As your Vice Mayor and Ward 4 Alderman for the past seven years, I now ask you to join me as I run for the office of mayor for the city of Fayetteville, Arkansas.
As a fourth-generation Arkansan who has spent the last thirty-five years of my life in Fayetteville, I am extremely excited about my campaign to represent the citizens of Fayetteville as your next mayor.
I officially announced my candidacy on Sunday, March 9, on the Fayetteville Square — the historic center of our community. I have a vision for Fayetteville that is born of my love for our city, and I am ready to pour my heart and soul into the position of mayor — all day, every day. I am running for one reason and one reason only: TO SERVE THE PEOPLE — ALL OF THE PEOPLE!
Over the next nine months we will use this website to update you on our campaign, provide detailed information about my campaign platform, answer your questions, and hopefully garner your support in this 2008 mayoral campaign.
Fayetteville has a unique past and a promising future. I have a vision for our future, and I need your help to make that vision a reality. Together, we can make great things happen.
Timely Topic: Fayetteville High School
A very popular question these days seems to be, “What should we do about Fayetteville High School?” As a private citizen of the City of Fayetteville, I most certainly have an opinion. I want the best educational system, environment, and facilities possible for our children of Fayetteville, and I would like to see the close ties with the University maintained. I believe that can be done best without moving our facilities to the fringes of our city limits. That would be my opinion as a private citizen. However, when I am asked, how I feel about the High School as Mayor, I have to take a different approach to the question. What I believe personally, at that point, is totally irrelevant.
As the Mayor of Fayetteville, it would be my charge to follow policy and do what the citizens of the City direct. The 2025 Plan is a set of goals developed through citizen input and voted on by the City Council. They are meant to be a set of guidelines to follow as the City grows and moves towards the year 2025. Included in that Plan is a guideline that directly discourages “sprawl” and, instead, encourages in fill within the City. I strongly supported the 2025 Plan when the Council passed it and I still do. It is a good document and a direct reflection of what our citizen's want in terms of development. It is from that point of view I would have to filter any question regarding new development.
Using the 2025 Plan as a guide, I would have to argue placing a new High School on the fringe of the City would be a direct violation of those guidelines. As we have clearly seen with the opening of the Owl Creek Middle School, development follows schools. Sounds simple but it is anything but. A school, the residential and commercial development that surely follows requires serious infrastructure including roads as well as water and sewer service, solid waste, and police and fire coverage. None of those are cheap and all of these items would fall on the City to provide. In 2003 the city conducted a roads and transportation study, that stated we were currently 44 Million dollars behind in road infrastructure and that we would need approximately an additional 81 million dollars of investment in order to keep pace with the anticipated growth and development over the next 15 to 20 years. Remember this is 2003 dollars. With numbers like this we need to be very conscious of where development goes and what infrastructure cost is associated with the development. The City Engineer had told public citizens inquiring about the future cost associated with the proposed new school location that approximately 10 to 15 million dollars of additional investment would be needed for infrastructure should this become the school location. ALL of those expenses would fall to the City. In the end, it is still called “sprawl” not in-fill and it has real cost that must be considered.
A far better question than where should the High School be built would be how can the City and the School Board work more closely in the future? It is the job of the School Board to plan where new schools will be needed. It is the job of the City to help direct ALL development within the City as wisely as possible following our guidelines. I want to work to bridge this gap so the placement of new educational facilities in the future can happen much more easily and within the guiding development principals of the City. I want to make the City and the School Board a win-win combination where all of our citizens are served without ignoring or violating development guidelines.
April 21, 2008
