The City of Fort Smith Board of Directors convened for a study session on October 28, 2025, to review five departmental Capital Improvement Plans (CIPs) spanning streets, public works, parks, solid waste, and transit. A significant portion of the discussion focused on fiscal constraints resulting from a reduction in sales tax revenue, staffing challenges, and controversial infrastructure projects, specifically the Parrot Island water slides and the proposed indoor sports complex. The board also initiated a discussion on a new ordinance to increase oversight of major capital projects exceeding $500,000 not included in existing CIPs.
Good evening and welcome to the fourth Miss City Board of Directors Study Session on this October 28th 2025. These meetings are being televised live for the benefit of residents who cannot be here with us in person. Uh today at this time we will go right to the first item on the agenda. Thank you. Yes, sir. This evening the board will be reviewing five departmental capital improvement plans. A capital improv improvement plan is a tool used to schedule and prioritize major projects over several years. The first CIP plan that will be reviewed is for streets, bridges, and associated drainage, and coming to the microphone is Ben Marts, who is the NM interim director of our engineering department. Hello. I apologize. Okay. So you all have already seen this plan. There's been it's basically the exact same plan that y'all saw during the study session. Um the I think there's two items on there, one dealing with um right of way abandonment around the airport, and also general and extension that are the two added items, but other than that, uh with the exception of items being moved from 2026 to 2025 that finished up early. This is the same plan that was presented at the previous study session. With that, um we've I went ahead and presented the 10-year plan here because the original five-year plan could not um contain the the plan as was in the previous year due to the the reduction of the sales tax. And so in order to be able to show those projects being pushed off into further years, I wanted to be able to kind of show how that would look potentially. And um I'm open to any questions or guidance that y'all may have on this. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. This time we will uh go to the board. Are there any questions? Director Newmart, you recognize Ben, thanks for sending this and thanks for the the corrected item. You know, I originally looked at this and and I I had a couple concerns, but let's let's uh just kind of level set for everybody. This the funding for this CIP comes from where? This is all the sales and use tax, which is the five eighths. So we've we've got you got some uh one percent um at the beginning of the year, and then once we made that adjustment, it's five eighth cents. So that's correct. You can see that on the uh 2025 um item where I've shown the one percent, which went through, I believe it was uh May. Okay, and then dropped off. Right. So where we were getting about 30 million, we're going forward, we'll get about 18 million a year to be able to fund um streets and and drainage projects. So um I look uh as I was looking at this, I kind of I was I was going back and forth a little bit because there there is at the beginning of 25, there's 51 million dollars there. So that's carry over from from some uh from previous years, and then also the the combination of the one percent and the five eight percent for the for the year. So it leaves us with a total total funds available is 74 million. Um looks like we're spending the expenditures are about 26 million, 27 million, actually. And so it's so it looks like we got 27 million, 30 million, 30 million. Uh and I was looking at this and I was just having some questions and concerns about you know the spin down of that, but in reality, these are these are sales tax funds, the citizen the expectation is we spend those dollars. Correct. And the the expectation is we're not carrying over more money than we should. Um because the citizen the expectation is the citizens want this money spent. Right. So we're we're care we're carrying over a large fund balance, 51 million. But in reality, when we get into later years, is this fund or as we get into the the remaining 10 years on this, uh we'll be spending at about 18 to 19 actually in in 35. We're projecting if no if no major change happens, we're projecting about 20 million dollars. So we start to see that increase as we go. So I think that's important to understand. I just had some questions about the the larger spend in the in the beginning of the of the the first few years, but it makes sense. We want to spend what the citizens have asked us to spend in terms of all of these items. So I think that's important for folks to understand and to know.