City Council gets new member

ROGERS — City Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to appoint Barney Hayes to the vacant council seat representing Ward 4.

“It feels good” to be back on the council, Barney Hayes said. Hayes previously served on the council from 1998 to 2010, as Rogers parks director from 2010 through 2015 and as a planning commissioner from 2016 until the present.

Hayes also worked 36 years for the Rogers School District. “When mama calls, I come running,” he said of the city.

Alderman Mark Kruger announced the seat’s vacancy during the last council meeting, following the unexpected death of alderman Sam Jeffery on March 9. The council declared the position open and accepted applications and resumes from the public through Friday. A dozen applicants attended a special meeting Monday to interview for the job, which will conclude Dec. 31, 2018, the date Jeffery’s term was to expire.

In his application to the city, Hayes described himself as a “Rogers guy who strongly believes in our city…who if selected would work hard for the City of Rogers and the community as a whole.” Hayes said Tuesday the council and other governing bodies were doing a great job and he wanted to “help keep that up.”

Hayes will immediately resign from his positions on the Planning Commission and as a Benton County justice of the peace to avoid conflict with his council seat.

Mayor Greg Hines said the special meeting lasted less than two hours and the council heard from a handful of familiar faces, as well as several young people relatively new to the city.

Brad Easley, human resources client manager for J.B. Hunt Transport; John T. Eaves, sales engineer for Tank Connection; Ashley R. Kamara, owner of Ashley Kamara Photography; Benjamin B. Kaufman, research officer for the Walton Family Foundation; and Mark S. Kelley, owner of Divergent Properties and customer sales executive for The Hershey Company, were among the fresh faces.

“Whether they’ve recently moved here or returned, there were younger faces,” Hines said. “I’ll be looking for ways to plug them into various boards” and other city bodies, such as the chamber.

Jessica Rush, owner of Levi’s Gastrolounge and Lowbar and previous director of Main Street Rogers; Dan Brown, who served on the council from 20112013; Dani Madison, Rogers Historical Museum commissioner; and Kristopher “Kip” Kruger, Heritage High School freshman football coach and son of Alderman Mark Kruger were among those familiar faces.

Carlos O Chicas Zepeda, previous sports director for Univision Arkansas, and Carrie Perrien Smith, president of Soar With Eagles, were two candidates who have both run for offices in the past.

“Tonight the Rogers City Council had a great opportunity to make a difference in appointing a new face to their council,” Zepeda said publicly on social media after the Monday meeting. “Over 64,000 people lives in Rogers, over 21,000 are Latinos…but members looked the other way and appointed one of their own. How do you want our Latino community to get involved, if when we do, we are rejected?”

Smith ran for City Council and most recently for mayor in November.

“Having run in three political campaigns in my city, I am often asked if the good ol’ boy network still controls decisions at the city level,” Smith said on social media after the Monday meeting. “As much as I want to say it does not, the City Council gave me no evidence tonight to prove otherwise. There was so much fresh talent to choose from. It would have been nice to see someone truly new on the council.”