Good evening and welcome to the Fort Smith City Board of Directors study session on this September twenty second of the year twenty twenty-six.

These meetings are being telecast live.

Um for those who cannot be here with us.

American Icon Dolly Parton passed away at the age of eighty in Nashville, Tennessee.

Currently, over eight thousand three hundred children within the Fort Smith area, uh, receive a book each month from the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.

So I'm going to go over this proclamation, and we're going to ask Shea to join us.

Whereas Dolly Parton has built an extraordinary legacy as a celebrated singer, songwriter, entertainer, author, entrepreneur, philanthropist whose remarkable career has inspired generations through her music, her storytelling, her generosity, and unwavering commitment to helping others.

And whereas Dolly Parton's music and career have transisted transisted transcended generations and genres with her distinctive voice, her songwriting and storytelling, earning her worldwide recognition while her work continues to celebrate the dignity of hard work, preserving its hope, and the everyday experience of working people.

Whereas Dolly Parton's Imagination Library founded in 1995 through the Dolly Wood Foundation is a global book gifting program that provides free, high quality, age appropriate books to children from birth to age five, regardless of their families' income.

And it has gifted more than 200 million books to children around the world, helping inspire a lifelong love of reading and strengthening early childhood literacy.

And whereas the United Way of Fort Smith area has been affiliated, an affiliate of the program since 2006, expanding from one Fort Smith uh zip code to all six counties in the service area, investing more than one uh one million dollars and then distributing over 7,300 uh 7, 736,000 books to children, including 399,000 books within Sebastian County alone.

And today, providing more than 8,000 children across Sebastian Crawford, Franklin, Logan, Sequoia, and La Florida counties with a book each month, fostering a life of love for reading and supporting early childhood literacy and learning throughout our region.

So now, therefore, I George B.

McGill, the mayor of the city of Fort Smith do hear fire proclaim Friday, September the 25th of 2026 as Dolly Parton's nine to five day.

Shay, would you come forward, please?

Thank you guys.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Okay.

Citizens Forum.

Madam Clerk.

We have, I think it's 11 or 12 people signed in, but the first being LeBon Morton, and each will have five minutes.

LeBon Morton Fort Smith.

I want to speak on the consent decree program management proposal that uh is going to be discussed tonight.

Um I think about this, I think I was the first person, or I'm sure I was the first person to raise this idea of having a firm with broader expertise than we could, or than any one city could have.

A firm that had already handled a consent decree in a larger city to bring their expertise to Fort Smith to try to make sure we were doing this in the most efficient way and at the least cost.

So what I would say about this proposal is there's no doubt this firm has tremendous expertise.

Uh they're they're worldwide firm uh very much recognized.

I will say that the cost is quite a bit higher than I expected when I was uh making this uh recommendation in 2024.

Um at the same time, what they're what they're proposing is much broader coverage.

I was really focused on the construction and kind of the design and the layout.

They're really handling the whole thing from from beginning to end handling all the reporting to the EPA and they're handling the financial side of things too, which I've told uh city administration that uh we have strong financial people.

Andy Richards is top notch on the finance side, and he should continue to have a strong role, and there are other areas where we might be able to do more work than what they contemplate, which would save us money because it is an hourly uh project.

Now, one thing we've got to do is whoever's assigned to this, if we if we go forward with it, they've got to monitor those hours on a and those projects on a monthly basis so that we make sure we're not duplicating work on this whole thing.

But my my thought is there's a one-year term in here that's fixed, and the city can evaluate after that period of time and decide if they want to continue.

But I think there's a good chance that they can do what these large uh firms with a lot of experience and and knowledge can do, which is make it more efficient and save us some money in the long run.

Uh, but they should be they should be asked for where have you done this before?

What what benefits did the city that hired you receive?

What tangible benefits did they receive from the work that you and your firm did?

Um, and we should talk face to face with people in some of those cities and ask them what was the benefit of this firm, what were the problems you had, what were the things that really went well, and what were the things that surprised you?

So, with two minutes and eleven seconds to go, I stop.

Thank you.

Thank you, Levon.

Thank you very much.

Next we have Shane McKinney.

Thank you, board.

So um first off, I'm really happy to see all you guys here.

Thank you for work working for our city and uh doing so much for it.

This is it's just awesome to see you all here supporting and uh hopefully we can come up with good things for that.

But I want to talk about transparency.

Um I talk about transparency and accountability a lot.

But one of the things I think uh we're missing as a city on transparency is that it's okay to make mistakes.

I make mistakes, you all make mistakes.

Uh we have we have problems, we have issues, maybe we don't pay the right amount to to firefighters.

Maybe we bought water slides that we shouldn't have bought.

Maybe we did whatever this mistake may be, and to say, sorry guys, we made a mistake.

Uh we're gonna change course, we're gonna correct this problem.

I really think that as a city, the engagement in things that we're seeing isn't just because we're angry that mistakes are made.

We're angry that mistakes are continued to be doubled down on or ignored or not talked about, and it creates speculation.

I talked about last time uh the problem uh with our IT and that we didn't know anything about what was actually happening, and that creates distrust, it creates speculation, it creates problems.