CM hopefuls discuss water, city issues
City employees, city directors, and business and community leaders attended a reception Wednesday evening in the Hot Springs Convention Center to meet three of the four city manager candidates.
Joseph A. Fivas, a candidate from North Carolina, was out of the country on a preplanned vacation, but will interview for the job today via Skype, city officials said.
The other candidates are David Frasher, of Oregon, Anthony O’Rourke, of Washington, and Interim City Manager Bill Burrough.
“I think Hot Springs is a dynamic, exceptional community,” Frasher said.
“It is one of a kind in the state and the Midwest. I think all the bones are here to do some amazing
things moving forward. I think your downtown action plan is very exciting, as is the broadband project and the idea of having high-speed Internet for everyone in the city, as well as extending it to, if possible, the edge of the city so that people who want to come into the city have a reason to want to come into the city. That’s only one reason, and there are many others,” he said.
Frasher said he had also been apprised of the city’s quest for additional water supplies and “it’s all about partnerships.”
“I think the city has done a good job of forging some of these critical relationships and looking at a diversity of water sources.
“But, I think they also need to work a little closer with the county on future annexation issues. I think both the county and the city actually benefit from annexation if done the right way. I think there are some opportunities to mend some fences where we can,” he said.
O’Rourke said if he was selected as the new city manager his job would be to facilitate and execute the vision of the city board, and taking the city forward is a function of the board.
“My job is to facilitate and execute their vision for the community by selecting strategic priorities of the key intended outcomes that are the performance measures that we monitor and measure our progress by. I would deliver on their plan and vision. That’s my job,” he said.
O’Rourke said the city’s search for additional water is “an important issue, but not unique.”
“Coming from an area of the country where water is vital to the 10th-largest agricultural area in the country, we’ve just gone through a process of having to come up with a water management plan that will cost $4 billion for central Washington.
“But it is an important issue, and it’s one I think the city is on a good road to address and hopefully resolve long term. But it’s an expensive and complicated situation, no question about that,” he said.
If selected to fill the city manager position, Burrough said a lot of projects are already in place, including downtown revitalization, a search for more water, and meeting the mandate of the Consent Administrative Order the city is under, but the city needs to focus on a succession plan.
“We’ve had some key department heads leave, as well as the city manager’s untimely death,” he said.
“Those positions opened in 2015 and we’re going to see more in 2016 and 2017. When you look at 52 percent of the population at 55 to 65 years of age, we’re not immune to that in Hot Springs. We have a new utilities director, a new airport director will be coming on, a new sanitation director, a new chief of police will be coming, and theoretically, we have several people that are at the retirement portion of their careers in the next two to three years.
“So we need to look at a true succession plan, do some analysis of those positions, and make sure we have people within the organization that are eligible or in a position to move into some of those so we don’t lose their institutional knowledge as we move through that process,” he said.
Burrough said he feels “very positive” that the city will continue its efforts to secure additional water from lakes Ouachita and DeGray.
“I don’t think anyone has a better pulse on that than I do. We are encouraged by some of the events that are happening now and hope they continue as we move through the process. We still have a ways to go before we get an actual agreement, but things are looking better than they were just a few months ago,” he said.