Fort Smith candidates favor sewer pact redo

FORT SMITH — Two candidates for city director favor renegotiating a consent decree with the federal and state governments to gain more time to comply with their demands to fix the city’s wastewater system.

Robyn Dawson and Samuel Price made their remarks in front of about 100 people at a candidates forum Tuesday night at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Dawson, Price and Libby Piatt are running for the Position 5 at-large seat on the Board of Directors being vacated by Tracy Pennartz.

Voters will choose from among the three in the municipal election Aug. 14. Early voting begins Tuesday. If no candidate wins 50 percent or more of the vote, the top two candidates’ runoff will be held during the Nov. 6 general election.

Price, 24, a department manager with McDonald’s and a college student studying elementary education, said extending the deadline to complete the wastewater system improvements could reduce the need to raise sewer rates further.

He’s opposed to raising any more revenue to pay for the improvements “because we already increased by 167 percent. How much more can we put on the taxpayers?” he asked.

City directors raised sewer rates 167 percent over three years when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Justice and Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality filed the consent decree with the city in federal court in 2015. The decree says Fort Smith agrees to make system improvements, costing an estimated $480 million, over

12 years or face government sanctions.

Dawson, 52, a principal at Spradling Elementary School and co-owner of two small businesses, said she supported City Administrator Carl Geffken and others who seek to begin renegotiation talks with federal and state officials on lengthening the timeline of the decree. She said Fort Smith has been doing its part

and complying with the decree schedule and deserves more time to complete the work.

Lengthening the time would also allow the city to devote some of its money to improving the city’s water system, Dawson said.

Price and Dawson said Fort Smith was progressing economically. Dawson pointed to large investments in the city in the past couple years totaling $30 million.

Among them was the groundbreaking in May of a

second medical school at the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education, Phoenix Investors plans to renovate the vacant Whirlpool plant in south Fort Smith, the opening of the Glafelter plant at Chaffee Crossing and construction of a Silgan Plastic Food Containers plant in Fort Smith.

“I think we’re well on our way to progress in Fort Smith,” she said.

Price said he believed Fort Smith had all the components in place for economic development.

“We have to make sure that people know that Fort Smith is open for business,” he said.

Piatt attended the forum and answered a few questions but declined to answer more because she said she was upset about an argument that occurred before the forum during which she was caught up in some pushing.

She is a sales representative for amusement companies in Arkansas and Tennessee and an advocate for the homeless and mentally ill.