Board discusses Lake Francis Drive, fee study, code renewal
Editors note: The Herald-Leader is publishing a series about the goals that city board members decided to pursue during a May 14 workshop at the Siloam Springs Public Library with City Administrator Phillip Patterson and Mayor John Mark Turner.
The board informally chose 12 out of 58 proposed goals to focus on over the next two years.
The city board approved the 2021-2022 goals during the July 7 city board meeting.
This week the Herald-Leader will focus on Goals Eight, Nine and 10: Lake Francis Drive improvements, a fee study and a development code renewal.
Lake Francis Drive improvements
During the goal setting workshop, Director Reid Carroll brought up improving Lake Francis Drive. He focused on the large curb at Lake Francis Drive and Ark. Highway 59.
“We need to make that curb not so dramatic,” Carroll said.
Patterson asked the board if they wanted to do a rebuild on Lake Francis Drive. Director Carol Smiley felt the main focus should be on the curb mentioned by Carroll. The city administrator said the improvements made when the city curbed and guttered one side of Lake Francis
Drive will accomplish a lot.
“I think the new improvements will accomplish a lot because we did curb the gutter on one side to build the sidewalk,” Patterson said. “We may have to curb the gutter on both sides so we finish it (Lake Francis Drive).”
The city board conducted an informal poll and agreed to put this on the list of goals for 2021 and 2022.
Fee study
The city administrator proposed doing a fee study of the individual services provided and compare those fees with the fees of similar and competing municipalities. Patterson did not say which municipalities Siloam Springs would be looking at.
Patterson said when he first arrived in Siloam Springs he did a study on the fees but recognized that starting to raise fees is not something a new city administrator wants to do, he said. The city administrator talked about knowing how much revenue comes from fees and how much is subsidized by another department.
As an example, Patterson used the Family Aquatic Center. He said the city will never get 100 percent of the cost from the fees charged and the board should have a goal of how much to subsidize from other departments.
“You should have a goal of is it 80 percent and we are subsidizing 20 percent?” Patterson said. “Or is it 50/50? If it is 50/50 should we try to make it 70/30 or whatever the idea is.”
The city administrator also discussed planning fees and late fees and asked the board to update those because they are not covering the cost of having rezoning permits recorded in the newspaper. He also said planning fees do not cover the cost of salaries of people associated with planning and community development.
Smiley also agreed with Patterson on knowing where the city is in regard to fees. The city board members conducted an informal vote and agreed to put this on the list for 2021 and 2022.
Development code renewal
Patterson believes this was a goal chosen for the 2019/2020 list of goals, but it had to be moved around so the city could do the Comprehensive Plan first before the city began revamping the development code.
The Comprehensive Plan was put on hold in April when the city cut $2.9 million from its budget due to concerns of low sales tax revenue and utility sales because of the coronavirus shutdown.
During the city board meeting on Aug. 4 Patterson announced he was restoring several budget cuts made due to the shut down caused by the coronavirus. The city administrator said the Comprehensive Plan was not one of the items to have its funding restored.
Patterson said this goal should probably just roll over into the list of goals for 2021 and 2022.
Form-based codes regulates development by shaping the development’s relationship between public and private spaces such as interaction between streets, blocks and buildings in terms of form, scale and massing, and the use of frontage areas, Patterson said.
Conventional zoning regulates development by segregating land-use types, allowable uses, development intensity such as dwellings per acre, lot coverage, building height limits, setbacks, parking ratios, etc., via different zones like C-2 (Roadway Commercial) or R-2 (Medium Residential), Patterson said.
The city board informally agreed to roll over the goal to the 2021/2022 list of goals.