BENTONVILLE — Residents who want the city to build an animal shelter will have to wait a couple more months to see whether tax dollars will be used to pay for its design.
City Council and staff members recently discussed waiting until the new mayor takes office in January before allocating money to the project. Mayor Bob McCaslin didn’t seek re-election. Stephanie Orman and Jim Webb are in a runoff election Dec. 4. Both have expressed support for the animal shelter.
City staff members first need to provide input on how the shelter will be run, said Jake Harper, director of finance and administration.
“When you start talking about how you’re going to design it, that goes hand-in-hand with how you’re going to operate it,” Harper said.
Bill Burckart, a council member and animal shelter task force member, told the council Nov. 13 about the task force’s past six months of work looking at what it would take for the city to have a shelter.
Council members discussed next year’s budget for the first time at the meeting. No vote was taken. The City Council plans to discuss the budget today with tentative plans to approve it Tuesday.
The city is in the first year of a three-year contract with Centerton to take lost and stray dogs to the Centerton shelter.
Burckart said design work would cost about $350,000 and would have to begin by January to have the shelter built and open by the time the contract with Centerton ends.
Centerton Mayor Bill Edwards has said the partnership between the two cities is a great one, and Bentonville could continue to bring its dogs to the Centerton shelter if the construction deadline isn’t met.
The total cost of the shelter isn’t known, Burckart said. The designs will provide an estimate.
“With the leadership change coming in January, and that being such a big capital project and go-forward expenditure, I think we’d be doing Mayor McCaslin and the new mayor the benefit of waiting until January to have a budget adjustment,” council member Chad Goss said.
A capital campaign to raise money for the shelter will be needed and a nonprofit organization will have to partner with the city to provide services, the task force determined.
The 2019 budget includes $16.2 million in capital improvements, 27 new full-time positions and one additional part-time position.
One of the full-time jobs is for a chief building official in the Building Inspection Department. The position’s base pay would be $66,747.
Other positions in the proposed budget include six firefighters with a base pay of $39,139 and two fire inspectors with a base pay of $50,752. The pay for the eight positions would be $336,338 annually.