Chamber closer to hiring new president

The executive committee of the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce has interviewed five candidates for the open chamber president position and has forwarded two of those to a “community advisors” panel, Roger Meek said Friday.

Meek, chairman of the chamber board of directors and a manager at Coca-Cola Bottling of Fort Smith, along with Jim Patridge (Bancorpsouth), Brian Hastings (Hiram Walker-Pernod Ricard) and Larry Bates (Simmons First National Bank) are the chamber’s executive committee.

The chamber did not conduct a public search to fill the position left open Jan. 30. Sandy Sanders, who Meek said did not apply for the job and was not one of the five candidates interviewed, serves as interim chamber president.

The six-member community panel — who Meek would not identify “out of courtesy” to their willingness to serve — will probably review the two candidates within the next three weeks.

“I think they will give us candid and honest feedback as to what they think … as to what they think is best for the chamber,” Meek said of the community advisors.

Based on the requests for complete confidentiality from the candidates, Meek declined to divulge if the residency of the two candidates.

Unless the community advisors reject both candidates, their recommendation will be forwarded to the chamber board for a vote. Meek said he told the chamber board at a Mar. 19 regular meeting that they would be instrumental in the hiring of a new president.

“This is not our (executive committee) hire. The ultimate people that will do that will be the chamber board of directors,” Meek told The City Wire. “We’ve got too many good and smart people on this board to just ask them to rubber-stamp this.”

However, if the community advisors reject both applicants and recommend a broader search, then “we’ll start over again,” Meek said.

And the same goes for the chamber board.

“I told them (chamber board members) if they don’t like our choices, then we will go to round two,” Meek said.

Round two would involve a nationwide search, he said.

Barring any problems with schedules or other issues, Meek said he was hopeful a new president could be announced in late April or early May. Meek also stressed that the process was not an attempt by the executive committee to “shirk its duty” of finding a chamber president.

“I don’t want to be accused with this (new hire) that it’s just the old status quo, or small circle of us running things. This is too important a hire for just a small group of people,” Meek said.