Port Authority board blocks deal with tribe

Pacts barred when land use unsettled

The Little Rock Port Authority can no longer enter into any memorandum of understanding with the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma while the tribe’s application to place land into federal trust remains active before the U.S. Department of the Interior, according to a resolution passed by the authority’s board Wednesday afternoon.

The resolution doesn’t mention the tribe specifically, but the tribe is the only entity that would currently be affected by the resolution.

Port Authority Executive Director Bryan Day said the resolution isn’t legally binding but that it would be followed by the Port Authority until it is rescinded.

The Port Authority and the tribe had been working on a memorandum of understanding of how to address future discoveries of tribal artifacts on authority land. A proposed section would state that land-use plans for the tribe-owned property should be consistent with the Port Authority’s recently adopted mission statement, which says it favors land uses that are compatible with or supportive of industry.

Tribe Chairman John Berrey said he wasn’t sure why the Port Authority passed the resolution, adding that the board’s chairman, Chris Mathews, had approached the tribe about wanting to do a memorandum of understanding last year.

Berrey added that, under national historic preservation law, federally funded development on land that the Port Authority wants to acquire with city sales tax revenue must identify any tribal remains or artifacts on the property. He said he wonders if the Port Authority’s process for identifying any remains and returning them to the tribe might be stalled by the resolution passed Wednesday.

The tribe owns 160 acres in the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction near the industrial port east of the city, where graves and artifacts were discovered a decade ago. Back then, officials notified the tribe of the findings and discussed how to preserve the artifacts.

Berrey said a memorandum of understanding now would be a proactive measure implementing a process for dealing with any further artifact discoveries that might occur in the area. A former member of the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Berrey said such agreements are designed to streamline responses to the discoveries and prevent the discoveries becoming “loggerheads” to development because developers have to stop construction and negotiate over what to do with findings.

“That’s all this is,” Berrey said.

Berrey said Wednesday night that he had yet to speak with Port Authority officials but would email Day today asking about what happened.

On Wednesday, authority officials debated how to address efforts to establish a memorandum of understanding with the tribe, which Mathews told the board was growing into a distraction from the rest of the Port Authority’s responsibilities.

One proposal, by board member Frank Scott Jr., would have tabled the memorandum for more research on archaeological issues and the land the port wanted to acquire but would eventually allow it to go into effect. That measure failed 4-2, with Mathews abstaining. Scott and Dexter Doyne voted in favor. Jon Wickliffe, Melissa Hendricks, Joseph Bailey and Greg Joslin voted against it.

The second proposal, posed by Wickliffe, prevents the Port Authority from entering into any kind of agreement with an entity that has a land-use or change of government matter before a local, state or federal government agency. That passed 4-2, with the votes reversing and Mathews still abstaining.

“I’m deeply disappointed in what took place today,”

Scott said. “Just deeply disappointed.”

Scott said his plan would have allowed the authority “to continue to operate in a spirit of cultural competency” by creating a plan to address the potential discovery of tribal artifacts on land near the Port Authority.

“The [memorandum’s] basic premise has been lost in this process,” he said.

Wickliffe said he was not concerned with the Quapaw Tribe’s presence in the area near the Port Authority and was not considering whether a memorandum of understanding would positively affect the tribe’s land-into-trust application.

“I think they’re being very neighborly, and we’re just trying to do the same,” he said.

The port has $10 million to expand its territory, and Mayor Mark Stodola has expressed a desire for the tribe to give land to the city or continue to subject the land to the city’s jurisdiction. Local and state government leadership, along with congressional representatives have questioned or outright opposed the tribe’s land-into-trust application, which would remove the land from local jurisdiction. The tribe is seeking to place the 160 acres into federal trust, what the tribe has called a fairly common process for tribes to prevent alienation, which is the ability of a property or property rights to be sold or transferred.

The Quapaw Tribe has not announced any firm plans for the land, which it has used for growing crops, some of which it has donated to the Arkansas Food Bank. Suspicions have been

raised locally that a casino is possible, which the tribe has denied. The tribe additionally told the Department of Interior in its own comment on its trust application that it would sign a pact with local government entities not to build a casino. It has not yet signed any pacts, but officials believed the draft memorandum of understanding would have prevented a casino.

The comment period for the tribe’s application has ended, and the Department of Interior can issue a decision at any time but is not required to issue one at all. A department official said in a general public hearing last year that did not involve the Quapaw Tribe that applications with a lot of local opposition tend to languish in the department without any decision being made.

Day said he did not offer an opinion to the board on either motion made Wednesday but cautioned that blanket rules put in place for one specific issue can often have unintended consequences for other projects down the road.

Day noted after the meeting that the Port Authority already has a land-use resolution in place that states the authority is “committed to working with any individual, entity or group on the protection and preservation of all identified historical, ancestral or culturally significant properties” within and adjacent to Little Rock Port Authority lands.

Day said the Port Authority would still need to be a good neighbor to the tribe.

“It just needs to be a different relationship than we planned for,” he said.