FORT SMITH -- Citing a lack of transparency and accountability by city officials, a group of residents has begun a campaign to change Fort Smith's form of government.
Leaders of the group Take Back the Fort 2015 began circulating petitions last week to change the city administrator form of government Fort Smith adopted in 1967 to a mayor-council form.
One of the leaders, Don Bales, said he hoped to get enough signatures by March 2 to get the question on the May 12 special election ballot.
Fort Smith directors are asking residents to vote May 12 to renew the city's 1 percent sales tax for streets and allocate 5 percent of the tax money for development of a city trail system.
City Clerk Sherri Gard said 2,518 signatures will be needed to put the group's initiative issue on the ballot. She said state law requires the number of petition signatures to equal 15 percent of the total votes cast for all candidates in the mayor's race in the most recent general election, which was 2014.
The petition reads: "We, the undersigned, as residents and registered voters of the city of Fort Smith, Arkansas, do hereby petition you to call a special election for the purpose of submitting to the qualified voters of the city of Fort Smith the question of organizing the city of Fort Smith under the Aldermanic form of government (mayor and council)."
Bales said that because the petitions have been in circulation for just a week, he didn't know Friday how many people have signed them so far.
The main reason for the change in governmental form, Bales said, is to have an elected mayor directly accountable to the voters who would have authority over operation of the city, rather than a city administrator who is not accountable directly to the public, Bales said.
Arkansas Municipal League Executive Director Don Zimmerman said Friday that in the mayor-council form of government, the elected mayor is the chief executive of the city and is in charge of day-to-day operations.
In the city administrator form, the authority of the day-to-day operations in the city lies with a city administrator who is hired by the board. The elected mayor presides over board meetings and does not have a vote on the board but has veto power.
Mayor Sandy Sanders pointed out that it takes only four of the seven city directors to fire the administrator.
"But now, the board feels he is fulfilling the board's wishes," Sanders said. "We tell him what to do, and he does it."
Bales responded that the directors couldn't decide whether to give the administrator power to hire and fire department heads, casting doubt on their ability to decide to fire the administrator if the question came up.
A mission statement of Take Back the Fort 2015 said, in part, that the current form of government in Fort Smith diffuses responsibility over the Board of Directors and allows the hired city administrator, currently Ray Gosack, to make "key decisions" on how the city is run.
Bales said, for example, that city directors couldn't decide at last Tuesday's meeting whether to allow Gosack to retain the authority to hire and fire city department heads without board approval, even though two directors wanted the vote.
The board decided to postpone the vote on the proposed ordinance for more discussion at the request of the two new directors on the board, Don Hutchings and Tracy Pennartz.
Another leader in the Take Back the Fort 2015 movement, Jack Swink, said the city's form of government should be changed because of directors' lack of transparency and accountability in the handling of wastewater-system improvements mandated by the federal government that will require the board to increase utility bills by 200 percent.
He also said a 1 percent prepared-food tax that city officials sought in 2011, which he actively opposed, was not necessary to fund the city's convention center. He said the lack of available funds was due to the board's inability to efficiently spend taxpayers' money.
"There have been other incidents where special interest groups have been forgiven loans, water true-ups have been lost due to untimely billing and other incidents," Swink wrote in an email Friday. "These are some reasons I feel the people, the taxpayers, deserve better."
City Director Keith Lau said Friday that he did not support changing the form of government. He said if the right people are in the government, the form shouldn't matter.
Lau and Sanders said voters electing a mayor to run the city run the risk of choosing someone who is politically popular but lacks the skills to run the day-to-day operations of a city of 90,000 people.
"For a city our size, we want a professional person with expertise in operating a multimillion-dollar operation with hundreds of employees," Sanders said.
Lau said electing a mayor to run a city is a double-edged sword. Fort Smith switched to the administrator form of government in 1967 to escape the "cronyism" experienced under the city commission form, he said. Having a mayor in charge of the city's operations could invite its return.
Zimmerman said that under the mayor-council form of government, the city attorney, clerk and treasurer, along with the mayor, are elected. He said cities would have the option of combining the clerk and treasurer positions.
Fort Smith is one of three cities in the state with the city administrator form of government, Zimmerman said. The other two are Barling and Siloam Springs.
Five cities in the state have the city manager form of government, Zimmerman said: Little Rock, Hot Springs, Arkadelphia, Hope and Texarkana.
The city manager differs from the city administrator form in that the mayor is usually chosen from among the seven elected city directors, and the directors then hire an administrator to run the city's daily operations. Little Rock's mayor is elected by residents, however.
Fayetteville, Maumelle, Camden, Newport, DeQueen and Benton have given up the city manager form and gone to the mayor-council form in the past 15 to 20 years, Zimmerman said.
NW News on 02/09/2015