Central Arkansas Water board picks 4 commissioner finalists

Four people will be interviewed next week to fill a position on the Central Arkansas Water board of commissioners.

In a closed executive session Thursday, the board selected the finalists from nine applicants.

Whoever is selected for the vacancy will fill out the remaining 2½ years of John Braune's term. Braune resigned. The seat is designated for a Little Rock resident.

The appointment will begin with the Feb. 15 meeting and end in June 2020.

The finalists are:

• Mark Langston, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Life & Specialty Ventures LLC.

• Stuart Mackey, principal at Coldwell Banker Commercial Hathaway Group.

• James McKenzie, the former executive director of Metroplan.

• Gregg Patterson, senior communications coordinator at Arkansas Farm Bureau Federation.

Langston has been with Life & Specialty Ventures for 13 years and was with a subsidiary of the company for seven years before that. In his cover letter he said his background in finance and real estate purchases make him a good complement to the current commissioners.

Mackey has worked in banking, finance, hospital administration and real estate. He was the 2004 and 2017 Little Rock Realtor of the Year, and he chairs the Little Rock Realtors Association's legislative affairs committee. He was formerly a president of the group. He's on several other boards.

McKenzie was the executive director of Metroplan for 28 years. He helped form the Mid-Arkansas Water Alliance, which is a collection of 27 water utilities in six counties. He also served on the Lake Maumelle Watershed Task Force. In his cover letter he wrote that "a century of sound planning and investment decisions have left central Arkansas in a good place" in terms of water sustainability.

Patterson wrote in his cover letter that the need for clean drinking water for consumption, community growth, economic development and recreation is a passion of his. In the 1990s he helped create the Arkansas Water Education Team, a statewide water education program for students, at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. He's worked for Ducks Unlimited, Winrock International and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, in addition to the state Environmental Quality agency and his current job.

The current commissioners plan to try to set up Tuesday interviews of the finalists.

Central Arkansas Water is the largest water supplier in the state, providing water to about 400,000 people in the region.

Its board oversees its financial matters and makes policy decisions.

Metro on 01/12/2018

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