Residents asked for Fort Smith’s good, bad points

FORT SMITH - Residents are being asked for their ideas about what’s good and bad about Fort Smith as part of an effort to revise the city’s vision of itself for the next 20 years.

About 20 people attended the first of three meetings to be held over two days to provide input for Miami-based Wallace Roberts Todd LLC on its vision of Fort Smith’s future.

In opening the first meeting Monday morning, Mayor Sandy Sanders said a lot of things have changed since the plan was updated 11 years ago, and it needs to be revised.

Fort Smith hired the company to work with a 30-member resident task force to update the comprehensive plan over 18 months.

Wallace Roberts Todd team leader Sylvia Vartas, who led Monday’s meeting, divided residents into three groups and asked them to discuss their ideas on Fort Smith’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Although they worked independently, the groups seemed to agree that among Fort Smith’s strengths are the Arkansas River, the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, the city’s natural beauty, workforce, central national location, transportation systems and history.

Among weaknesses the groups named are bureaucratic obstructions to development, pessimism and apathy, inability to retain young people, urban decay, unresponsive city government, and social and cultural disparities.

The groups said opportunities include the ample land for development, the riverfront, tourism - including the U.S. Marshals Museum - developing high-tech industries and attracting young professionals to the city, Chaffee Crossing, and the university.

The groups saw as threats the loss of population, lack of residents’ involvement, the city’s image as lacking educated people, crime, city government and lack of jobs.

Vartas said the company will use input from the three meetings to create a draft vision statement for the resident task force to work with in the fall.

For those who don’t want to attend the meetings, surveys are available on the website futurefortsmith.com.

Vartas also said kits in a format similar to the three public input meetings can be downloaded from the site for groups to conduct their own meetings.

The second meeting was Monday evening at the Fort Smith Public Library. The third meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. today at the Fort Smith Senior Activity Center at 2700 Cavanaugh Road.