Fort Smith Board of Directors Strategic Workshop - August 26, 2025
Fort Smith Board of Directors Strategic Workshop - August 26, 2025
The Fort Smith Board of Directors held a full-day strategic workshop on August 26, 2025, facilitated by Kendall Ross of the University of Arkansas Fort Smith. The workshop focused on defining core values, reviewing the city's mission and vision, conducting a SWOT analysis, and setting strategic priorities for long-term impact. The board used a blank-slate approach, voting exercises, and small-group discussions to align on the city's direction. The session was audio recorded only.
Discussion Items
-
Values Definition: Each director proposed three values for the city, then voted with five dots each. The board combined new values with those from 2023, ultimately defining six values: safety, quality core services, quality of life, opportunity, financial responsibility, and work ethic (hardworking community). Each value was described in a paragraph, with work ethic noted as "hardworking community" and emphasizing innovation, intelligence, and contribution.
-
Mission and Vision Review: The board examined the existing mission statement ("The City of Fort Smith is committed to providing high quality resident focused services for the advancement of a thriving community") and revised it to: "The City of Fort Smith is dedicated to offering resident focused services, maintaining reliable infrastructure, and fostering an environment that promotes economic growth for the benefit of a thriving community." The vision statement ("Fort Smith strives to be a dynamic business, family, and military friendly destination that welcomes people from all over the world") was reaffirmed without changes, with directors noting its alignment with the military mission and community values.
-
SWOT Analysis: The board identified strengths (e.g., geographic location, UAFS, FMS military presence, water supply, landfill, healthcare), weaknesses (e.g., aging infrastructure, reactive mindset, lack of infill development, poverty, strategic alignment issues), opportunities (e.g., riverfront development, military mission support, AI infrastructure, remote work, less regulation), and threats (e.g., rapidly growing infrastructure costs, federal programming cuts, competitive wages, cybersecurity, erosion of zoning). Voting with six dots each highlighted top strengths and weaknesses.
-
Strategic Priorities: Directors split into two groups to develop priorities based on the SWOT. Group 1 proposed: 1) Create a military/defense industry support officer within city leadership to provide monthly updates and act as a liaison; 2) Host a riverfront development summit with property owners and interested parties by end of 2025; 3) Develop a long-term infrastructure reinvestment policy. Group 2 proposed: 1) Market geographic location to attract industry and tourism, possibly through an economic development commission and targeted outreach; 2) Reimagine the city budget process (e.g., zero-based budgeting) with quarterly reviews; 3) Establish a public works department reorganization, including in-house street overlay and waterline repair teams.
Key Outcomes
- Adopted Values: Safety, quality core services, quality of life, opportunity, financial responsibility, and work ethic (hardworking community) – with full descriptions to be finalized.
- Revised Mission Statement: The board agreed on the new mission statement as drafted above, pending final wordsmithing.
- Reaffirmed Vision Statement: No changes to the existing vision.
- Six Strategic Priorities: The board identified six action items, which require further refinement into SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound).
- Next Steps: Staff will compile the workshop materials (values, mission, vision, SWOT, priorities) and distribute by Tuesday, September 2, 2025. The board committed to scheduling budget workshops in September to align the budget with the new priorities, with sessions likely on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Directors also agreed to make the strategic workshop an annual event, ideally in spring 2026, to inform the next budget cycle.
Meeting Transcript
Thank you everyone for being here. This is a very important session that we've been having. Strategic workshop. Thanks, Kendra, for again for again joining us and be here to help navigate us through this process. Let's make the most of it. And let the work we do today manifest us next year and far into the future. So take a minute to grab something over here that got snacks, beverages, and all. And with that, Kendall, if you want to open up and we'll we'll move forward. Sounds good to me. We'll make this as informal as possible. Help yourself with the food and water and the restroom is right there if you need that, no worries. I think you guys have seen me before. Lee and I met for the first time today. And so uh I appreciate the opportunity to come and to kind of facilitate this. Honestly, that's what I am as a facilitator. I'm going to try to get out of the way while you develop the values of the city. We're going to take a look at the mission and the vision. Um we'll take a look at your strategic plan as we move forward. Um I thought I would start with um my background because some of you don't know my background. Um I grew up in Mulro, Oklahoma. You can thank me later for that. Um Fort Smith is kind of like home to me. I mean, if you grew up in Mulro, Oklahoma, if you did anything, you came to Fort Smith. You came here to skate, that's what I did when I was a kid, or see movies or things like that. So Fort Smith is kind of home to me. Uh I'm a mechanical engineer by trade. You may go, well, why in the world are you leading a strategic planning? Well, uh, it it's been an interesting career path for me. Uh I was an engineering manager at Ream for about a dozen years. I left there and went into the ministry full-time. I was an executive pastor here in Fort Smith for 20 years. Uh then I moved to Ozark. Technically live in Denning, Arkansas, but no one knows where Denning, Arkansas is. Uh it's a suburb of Altus, uh, and so there's like 207 of us. It's a suburb of Altas. That's the way I look at it. Uh so I pastor a church in Ozark. Um, but I've been at the University of Arkansas, Fort Smith now for uh about seven years full-time, about 10 years as a faculty member, adjunct faculty member. Love what I do. Um I started teaching uh leadership and management, um, got my degree in organizational leadership, and from that I learned how to lead a strategic planning sessions. We do a lot of this for businesses and industry here in town. Um we've even been to um a university in Missouri to do the exact same thing for them. So um love what I do. I need to give you my uh proprietary statement that you can't see because the sun is on the screen. All content on this slide and in this presentation is the intellectual property members of our sophomore smith, reproduction distribution, or presentation of this material whole or in part without written incentive UAFS. Thank goodness we got that out there. All right, here we go. Um most of you are really familiar with what we do at the Center for Economic Development. We're located down at the Bakery District. Um we now we in the past we had three centers that were a part of the uh the bakery district center for economic development.
openpublica.com