Two Votes Tell Tale Of Poor Campaigns For Big Projects

Recently two separate regional issues went to the local voters, asking for minor and temporary raises in the local sales taxes to construct projects needed by each entity.

Both projects were soundly defeated at the ballot boxes.

One does not need to dig very deeply into these “asks of the voters” to see why.

The one-eighth cent sales tax asked by Benton County for funds to build a new courts building and rehab the aging 1928 courthouse failed by more than a two-toone margin.

Down in Fort Smith, that city sought a nine-month, sales tax to finish the $50 million U.S. Marshal Museum, already under construction. It, too, failed miserably. Why?

It was not the current state of the Arkansas economy. While not exactly robust, the economy is doing well, according to most of the indicators for Benton County and the city of Fort Smith.

First, let’s stay close to home and talk about the Benton County court’s building issue. Benton County, which is to receive another circuit judgeship from the Arkansas Legislature in the next few days, is out of courtroom space.

The courtrooms in Benton County’s Circuit Courts are housed in three separate spaces.

There is little room in the 1928 courthouse on the downtown Square in Bentonville for expansion. The 91-year-old space desperately needs a rehab as the grand old building was not wired, plumbed or built for the needs of a 2019era public building.

The adjacent courtrooms, built from a former U.S. Post Office and other structures, also are inadequate.

Barry Moehring, the Benton County judge, wisely undertook a campaign of going out into the county and talking with voters prior to the vote. I have to wonder why, with the information on hand, the voters responded so negatively to Moehing’s public meetings and voted down this project. The plans were not so grand or ornate to raise public scorn.

The issue that failed to get raised, perhaps, was safety.

Pure and simple, the safety of the public, those involved in trials, judges, juries and those working in the courtrooms and downtown area, is at risk — each and every day a courtroom proceeding is going on in Benton County.

Why yes, there are precautions for safety in place now.

But those are nothing like the barriers, entryways and staging area for prisoners and even the security of the public entrances for the public, planned in the new courts building.

Public safety is a must. The new building presented a way to transport, hold and move prisoners to the courtrooms in a safe and humane way.

Today there is a constant recipe for disaster lurking each and every time a prisoner is transported from the county jail to the courtrooms.

But those concerns and the concerns for the employees of the Benton County Courthouse and the public in and out of that structure on a daily basis as taxpayers, jurors or just citizens are still at a high risk level.

Lastly the turnout — a paltry 6 percent — falls on those wishing for these improvements to succeed. There needs to have been a better get-out-the-vote campaign in this failed attempt.

On to Fort Smith … and a similar ill-fated campaign to finish the long-suffering U.S. Marshal Museum. It was, as both sides finally admitted, to be a private constructed project — not a municipal or county funded project.

Raising the funds for the project has, as expected, hit some snags. The city voters were, I think, looking for a reason to support this effort, but no reason was ever extended by the U.S. Marshal Museum fundraisers.

If the museum had, say, extended its hand such as free admission to all Forth Smith residents — for a year, two years, heck, even five years from the end of the tax — it might have been win-win.

Instead a local attorney, who seems to relish pointing out the obvious flaws in the elected and non-elected folks in the River Valley, won again.

But Fort Smith was the real loser.

And so was Benton County on very desperately needed courthouse plans.

MAYLON RICE IS A FORMER JOURNALIST WHO WORKED FOR SEVERAL NORTHWEST ARKANSAS PUBLICATIONS. HE CAN BE REACHED VIA EMAIL AT MAYLONTRICE@YAHOO.COM. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.