoming council members at an orientation this week.

Despite his frequent disagreements with other council members, Ferrell rarely let issues get personal.

“He always challenged ideas ... and did it in a professional and thoughtful and reasonable way,” Lewis said.

Lewis, who was elected in 2008, has lived in Fayetteville since 2000. She holds a doctorate degree in environmental dynamics from the University of Arkansas and is a working group director for the university’s Sustainability Consortium.

Lewis has often been pigeonholed as the council’s “greenest” member. She was a staunch advocate for the city’s streamside protection ordinance, which sought to prevent harmful contaminants from entering local waterways through runoff and erosion. She was responsible for a resolution requiring the city to openly document all recycling efforts, was instrumental in developing the city’s first low-impact development manual and served as council liaison to the Environmental Action Committee.

“I think Sarah’s biggest contribution is the scientific background she brings to those conversations,” Petty said.

Ferrell said Lewis helped him understand environmental stewardship can be more than feel-good policy. It can also save the city dollars and cents.

“If you do something right up front, it saves you — and citizens — a lot in the long run,” Ferrell said.

Without Boudreaux, Ferrell and Lewis, the council dynamic is certain to change in some way, although the extent is unclear.

“The ones who have been there, now we have to lead and initiate discussions and bring ideas continually to the council,” Tennant said.

Petty cautioned against reading too much into how the outgoing aldermen’s departure will affect the council’s remaining members.

“This isn’t an episode of ‘The Sopranos’,” Petty said. “No one’s going to make power plays or anything like that.”

Petty said he looks forward to becoming chairman of the council’s Street Committee. He said he wants to continue to diversify Fayetteville’s system of roads, sidewalks and trails and will seek grant money and private partnerships for community development projects.

Adams said she wants to better enforce city code in neighborhoods where university students live and looks forward to improved relationships with the university via the Town and Gown Advisory Committee.

Gray said she anticipates hearing fresh ideas from the council’s newest members.

“I think they’ll be exceptional,” Gray said. “They’ll be fast learners, and I think they will do an excellent job.”

Sarah Marsh, a sustainable building consultant and 2001 graduate of the University of Arkansas, will fill Boudreaux’s position on the council. Marsh has served as volunteer facilitator of the Fayetteville Forward Green Economy Group and was a mentor at Fayetteville High School through the U.S. Green Building Council’s Green Schools Challenge program.

Schoppmeyer, founder and superintendent of Haas Hall Academy in Fayetteville, will replace Ferrell. Schoppmeyer holds a doctorate in educational administration from the University of Arkansas and has been a member of the city’s Civil Service Commission.

Long won a Nov. 27 runoff election against fellow Ward 4 candidate Mike Emery after a hotly contested general election race earlier in the month.

Long is a buyer for an area food batter and breading company and has served as chairman of the Fayetteville Animal Services Advisory Board.

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