Funds uncertainty delays Marshals Museum

FORT SMITH — Officials at the U.S. Marshals Museum are pushing back the opening date of the museum until next year.

Patrick Weeks, the museum president, told about 40 people at a community meeting Wednesday night that he couldn’t make plans to begin production of the exhibit experience for the 50,000-square-foot museum until he knew whether Fort Smith voters would approve a temporary 1 percent sales tax to pay for finishing the facility’s interior.

He said construction of the building on the banks of the Arkansas River did not get underway until July when it was certain that the museum had the $19.1 million to pay for it. The same goes for the exhibit experience.

“As with the building, we won’t push go on production of that experience unless we can righteously say where that money is coming from to pay for it,” Weeks said.

The special election on the nine-month tax is March 12 with early voting starting March 5. If it passes, the tax is expected to generate $15.5 million over nine months. Once the financing stream is established, Weeks said, the schedule for the museum experience can be drawn up and put into motion.

More rainy days than normal have slowed the work, as well, he said.

Weeks said the museum building will be dedicated Sept. 24. Museum officials had planned to open the museum that day in observance of the 230th anniversary of

exact water level at the levee.

Some 30,000 sandbags were prepared Wednesday to reinforce the levee, according to Dan Noble, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management.

“We weren’t able to get those sandbags to the area because it was unstable, so Jackson County … [asked us] for assistance,” Noble said.

The National Guard, at the request of the Department of Emergency Management, used helicopters to drop 3,000-pound sandbags next to the levee Thursday afternoon to fortify the structure.

“This doesn’t happen very often,” Noble said. “The last time the National Guard was used in this role was in March of 2018 when the levee broke in Humnoke. Two Black Hawks were sent to Jonesboro, but only one went into Jackson County. They will drop 100 of those 3,000-pound sandbags.”

Regular 10-pound sandbags were made available to residents in the affected areas that can be used to protect homes should the levee break, Noble said.

The next step is figuring out how to fix the levee, Phillips said.

“We’re coming up with a plan with what the [levee] district needs to do,” he said. “But we need the river to come down in order to see it.”

According to records from 2016, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers noted deterioration in parts of the levee, saying it could cause “potential loss of life” and rack up more than $60 million in damage if it failed.

County officials put $100,000 into upgrades for the levee system last year, but Phillips said it didn’t appear the work had settled and hardened before rain set in this week. Parts of the more than 22-mile-long levee likely will need to be replaced, he said.

Jim Marple, emergency management planner for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the Little Rock District, said the first step would be getting the money together to hire an engineer to design a plan and specifics for construction.

Marple said the Corps of Engineers built several levees in the 1940s, then gave the levees to county authorities. Responsibility for maintaining the levees fell to the counties or levee districts, he said.

Marple said the Corps of Engineers will not repair the Jackson County levee.

“It will be up to the county to repair it,” he said. “We are there right now to provide technical assistance.”

Phillips said the levee district will be in charge of raising the money to fix the levee.

“The money won’t come from our general fund,” Phillips said. “They have their own tax money they get from landowners.”

A start date for repairs is pending.

“All this has to do with the weather,” Phillips said. “It involves a lot of cooperation, and the weather has to be dry.”

Travis Shelton, a meteorologist with the weather service, said light rain is expected today and Saturday in northeast Arkansas, but it isn’t expected to have a significant impact on the river’s level.