OPENPUBLICA · PUBLIC MEETING RECORD
Record of Proceedings

Fort Smith Board of Directors Study Session - April 14, 2026

Meeting PortalTuesday, April 14, 2026
BodyFort Smith, Arkansas
SessionMeeting Portal
DateTuesday, April 14, 2026
StatusFILED
Video Record
0:00 / 2:48:53

Transcript — Verbatim
3:14

Good evening, and welcome to the Ford Miss Cedar Board of Register session on this April 14th of 2026.

3:22

At this time, we will go right to the first item on the agenda.

3:26

Yes, sir.

3:27

The first item is amendment number one with Half Associates and Mr.

3:30

Todd Mickey, the Director of Engineering will discuss the Acme Brick stormwater mitigation ponds.

3:36

This was tabled from last week's regular meeting.

3:44

Myself and Alan Beaver from Half Associates are here to present on this design amendment and answer any questions you may have.

5:00

I don't know if this laser pointer works, but you want to be able to see it anyway, is a consent decree portion of the sewer main that has to be upsized for additional flow capacity anyway.

5:09

So in this process, we are hiring them to design this as uh kill two birds with one stone type of project for something we already would have to design on the east side near the additional pond.

5:21

There is a sewer line relocation that is not an upsize in the consent decree, but is a NASCO-rated four or five pipe, so it needs to be addressed.

5:31

So we're also asking them to uh relocate that so that the pond can be there to maximize flood storage.

5:41

This drainage area map in is presented in three locations.

5:46

The East Pond is a basin of 194 acres, which will take floodwaters from this entire section of the town up to the old ACME brick administration building area, which has been demolished, of course, but we will dig that out to maximize its its usage.

6:05

But all 194 acres of this area of town will drain there and be able to be stored there in the event of a flood, and is going to be the most amount of area that's treated.

6:19

The greenish area there is approximately 89 acres for the pond basin in the quarry itself, and then an additional 54 acres that's rerouted from uh uphill to come into this location.

6:36

So that would go into the most visible of the three ponds.

6:40

The pink area is approximately 66 acres, and that is the area that will not be normally seen.

6:49

You'll have to walk back there to see it, but it can hold approximately 66 acres worth, and this will maximize as much flood control as we can downstream.

7:01

So I'm gonna hand this off to Alan Deaver, and he's gonna kind of go through the uh project from kickoff to where we are at today.

7:12

Hi there, good evening.

7:14

Um yeah, just to start, I feel like I'm really loud.

7:17

Just to start, uh I'd like to go through where we started from and uh and and how we got here.

7:24

Um like Todd said, in January of 2025, we were executed to do the stormwater mitigation design, um, and then within the first quarter of the year, uh, moved through all of our uh data gathering phases for you know survey environmental and geotechnical investigations and then quickly realized after receiving that geotechnical information that there was a very large hard layer of uh sandstone a little bit higher and and would be requiring us to remove it in order to do that two-pond scenario.

8:06

So we quickly pivoted and came up with an alternative scenario that uh was presented to staff and the design team in April of 2025 as a cost-saving measure ultimately, and we can get into those uh specifics here in a bit.

8:23

And then we um adopted that, moved forward with 30 percent plans delivery in May, and then um at that time a decision needed to be made on pursuing all dry pond scenarios, or if we were going to consider the quarry pond in a wet design.

8:42

And uh at the time we were directed to pursue full dry detention basins.

8:50

So we moved forward with that and delivered 60 percent plans in August.

8:54

And since then we've been in somewhat of a holding pattern awaiting RDG master plan concepts, or we were in a holding pattern, awaiting RDG master plan concepts and working with the city on their internal discussions, decision making, uh supporting the master planning efforts, and conducting site visits with uh with stakeholders.

9:19

Um and at this time we're ready to proceed forward with staff direction and your approval of our amendment.

9:26

Uh the next slide here highlights the differences, I guess the comparison of our original contract amount and then what's before you for approval for review and approval.

9:39

Um that original contract executed in January of 2025 of the 466,000, we have uh spent 330,000, and that is paying for our subconsultants, environmental engineers, geotechnical engineers, our survey, and then got us through 60% plan design, and then just assisting from that point on with the city decision making.

10:04

And so that leaves us about $90,000 left in uh in design, and then the full budget allotted for the bidding and construction phase, uh, which has obviously not been touched yet.

10:17

So on the new amendment, as you can see, we've broken it out by each item that is in the amendment for your approval, uh, along with their design fee amounts and the approximate percentages that they are of the total amendment.

10:32

And throughout the next handful of slides, we'll dive into each one of these briefly and give uh some background and explanation for each and provide an opportunity for questions.

10:42

And so, if if ever as we're going through, please, by all means, at the end of each slide, we can take some questions and make sure that there's clarity on each one.

10:54

All right, so the first of which we'll start with is the decision on the on the wet west creek pond, excuse me.

11:03

And as I mentioned before in the timeline breakdown, we provided this third pond option fairly quickly, or as an option uh to pursue, and that is really the we're calling it a pond, but it's really just a berm across the low area in that valley between the two ridges in order to create that storage volume.

11:24

So actually, very little little construction work to to construct this pond, but we get some meaningful storage behind it.

11:34

Um the implementation of this pond was done for several reasons, but ultimately boils down to uh attempting to save the city time and money.

11:43

Uh firstly, um, in an effort to do so, it will reduce the amount of rock, as we've said multiple times, so it reduces the amount of rock excavation needed significantly.

11:56

Um at the end of the day, we have a target volume of water that we have to you know store for these large uh storm events, and we have a limited area on the property to do so.

12:09

And so specifically on the east basin, where there is uh uh definitely some limited area and where the largest amount of water is going to.

12:18

Uh this combined with a drainage reroute to take some of that basin, as Todd was talking about away from the east basin and moving it to the quarry pond, allows us to hopefully stay out of that rock as much as possible.

12:33

And um, so at the end of the day, doing this we get the same volume, but we don't have to dig as deep.

12:42

All right, and then the other big thing that we avoid with this um option is uh costly and time consuming environmental permitting.

12:52

The creek along this western border is identified on the USGS wetlands map or as a potential wetland, and so uh during the original scope of the project, we included environmental studies to get that checked out and make sure that we were you know doing everything the way we needed to be doing it, and that investigation came back identifying that as an intermittent stream and uh relocation, which would have been necessary if we were to stick with the with the two pond scenario, basically getting that green area into the quarry pond shown in the blue, um put candidly uh can be a permitting nightmare.

13:33

And so when we can avoid relocation of those streams, streams uh we would love to do so.

13:40

So this berm is far less impactful than uh total relocation of that and is would fall under the the core of engineers nationwide permit, um, which that permitted has already been done.

13:56

It's very quick and uh I say painless process and it has already been approved.

14:01

So we're good to go.

14:03

Um any questions on that?

14:07

Sorry.

14:09

If not, okay.

14:20

Is not to further support design.

14:23

It is meant primarily to determine if we can save the city money.

14:27

So the current investigations that have been done gave us everything we need to know about where that rock layer is, what kind of soil we're dealing with, but as part of the uh the reroute and the the third pond, the the east basin on the east side of old greenwood requires a large amount of excavation.

14:50

We're digging a big hole.

15:00

And on the west side, we're essentially using the quarry and its natural banks to contain that water and creating some embankments on the north side, and then that west pond is a full embankment, no no fill, no cut necessary.

15:09

And so basically we have all this excess spoil on the east side that when we asked uh our geotechnical engineer, hey, is this stuff able to be utilized in those embankment slopes?

15:22

Um their answer was in order to give you the right answer, we need to do a little bit more investigation.

Discussion Breakdown — Share of Meeting
Water And Wastewater Management█████████████████████████25%
Engineering And Infrastructure█████████████████████21%
Public Health███████████11%
Public Engagement█████████9%
Community Engagement█████5%
Government Structure Reform█████5%
Animal Welfare█████5%
Environmental Protection████4%
Fiscal Sustainability████4%
Summary of Proceedings

Fort Smith Board of Directors Study Session - April 14, 2026

The Fort Smith Board of Directors held a study session on April 14, 2026, to discuss four main agenda items: a stormwater mitigation amendment, a proposed frontage levy for water infrastructure, a potential freeze on utility bills for seniors, and changes to the citizen forum public comment period. The meeting also included a lengthy citizen forum with numerous public comments on a variety of topics.

Discussion Items

  • Amendment #1 with Half Associates (Acme Brick Stormwater Mitigation Ponds) – Todd Mickey (Director of Engineering) and Alan Beaver (Half Associates) presented a $464,000 amendment to the original $466,000 contract. The amendment covers additional design work for three pond basins (East Pond draining 194 acres, quarry pond draining 89+54 acres, and a third pond draining 66 acres), a sewer line relocation/capacity upgrade (24-inch trunk line) required by the consent decree, geotechnical investigations to assess rock excavation and potential shale mining, and design of a wet quarry pond as a recreational amenity. The project aims to reduce flooding: in a 25-year event, 25 structures removed from floodplain and flow reduced by 325 CFS; in a 100-year event, 7 structures removed and 696 CFS reduction; 137 total structures benefited. A FEMA BRIC grant opportunity was noted for up to 75% reimbursement. The board discussed the amendment's cost breakdown and necessity. Director Kemp expressed concern about the doubling of the original contract but acknowledged the value of the sewer component. No vote was taken; a motion to add the item to the next regular meeting agenda was approved.
  • Frontage Levy Presentation by Andy Postrick – Private citizen Andy Postrick presented a hypothetical alternative water billing model based on the linear footage of pipe fronting a property rather than water consumption. He argued that pipes are the primary cost driver and that the current volumetric billing is unsustainable as usage declines. He cited examples from Winnipeg and Fort Collins, and provided a calculator at fswatercalc.com. Advantages include stable revenue, no meter reading needed, and fairer allocation of costs. Disadvantages include high upfront complexity, no incentive for water conservation, and higher bills for larger parcels/vacant lots. He also proposed a water service discount/rebate that could be funded by wholesale customers. Board members thanked him for the presentation but took no action.
  • Freezing Utility Bills for Seniors (Age 65+) – Staff presented options based on peer cities Springdale and Rogers, which freeze rates for the first 1,000-1,500 gallons for seniors. Board members discussed possible approaches: a freeze on the first 1-3 CCFs, a percentage discount (e.g., 10-15%), or expanding the existing Project Concern program. Staff noted that 16% of Fort Smith residents are 65+, equating to about 5,860 accounts. Director Good expressed support for helping seniors, while Director Settle cautioned about revenue impacts and noted Project Concern already serves 330 seniors. Director Kemp suggested a fixed percentage discount. The board directed staff to draft options for a study session in June 2026.
  • Citizen Forum Public Comment Period – The board discussed moving the citizens forum from the end of the first study session to the beginning of each regular meeting, and whether to set a 3- or 5-minute limit. Director Christina Savage advocated for 5 minutes and no restrictions on topics. Director Kemp moved to move the forum to the beginning of each regular meeting with 3 minutes per speaker. The motion was seconded but no vote was taken; it will be considered at the April 21 regular meeting, where the time limit can be amended.

Public Comments & Testimony

  • Jimmy Harrison – Asked about the city administrator search; Mayor McGill replied that a national search with Colin Benzinger & Associates is underway, with a decision expected by end of July 2026.
  • Quentin Cunningham – Criticized the Main Street survey for combining homelessness and housing insecurity (double barreling), stated that only 67 of 658 respondents mentioning homelessness explicitly called for enforcement, and alleged that Main Street leaked unredacted personal information of 259 citizens, violating the Arkansas Personal Information Protection Act. He requested termination of the city's contract with Main Street Fort Smith.
  • Gary Podgersky – Delivered a civics lesson on the First Amendment, citing Supreme Court rulings on social media pages of public officials, and challenged board members to review their own social media practices.
  • John Rimmer – Proposed a low-cost veterinary clinic for Fort Smith, citing rising costs and a need to help low-income pet owners. He stated he had provided five potential revenue streams to the city and requested board consideration.
  • Shane McKinney – Raised concerns about oversight of the alleyway project, noting that utility poles were not moved before concrete pouring, leading to a foreseeable problem. He questioned the lack of project oversight by the board.
  • Amanda Lankert – Opposed the mosquito fogging program, citing peer-reviewed studies linking pyrethroids to neurodevelopmental harm, cardiovascular risk, and endocrine disruption. She argued the program contradicts EPA and CDC guidance, which reserves adulticiding for disease thresholds not met in Sebastian County. She requested a pause and shift to BTI larvicides and ecosystem-first strategies.
  • Liz Smith – Thanked the board for their work and stated that many citizens support them.
  • Crystal Cadelli – Criticized budget priorities, noting that the police department did not fill nine positions (including animal warden) while a digital media position was added. She urged the city to sell idle properties (Acme Brick, Crane Building) to fund water meters and restore positions.
  • Chris Cadelli – Urged the board to address the Baptist Health closure of labor and delivery, and called for a study session on changing to a strong mayor form of government. He noted a grassroots petition effort.
  • Joey McCutcheon – Supported the strong mayor petition and urged the board to refer the issue to voters. He also alleged a secret water line project at Parrot Island, requesting investigation.
  • Dan Williams – Criticized the board for lack of accountability and transparency, and repeated concerns about homelessness downtown. He referenced the survey data and called for a plan.
  • Don Chester – Expressed deep concern about the Baptist Health labor and delivery closure, citing Arkansas' high maternal death rate and food insecurity statistics. He urged the board to prepare for the impact on the community.
  • Richard Morris – Using a new hearing assistance device, he shared an AI-generated assessment of board meetings, noting political division, lack of consistent enforcement of rules, and adversarial debate. He called for better decorum and respect.
  • Eduardo Guzman (State Senate candidate) – Discussed the Baptist Health closures and highlighted a local church that forgave $17 million in medical debt with $63,000. He called for prioritizing health care over slides and prison cells, and urged the board to send a letter of concern.

Key Outcomes

  • Amendment #1 – No vote on the amendment itself; it was moved to the next regular meeting agenda (April 21, 2026) for further discussion and possible action.
  • Frontage Levy – No action taken; presentation received for informational purposes.
  • Senior Utility Rate Freeze – Staff directed to draft options (freeze on first 1-3 CCFs, 10% discount, or other) and present at the first study session in June 2026.
  • Citizen Forum – Motion made to move the citizens forum to the beginning of each regular meeting with 3 minutes per speaker; no vote taken. The item will be on the April 21 regular meeting agenda, where the time limit can be amended.
  • City Administrator Search – Board members must respond to Colin Benzinger & Associates by April 20, 2026; recruitment timeline targets a decision by end of July 2026.
  • Baptist Health Concerns – No formal action taken, but board members acknowledged the issue; Mayor McGill stated he would follow up on the alleged secret water line.
  • Project Concern – Staff noted that 820 customers are enrolled (330 seniors), and the program is underutilized; no cap on enrollment.

Meeting Transcript

Good evening, and welcome to the Ford Miss Cedar Board of Register session on this April 14th of 2026. At this time, we will go right to the first item on the agenda. Yes, sir. The first item is amendment number one with Half Associates and Mr. Todd Mickey, the Director of Engineering will discuss the Acme Brick stormwater mitigation ponds. This was tabled from last week's regular meeting. Myself and Alan Beaver from Half Associates are here to present on this design amendment and answer any questions you may have. I don't know if this laser pointer works, but you want to be able to see it anyway, is a consent decree portion of the sewer main that has to be upsized for additional flow capacity anyway. So in this process, we are hiring them to design this as uh kill two birds with one stone type of project for something we already would have to design on the east side near the additional pond. There is a sewer line relocation that is not an upsize in the consent decree, but is a NASCO-rated four or five pipe, so it needs to be addressed. So we're also asking them to uh relocate that so that the pond can be there to maximize flood storage. This drainage area map in is presented in three locations. The East Pond is a basin of 194 acres, which will take floodwaters from this entire section of the town up to the old ACME brick administration building area, which has been demolished, of course, but we will dig that out to maximize its its usage. But all 194 acres of this area of town will drain there and be able to be stored there in the event of a flood, and is going to be the most amount of area that's treated. The greenish area there is approximately 89 acres for the pond basin in the quarry itself, and then an additional 54 acres that's rerouted from uh uphill to come into this location. So that would go into the most visible of the three ponds. The pink area is approximately 66 acres, and that is the area that will not be normally seen. You'll have to walk back there to see it, but it can hold approximately 66 acres worth, and this will maximize as much flood control as we can downstream. So I'm gonna hand this off to Alan Deaver, and he's gonna kind of go through the uh project from kickoff to where we are at today. Hi there, good evening. Um yeah, just to start, I feel like I'm really loud. Just to start, uh I'd like to go through where we started from and uh and and how we got here. Um like Todd said, in January of 2025, we were executed to do the stormwater mitigation design, um, and then within the first quarter of the year, uh, moved through all of our uh data gathering phases for you know survey environmental and geotechnical investigations and then quickly realized after receiving that geotechnical information that there was a very large hard layer of uh sandstone a little bit higher and and would be requiring us to remove it in order to do that two-pond scenario. So we quickly pivoted and came up with an alternative scenario that uh was presented to staff and the design team in April of 2025 as a cost-saving measure ultimately, and we can get into those uh specifics here in a bit. And then we um adopted that, moved forward with 30 percent plans delivery in May, and then um at that time a decision needed to be made on pursuing all dry pond scenarios, or if we were going to consider the quarry pond in a wet design. And uh at the time we were directed to pursue full dry detention basins. So we moved forward with that and delivered 60 percent plans in August. And since then we've been in somewhat of a holding pattern awaiting RDG master plan concepts, or we were in a holding pattern, awaiting RDG master plan concepts and working with the city on their internal discussions, decision making, uh supporting the master planning efforts, and conducting site visits with uh with stakeholders. Um and at this time we're ready to proceed forward with staff direction and your approval of our amendment. Uh the next slide here highlights the differences, I guess the comparison of our original contract amount and then what's before you for approval for review and approval. Um that original contract executed in January of 2025 of the 466,000, we have uh spent 330,000, and that is paying for our subconsultants, environmental engineers, geotechnical engineers, our survey, and then got us through 60% plan design, and then just assisting from that point on with the city decision making. And so that leaves us about $90,000 left in uh in design, and then the full budget allotted for the bidding and construction phase, uh, which has obviously not been touched yet. So on the new amendment, as you can see, we've broken it out by each item that is in the amendment for your approval, uh, along with their design fee amounts and the approximate percentages that they are of the total amendment. And throughout the next handful of slides, we'll dive into each one of these briefly and give uh some background and explanation for each and provide an opportunity for questions. And so, if if ever as we're going through, please, by all means, at the end of each slide, we can take some questions and make sure that there's clarity on each one. All right, so the first of which we'll start with is the decision on the on the wet west creek pond, excuse me. And as I mentioned before in the timeline breakdown, we provided this third pond option fairly quickly, or as an option uh to pursue, and that is really the we're calling it a pond, but it's really just a berm across the low area in that valley between the two ridges in order to create that storage volume. So actually, very little little construction work to to construct this pond, but we get some meaningful storage behind it. Um the implementation of this pond was done for several reasons, but ultimately boils down to uh attempting to save the city time and money. Uh firstly, um, in an effort to do so, it will reduce the amount of rock, as we've said multiple times, so it reduces the amount of rock excavation needed significantly. Um at the end of the day, we have a target volume of water that we have to you know store for these large uh storm events, and we have a limited area on the property to do so. And so specifically on the east basin, where there is uh uh definitely some limited area and where the largest amount of water is going to. Uh this combined with a drainage reroute to take some of that basin, as Todd was talking about away from the east basin and moving it to the quarry pond, allows us to hopefully stay out of that rock as much as possible. And um, so at the end of the day, doing this we get the same volume, but we don't have to dig as deep. All right, and then the other big thing that we avoid with this um option is uh costly and time consuming environmental permitting. The creek along this western border is identified on the USGS wetlands map or as a potential wetland, and so uh during the original scope of the project, we included environmental studies to get that checked out and make sure that we were you know doing everything the way we needed to be doing it, and that investigation came back identifying that as an intermittent stream and uh relocation, which would have been necessary if we were to stick with the with the two pond scenario, basically getting that green area into the quarry pond shown in the blue, um put candidly uh can be a permitting nightmare. And so when we can avoid relocation of those streams, streams uh we would love to do so. So this berm is far less impactful than uh total relocation of that and is would fall under the the core of engineers nationwide permit, um, which that permitted has already been done. It's very quick and uh I say painless process and it has already been approved. So we're good to go.

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