Library property nominated for list of historic places
Facility fails to score high enough to secure grant for improvements
The Forrest City Public Library has been nominated for the National Register of Historic Places.
The property will be considered by the state review board of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, Library Director Arlisa Harris told board members during their monthly meeting Monday.
"Who did all this research?" asked board member Judy Sweet after Harris shared the registration form for the library with board members.
"Arkansas Heritage," answered Harris.
"The idea behind this is wonderful," said Sweet.
Sweet expressed worry, however, that the listing might interfere with improvements to the building.
Harris explained that she and library board president Lindsay Hodges asked those questions of the Arkansas Heritage group and were told that due to the improvements being done to the added portion of the building, the listing would not interfere with improvements to the facility.
"We did make sure to ask about that," said Harris.
She also told the board that regrettably, however, the library does not meet the threshold for consideration for the state’s outdoor recreation grant program this year.
"Applications were scored using a priority rating system and ranked from the highest to lowest scores based on the papers I put in your packets," said Harris.
Harris told the board the library would have had the required 32 points for consideration had the program’s board elected to count items listed under the community outreach and public meeting portions of the priority rating system. Instead, the library’s application scored 28. The public outreach had a possible additional six points and the public meeting a possibility of four points.
"They decided not to count them due to the pandemic, according to the paperwork," said Harris.
Harris also said the board this year awarded points to applicants with a parks committee, but a parks and recreation director would not count for points moving forward. That item would have awarded the library's application an additional two points.
Harris said that in total, due to rules and policy changes that applicants were not made aware of, the library was not awarded up to 12 points that would have pushed the application to a possible 40 points.
The priority rating paperwork also shows the application received zero out of a possible five points due to the applicant not having received a grant from the parks group within the past year, and zero out of two points due to the applicant not currently having any open projects through the state parks program.
Harris said that because the library had to apply for the grant through the city, the current park grant project at Stuart Springs Park cost the application points.
"I got an email that stated having an open grant was really one of the main reasons we didn't get enough points to get invited to the grant hearing, and