City directors set recycling, museum votes

FORT SMITH — City directors will vote next week on the formation of advisory committees on recycling issues and on a U.S. Marshals Museum public facilities board.

The recycling advisory committee would formalize the work being done now by a seven-member internal recycling committee that has been providing insight, information and guidance to the city’s staff on recycling, City Administrator Carl Geffken said Tuesday.

Geffken said he hoped most of the members of the internal recycling committee would agree to serve on the advisory committee because they have knowledge and passion regarding the issue.

City Director Mike Lorenz was among those who said they liked the idea of the committee as a sounding board for input from the community on recycling.

The internal committee was formed after the public became aware in 2017 that the city was collecting sanitation customers’ recyclable material using the sanitation department’s recycling trucks but was dumping the material in the landfill.

Many people said they’d been deceived. One woman, Jennifer Merriott, filed a class-action suit in Sebastian County Circuit Court charging the city with illegal exaction of sanitation fees and unjust enrichment. The trial is pending.

Geffken said many sanitation customers also were interested in seeing change and improvement in the recycling program. Some became members of the internal recycling committee. When newly elected at-large Director Robyn Dawson joined the committee, Geffken said, he believed it was time to make the advisory committee official.

The committee would advise city officials on such issues as educating the public about recycling, making improvements on the materials being recycled and expanding the program, Geffken said. It also could tackle issues such as whether the city should open its own materials recycling facility.

The public facilities board advisory committee for the U.S. Marshals Museum would be temporary and would mostly provide information to the public about the formation and duties of the board.

Such information would include who would be appointed to the board and how; the duties and responsibilities of the board; why the board is needed; and how transparency would be achieved and protected in the appointment process and in carrying out the board’s responsibilities.

Under the ordinances city directors passed calling for a special election to vote on a temporary sales tax to help fund the museum, public facilities board members would be appointed by Mayor George McGill with replacements appointed by city directors.

If the temporary 1 percent sales tax passes March 12, the board would purchase the U.S. Marshals Museum building and grounds and lease it back to the museum to operate.

The public facilities board would go into effect if Fort Smith voters decide to levy the 1 percent sales tax for nine months to generate the $15.5 million needed to develop the exhibit experience for the museum. The public facilities board’s ownership of the property would enable the museum, a private entity, to use the public tax money to complete the facility now under construction.

If the tax is approved, the city would begin collecting it on July 1. Geffken said the advisory committee would remain in effect until the collection of the tax began.