Directors discuss parks, planning, safety
Editor’s note: The Herald-Leader is publishing a series about the goals city directors decided to pursue for the next two years during an April 14 workshop at the Siloam Springs Public Library with City Administrator Phillip Patterson and Mayor Judy Nation.
The board informally chose 11 out of 48 proposed goals to focus on over the next two years.
The board approved the 20232024 goals during the Aug. 2 city board meeting.
This week the Herald-Leader will focus on Goals 7-11 Planning, public safety and parks.
City directors rounded out the goal setting meeting by discussing unified codes, a possible new community center, making Parks and Recreation its own department again and ensuring that police and fire stay adequately staffed.
Unified code development
The first goal Patterson discussed was creating a unified development code. Directors Brad Burns, Marla Sappington and Carol Smiley submitted the idea for consideration.. Patterson said this goal would be worked, but the 2040 comprehensive plan had to be passed first. The goal was put on the board without any discussion.
City directors approved the 2040 Comprehensive Plan during the city board meeting on Tuesday, July 19.
Community center
Patterson then shifted gears to discuss a possible recreation center for all age groups. This goal was submitted by Sappington and Smiley.
“We definitely need a community center,” Smiley said.
Director David Allen said the city looked at this years ago and wanted to build a community center where the rodeo grounds are. The community center would have had a library, an ice rink, pools and basketball courts, Allen said.
Patterson said before Allen had been elected mayor, the
city looked at moving the rodeo grounds but found the process to be extremely expensive.
“When I got here we talked about putting it on (Highway) 59 and that property has no structural stability to it,” Patterson said. “We’d have to rip it all out and bring things in.”
The matter was brought before the board as a workshop on Sept. 4, 2018, according to the agenda from that meeting.
Patterson said when he went to the board he provided them with a bare bones amount, which he said still had a very high dollar cost. Patterson did not say how much the dollar amount was.
Patterson said he thinks the best idea is to put the community center on 27 acres located north of the hospital. Patterson said he put some numbers together and brought up the 3/8 Cent Sales Tax. This tax is split between quality of life projects and utility capital projects, Patterson said.
“If you ask to bond for a $20-$25 million recreation facility with pools, tracks, basketball courts, you could pay that off with that cent sales tax,” Patterson said.
Smiley asked when the tax expires and Patterson said not until late 2026. City directors approved the goal to be placed on the board.
Parks and recreation and the golf course
The directors moved on the next set of goals of making the parks and recreation division a full department again and for the city to take over the Course at Sagers’ Crossing. These goals were submitted by Director Brad Burns.
Making the parks and recreation division into a department is a goal that Burns has brought up in the past. The goal concerning the golf course was something the parks and recreation division wants to do, Burns said.
“They want us to encompass (the golf course) underneath Parks and Rec,” Burns said. “That’s why I threw it in there because I said I would.”
Allen asked when Parks and Recreation stopped being its own department. Patterson said it is a division today and was already a division when he began working for the city.
City Clerk Renea Ellis said in a follow-up email that Parks and Recreation ceased being a department in 2010 when it went under Adam Roark, who was the city engineer at the time and went under community development in 2010.
Regarding the golf course, Patterson said the city owns the land where the golf course is. Patterson also said the golf course has a 99-year lease with the city. Burns said to leave the golf course out and he would direct them to Sappington who is their ward representative.
City directors approved to place the goal on the board and moved on to the next goal which focuses on public safety.
Public Safety
There were two goals related to public safety that city directors approved to be placed on the board: Develop a plan to use the police department’s jail as a holding facility and to make a plan to make sure the police and fire departments remain adequately staffed.
The first goal was submitted by Burns, Director Mindy Hunt and Sappington. Staff suggested this goal to the directors to consider submitting, because whenever someone is arrested in Siloam Springs the officers have to take the suspect to the Benton County Jail in Bentonville, Patterson said.
“If we could have a holding facility for eight hours we do not necessarily have to keep them any longer,” Patterson said. “Then we can hire a few extra police officers and take everybody over there at one time every 12 hours or something like that. We would save a lot of time at our staff level, and we would keep more police on the street.”
The city jail was closed following a lawsuit against the jail for conducting unnecessary visual strip and/or body cavity searches between July 23, 2005 and Dec. 2, 2008, according to an article in the Herald-Leader on Jan. 27, 2010.
Director Lesa Rissler submitted the second goal about ensuring the police and fire departments are adequately staffed.
Rissler said she examined data on the crime mapping software that the city provides for citizens to use and found that if someone were to enter exact variables with an exact date and enters the city of Siloam Springs, that person will receive a certain number of the amount of crime in the city.
She went on to say that if someone were to enter the same variables and date and this time and plug in the city of Fayetteville, it will display a lower number than Siloam Springs making it appear that Siloam Springs has more crime than Fayetteville.
The city uses Lexus Nexus for its crime mapping software, according to a followup email from Police Chief Allan Gilbert. Rissler said the city used to measure that it had so many officers per citizen. Instead the city now looks at the number of crimes.
“They don’t do that anymore,” Rissler said. “So if you have a high amount of crime you might be a smaller city but you have a lot more crime then you need a lot more officers.”
Rissler said she felt the numbers don’t reflect it. She also looked at the annual daily trips of vehicles on the Arkansas Department of Transportation (ArDOT) website and found that between 20,000 to 29,000 people visit Siloam Springs, but the town itself only has 17,000 residents, Rissler said.
“And so the numbers I’ve seen as a citizen I didn’t feel like, we say we want to grow we want to grow,” Rissler said. “That’s great let’s grow. But let’s look at the crime data, too, and make sure our officers are reflective of not just the citizens.”
Rissler said the city has approved a lot of housing to be built so that will increase the number of residents as well as visitors and she feels like the officer count doesn’t match up. Anyone looking at the variables on the crime mapping software may decide not to live in Siloam Springs because of it, Rissler said.
Patterson said it was a very good point. Patterson has not used the same crime mapping software to look at Fayetteville, and when city staff came back to the board a year ago to talk about adding two new officers this year and next year and they are adding some part-time officers too, he said.
“We didn’t base it on a number per population because that’s so old school,” Patterson said. “I look at the (police) chief, I look at the fire chief to say ‘What is your need? Where do we go?’”
Patterson said he studied some information from the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and how to try to determine how many firefighters and police officers the city needs based on calls of service and downtime.
Patterson said he wanted to look at the crime data because he is only familiar with
New World and Southern Software.
“It’s not always apples-toapples even though to a citizen it might,” Patterson said.
Patterson also said he spoke to Gilbert and was told the police department is fully staffed. Rissler also said the police department needs to create more specialized divisions for officers.
She also said that the department routinely pulls officers out of their divisions to do other things like pulling data, which they are not trained to do, Rissler said.
“They didn’t go to college to figure out how to pull data,” Rissler said. “It’s unfair and you’re setting them up to fail.”
Rissler said the department was borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Patterson clarified that Rissler wanted to deal with the processes such as IT for FOIA requests, a community division for dealing with community events etc.
Patterson also brought up the fact that all of the resources were recently used to investigate a robbery that occurred on Friday, April 10, at Arvest Bank located at 1645 West Highway 412.
Patterson said a lot of the officers have never experienced a bank robbery, but they worked their bones to solve the case and that they did a great job.
Directors then approved placing this goal on the board of goals.