Court of public opinion

Should Benton County research residents’ attitudes?

Government costs money. The concept is pretty straightforward. Government isn’t the enemy. It’s not something Americans should try to strangle by efforts to dry up its resources, i.e., tax dollars. Government is the mechanism society needs to accomplish big, bold projects and programming that are difficult or impossible to achieve without the powers of taxation and regulation.

The debate in this country is often portrayed as the people vs. their government. That has to do less with the fundamental flaws in government than in its modern unwieldiness or in our elected public officials’ disconnect from the taxpayers they ought to be serving.

The truth is we rely on government a lot, more than many people would like to admit: Highways, our courts, having an agency that rescues children from dysfunctional or dangerous family situations, law enforcement and fire protection, immigration control, planning, military services. The government does so much. Even services one might never directly access — ambulance services, animal control, jails, to cite a few more examples — are vital to making our communities the kinds of places we want and need them to be.

Benton County is preparing, ever so slowly, to potentially ask its voters for permission and, perhaps, funding to build a new courts building. Keep in mind that the last building constructed specifically to house most of Benton County’s court proceedings is the Historic Courthouse, a mere 90 years ago.

In case anyone has been dozing, Benton County has changed a little since 1928. Just on the basis of population alone, Benton County is a different place. Its population in 1930, 20 years before Sam Walton arrived, was 35,253. Today, the county seat of Bentonville alone tops that by more than 10,000 people. The entire county, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates, has soared well beyond 250,000.

The courts have grown, too, in an effort to keep up with a bigger population’s need for criminal prosecutions and adjudication of disputes.

Years of discussion and planning have gone into a new courts facility that County Judge Barry Moehring and the Quorum Court envision as a four-story building on Northeast Second Street in Bentonville, across from the Historic Courthouse. It would house circuit clerk operations related to the courts and have room for all courtrooms except juvenile court, which has a facility of its own where juveniles are housed.

But it’s nitty-gritty time. It’s time not just to finalize planning for a building, but to discern a strategy to pay for it that the public can support. Moehring has asked the Quorum Court to spend up to $50,000 to hire a market research firm to gauge voter support for the project.

All the county meetings and intensive discussions will matter little if the Quorum Court asks voters to consider a measure the public might be likely to reject. Professional research can deliver reliable data on which future decisions can be made, but not everyone likes the idea.

“You can get poll numbers to say anything you want,” said Justice of the Peace Pat Adams. He advocated for justices of the peace to just talk with constituents.

Well, that’s always good advice, but a courts facility that should last decades is no minor project. Most quorum courts never get a chance to make such a lasting impact on their communities. Anecdotal responses may help, but real data collected through a trustworthy process goes beyond constituent talks that can be self-selecting.

Is Adams crying “fake news?” People can manipulate data, but is Adams saying he doesn’t trust his colleagues and the county judge to seek real answers? A marketing firm is only as good as it is trusted, so there is a vested interest for it to perform a valued public service through a contract. With the attitude he expressed, one can dismiss anything he disagrees with. Maybe those Census numbers cited earlier were fake? Did anyone see them actually count everyone?

When the county anticipates spending around $25 million on a needed facility, $50,000 to gather reliable information about constituent attitudes toward the project is money well spent.