RITA running short on cash

Money is “getting tight” for the Regional Intermodal Transportation Authority (RITA), but according to RITA board member Keith Hefner, president and CEO of Citizens Bank (Van Buren), “It should be tight if we’re spending to the purposes of this organization.”

RITA formed in 2009 thanks in large part to the efforts of then-Rep. Rick Green, R-Van Buren, who successfully pushed legislation during the 87th Arkansas General Assembly that provided an initial $375,000 to get the organization off the ground.

According to the Western Arkansas Planning and Development District (WAPDD) website, those funds were estimated to have run out in August 2011, but the organization has been sustained through local support. (WAPDD oversees RITA.)

The governments of Fort Smith and Van Buren as well as Crawford and Sebastian counties have helped fund RITA with $25,000 each, but that number is about to double in 2013, and Sebastian County Judge David Hudson wants to know where the “five-year plan” is for RITA to become self-sustaining.

“Each government entity needs to know what the expectations are. Fifty thousand dollars in 2013 is not $25,000 in 2013. We (Sebastian County) will do the best we can to come up with $50,000 out of our budget, but in today’s economy, that’s a lot of money,” Hudson said.

RITA board member and Chaffee Crossing Executive Director Ivy Owen agreed that RITA needed an exit strategy.

“It needs to be something we can try to hit. I wasn’t involved in the five-year Chaffee plan, but I know it had an exit strategy for the government to get out of it, and it worked,” Owen said.

RITA Board Member Rusty Myers assured that “it can certainly be done, and needs to be. It’s not that we haven’t given thought to that, but we need to qualify it and put it in print.”

RITA ended 2011 with a cash balance of $179,764. Six months later that number had fallen to $91,068 due largely to $66,000 in administrative costs and a lack of income.
At the end of 2012, the ending cash balance is projected to be $4,912.

RITA faces $50,000 in costs related to the Northwest Arkansas Regional Port project along with a $36,000 engineering contract for economic development purposes, and another $132,000 in additional WAPDD administrative costs, in 2013.