All mayor and aldermen positions in each of the seven cities in Saline County are up for grabs in the November election.
The Saline County clerk's office will begin accepting applications for the open positions at 8 a.m. Friday. The filing period will end at noon Aug. 15.
The open positions are for Benton mayor and 10 aldermen; Bryant mayor and eight aldermen; Bauxite mayor and five aldermen; Alexander mayor and eight aldermen; Haskell mayor and eight aldermen; Shannon Hills mayor and six aldermen; and Traskwood mayor and three aldermen.
All mayor positions are four-year terms, and aldermen positions are two-year terms.
Bauxite also has a recorder/treasurer position open. City clerks and city attorneys in Bryant and Benton also are open. All of those positions are four-year terms.
In Bryant, staff attorney Chris Madison cannot run for the position because he does not live in the city limits. Madison was brought on as the staff attorney -- and de facto city attorney -- in March 2012, he said.
During the last election, no one ran for the position, and Nga Mahfouz -- who worked under the city's previous mayor -- was kept on as city attorney. Under Arkansas Code Annotated 14-43-315, a first-class city with a population under 50,000 allows a city council to appoint a resident attorney for the office if no one is elected for the spot.
When Mahfouz resigned in January 2012, Mayor Jill Dabbs appointed Doyle Webb to serve in the interim. Madison replaced him.
But this go-around, the position will return to an elected one.
A Bryant ordinance sets an elected city attorney's salary at $10,200 a year, though the incoming elected official can petition the council to change that amount.
That same ordinance mandates that the elected city attorney live in the city limits.
"Given the dynamics of the politics in Bryant, having an elected attorney would help defuse some of those issues," Madison said. "Having an elected attorney would provide insulation from the political short circuits that occur between the branches and allow opinions to be taken at face value."
Metro on 07/24/2014