Next week, Fayetteville alderman will have their initial discussions, in preparation for a June 17 City Council meeting, on proposed changes to the way the Walton Arts Center is governed.

The City Council is the final of three partners to consider approving fundamental changes to the arts center's governing documents. The others -- the non-profit Walton Arts Center Council and the University of Arkansas -- have already signed off. The City Council should join them. The proposed changes will protect the city's and the university's investments in the center's current site on Dickson Street and clear the way for the arts organization to fulfill its regional mission.

Some may not remember, but the Walton Arts Center would not exist today but for a trio of key players: Sam and Helen Walton, who donated $5 million to the UA for its creation; the university; and the city of Fayetteville, whose taxpayers provided $3.5 million for construction and $1.5 million to help launch an operational endowment. The documents drawn up to establish the arts center, however, did not clearly envision its expansion outside the city of Fayetteville. That said, the arts center has, from its beginning, been a regional organization with regional goals.

Because of its Fayetteville-centered origins and its critical role in reviving Dickson Street, the people of Fayetteville have long thought of the arts center as their own, much like a proud parent.

The child has grown up. The arts center's drive to expand its physical presence outside Fayetteville -- the Arkansas Music Pavilion in Rogers is now open and the center hopes to one day build a second performance theater in Bentonville -- has strained the limits of the documents used to create it. Its leaders -- and major supporters like the Walton Family Foundation -- took notice in 2010 when Fayetteville City Attorney Kit Williams advised his City Council members that, if they wanted to do battle to keep the Walton Arts Center from expanding beyond the city limits, he believed he could make a compelling case.

To their credit, city leaders chose not to engage in that fight, opting to adhere to the original regional goals rather than provincialism. Amending the founding documents to clarify that mission is what the City Council is taking up now.

For most donors and patrons of the arts, that's all inside baseball. What they really want is simple: great performances, manageable prices and arts advocacy. On those points, the arts center as always delivered.

But Fayetteville residents rightly expect something more, due to their significant role in the arts center's founding. They expect that despite the center's expansion plans, the Fayetteville facility will remain a critical part of the region's creative and cultural community by continuing to provide -- at the very least -- the same quantity and quality of programming there all have come to expect.

In exchange, the Walton Arts Center Council's status as an "agent" of the city and university would go away. Neither entity is in the business of arts programming and doesn't want to be, but they do want to protect their investments in facilities and and quality-of-life factors.

A strong, thriving Walton Arts Center -- on Dickson Street, on an open-air stage in Rogers, or on a as-yet-unnamed piece of property in Bentonville -- is vital to Northwest Arkansas. All of the arts center's founding partners moving forward together is the way to achieve that.

We think the proposed changes accomplishes that, to the extent documents can.