District 5 contest rematch of 2010 race

The directors who have represented District 5 on the Hot Springs Board of Directors for the last decade are vying to be the voice of the south central part of the city for another four years.

It’s the second time incumbent Karen Garcia and Rick Ramick have run against each other in eight years, with Garcia taking the first round in a 2010 victory over Ramick and Glenn Gallas. Ramick was the incumbent, appointed by the board after former District 5 Director Bill Edwards died in June 2008.

Ramick ran unopposed for the open seat in 2014 after Garcia won the Democratic nomination for state treasurer. His residency qualification was brought into question in 2016, leading to his resignation the following year. The board appointed Garcia in June of that year to serve the final 18 months of Ramick’s term.

He told a gathering at a candidate forum earlier this month that he could not abide the tactics of those protesting his residency qualification. They included picketing the real estate office where he works, but Ramick told the board a bomb threat called into the office in April 2017 was the most egregious provocation.

He said the intensity of the protests became too much to bear in the resignation letter he read to the board later that month.

“I resigned because of constant harassment, stalking, picketing and bomb threats,” Ramick, responding to an audience member at the forum who had asked about his departure from the board, said.

His residency is no longer a flash

point. The Paddock Point address he has listed with the city clerk’s office officially became part of the city after a more than two-year legal controversy surrounding the area’s annexation ended earlier this year. The city began delivering services to the area’s more than 500 permanent residents in July.

Garcia waded into a controversy soon after taking over for Ramick, siding with constituents in their appeal of the planning commission’s issuance of a conditional-use permit for the construction of a 190-foot-tall water storage tower in their neighborhood.

She was part of the 4-3 majority that stopped the project, explaining to her fellow directors that city staff should not have told the planning commission that consideration of the permit could not be tabled when it approved the item a month earlier.

She told the board that staff didn’t show that the location in the Marquette Place neighborhood off Pakis Road was the most cost effective of the nine the city began scouting in 2016.

“It was a win-win for the neighborhood as well as the city,” Garcia, a retired certified public accountant, told the forum.

It was one of the highlights of her second term, she said, ranking alongside her push for the H2O Hot Springs, or Help to Others Hot Springs, program that allows customers of the regional water and wastewater systems to help low income customers pay their utility bill.

Ramick told the forum he wants to add more officers to the Hot Springs Police Department and build a fire station in south Hot Springs that would lower insurance premiums for homeowners. He talked about increasing the city’s paving budget and making the Majestic Hotel property a revenue generator for the city.

“I want to do something that creates revenue for the city of Hot Springs,” he told the forum. “I don’t necessarily think we need a public bathing area.”