Brainstorming session helps city prioritize
City officials met for a brainstorming session to develop priorities for the city last Thursday.
Mayor Peter Christie and several city council members spoke with Michael Brown, a consultant with Fayetteville-based consultation firm Insight Leadership Group. City department heads were also present.
After discussing the city and its needs with council members and viewing results from a poll conducted by the city, Brown said he intends to bring together common desires between citizens and city leadership to help develop a strategy for the city to move forward.
Brown said he typically works with private enterprises and consultation like this is fairly new for a municipality to pursue.
Christie said he found the exercise helpful.
“This was an excellent session,” he said.
While it’s obvious the stump dump fire is a top priority for the city, Christie said, and officials are working on daily, this exercise should produce a set of priorities for city staff to work on.
“We’ll put together staff and go through it,” he said.
Other pieces of the puzzle include the city’s comprehensive plan, which has been in progress for some time, as well as a viable plan to fix Sunset Drive.
While seeking input, Brown said that he looked for consensus among the city officials and the respondents to the city’s poll.
The poll, which was posted to the city’s website and social media in October of last year, drew 728 responses, with typical respondents aged 35 to 64.
The largest chunk of respondents were retirees at more than 40 percent, followed by sales, managers and directors which made up just under 30 percent of respondents.
Top public priorities shown by this poll included quality of life, governance, public finance, economic development, public services and growth management, in that order.
While 81 percent of respondents follow the city on social media, 63 percent reported never attending a city council meeting and 24 percent have never contacted any city department.
A solid 93 percent of respondents said they would welcome new businesses and 80 percent reported they are not satisfied with commercial services available in Bella Vista.
The largest chunk of residents, at 25 percent, reported getting their news from Facebook, while 19 percent and 18 percent reported reading news in POA publications and the city website, respectively. Television and the daily newspaper makes up 13 percent of respondents’ news, while 10 percent reported reading
and 15 percent indicated other news sources.
The presented poll results also included the top three answers residents gave when asked for something that should be considered a priority, which included commercial development, get rid of the POA and non-city issues like golf fees.
City council members who took the same poll indicated their top priorities were quality of life, economic development, growth management, public finance, governance and public services, in that order.
Council member Doug Fowler said it’s important to bring in more commercial services because right now, Bella Vistans leave town to access a lot of services, including food and entertainment.
Council member Linda Lloyd said that, while she would like to see the city grow she doesn’t want it to lose its character. She’d like to avoid chain restaurants, she said, and a hotel or motel would be welcome but should be tasteful.
“The thing that is most important to me about Bella Vista is that it retain its unique character and not morph into Bentonville or Rogers,” she said.
Lloyd said she’s also concerned that growth could lead to a drop in quality of life — for instance, if Community Development Services has to focus on increasing housing permits, the department may not have the manpower to provide adequate code enforcement.
Mayor Peter Christie said that the city is certainly growing and officials need to be ready for it.
“We all acknowledge that there’s going to be growth, we all acknowledge that we have to manage the growth,” he said.