Springdale adds position to city staff

Several council members say blindsided by request to vote

SPRINGDALE — Former City Council member Colby Fulfer started as a volunteer, but now earns $75,345 annually as the mayor’s assistant.

Council members unanimously agreed to add the job earlier this month although several of them said they were blindsided June 9 when Alderman Mike Overton brought it up for a vote as Mayor Doug Sprouse was calling for adjournment.

The issue wasn’t on the agenda, and the council rejected the request in March citing financial uncertainty in light of the covid-19 pandemic. Sprouse said Fulfer came to him last fall, saying he wanted to become even more involved in city government.

“He said he was really more interested in the administrative role of government rather than the legislative parts of it,” Sprouse said.

Sprouse also was considering the 2022 retirement of Wyman Morgan, the city’s director of administration and finance. Sprouse said he saw an opportunity to have Fulfer shadow and learn from the 20-plus year employee.

“He knows so much about city finance. He knows so much about city law. He knows all the little details of our budget and our bond program,” he said of Morgan. “And all of that will be lost if we don’t get somebody in here to learn it.”

The city added Fulfer to the payroll the morning after council approval, Morgan said. Sprouse said he would work Fulfer’s salary into the city budget.

He’ll receive for the remainder of the year $53,800 of salary, including benefits, not paid to Ashley Earhart, the city’s director of public relations. Earhart on June 1 announced plans to resign. Fulfer’s position with 17 years of service would top out at $111,870.

He resigned his council position Feb. 29 when he and his family moved out of Ward 1. He has spent nearly every day since in the mayor’s office, serving the city on a volunteer basis, Sprouse said.

Fulfer said he loves nothing more than digging into numbers, budgets. His application with the city lists leadership with real estate holding companies he developed. He also served as a co-pastor at City Church and was owner/director of Westfield Chapel Funeral Home. Fulfer didn’t submit a resume.

When Morgan retires, whoever holds the job of assistant to the mayor would transition into the city’s director of administration, Sprouse said. Financial duties would fall under the Finance Department and its staff of certified public accountants, who already keep the books.

Fayetteville has a similar position, with the salary raging from $102,606 to $148,345, said Susan Norton, who holds the position of chief of staff. Bentonville and Rogers don’t.

“I have been very open about who I wanted in that position,” Sprouse said. “And I told them when they turned it down, I would bring it back. The department heads work at the pleasure of the mayor.”

Sprouse said Fulfer has been working with sales tax projections and identified places to cut the city budget if sales tax revenue comes up short.

Fulfer said he has worked with leaders of the Arkansas Municipal League to reserve for cities and counties some of the money from federal and state virus recovery money. Fulfer served alongside Sprouse on the league’s executive committee before he resigned his council seat.

The council in March said it supported the measure, but didn’t want to commit until it knew how the city would fare economically in the covid-19 pandemic.

Overton was one of the loudest voices for tabling the item until the city had sales tax receipts. Receipts are reported by the state two months after collection. So amounts gathered in March weren’t released until late May.

“I want to see some actual figures,” Overton said.

Sprouse said several times March receipts would only show half of the picture because Gov. Asa Hutchinson ordered some businesses closed in mid-March. April’s figures in a full month of closings might provide a more accurate picture.

April figures won’t be reported until next week, Morgan said. Despite two weeks of closing, the city’s March sales tax return was up 7% from the year before. Morgan said this year’s return for March was $1,492,100.

Overton said June 15 officials had shown him enough projections to see a positive trend. And with the availability of Earhart’s salary, he knew it was the time to reintroduce the position.

The position wasn’t listed on the agenda for the night’s meeting. Several council members took long pauses for consideration when their names were called to vote.

“I thought about voting no,” said Alderman Mike Lawson. “But it would only penalize the citizens and the city. I thought let’s get him on board and get this started.”

Council member Kathy Jaycox wanted to table the vote until the next week’s work session.

“I still don’t see why it couldn’t wait two weeks,” she said. “I didn’t even know Ashley had resigned.

“The council has been pretty clear over many years that only things that are a true emergency be placed on the agenda at the last minute. And this council usually works so well together,” Jaycox said.

“Why wasn’t this on the agenda?” council member Jeff Watson asked at the meeting. Watson and Lawson declined further comment Wednesday.

Overton said he introduced the item without alerting the council because he thought of the measure just the night before the meeting. On the morning of the meeting, he contacted City Attorney Ernest Cate to draft an ordinance establishing the position, which Cate confirmed.

Council members may add a resolution to the agenda by asking the council to vote to add it, which they did to open it for discussion, Cate said.

Sprouse said he didn’t ask Overton to present the position to council again.

“I might have preferred to bring it up to council in a different way, but Mike thought it was time to bring it up,” he said.

Fulfer