Morton to not run for Fort Smith Board reelection

Fort Smith City Director Lavon Morton said Monday (July 15) will not seek reelection to the Ward 2 Board of Directors seat he holds. Morton was first appointed to the position in April 2019, and was elected in 2020.

He was up for election to the position in 2020, but because none of the four candidates who filed for an open position on the Fort Smith Board of Directors in 2020 were opposed, they were all certified by the Sebastian County Election Commission and declared the winners in each of their respective seats.

Morton owns houses in Ward 3 and Ward 4 in the city but lives in Ward 3. He said he is hoping to sell his house in Ward 3 next year and it would make no sense for him to be re-elected to the position, sell his house and move, and then have to resign from the board because he lived in the wrong ward.

“For the remaining five and half months I am on the board, I want to work really hard with the board and administration to come up with a sensible plan to present to the (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) EPA and the (U.S. Department of Justice) that can get us more time on the consent decree,” Morton said.

After years of failing to maintain water and sewer infrastructure to federal standards, Fort Smith entered into a federal consent decree with the EPA and Department of Justice in late 2014. The consent decree required the city to make an estimated $480 million worth of sewer upgrades over the course of 12 years. On May 7, 2020, the EPA and the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) agreed that the city proved that the sewer improvement program will be “inordinately expensive, accordingly, qualified for an additional five years of implementation time.” The city received an additional five years added to the 12 in the order to implement changes.

Along with the five year extension, the EPA and ADEQ agreed to provide additional flexibility with certain interim program deadlines that will allow Fort Smith the ability to stretch out expensive system improvements over the whole of the remaining program implementation schedule, according to the update to the decree provided by the city in 2020. The city now has until January 2032 to complete all consent agenda required improvements. City Administrator Carl Geffken has said ideally the city would like to extend that to 2042.

Morton said the EPA and Justice Department have indicated they could add another three years to the time, but the city is asking for eight.

“In the five years since I’ve been on the board, we have had no progress on working out something with the EPA and Justice Department on a schedule. I am hoping we can,” Morton said.

Morton also said he wants to work with administration and the board to find a solution that will allow the board to meet its debt covenants for 2025 with the city’s water department.

The Fort Smith Board of Directors on July 11 voted to increase water rates for all city residents and businesses and contract water customers like the City of Van Buren. The board has been discussing the increase since late 2023 after it received data showing stating that a rate increase was needed in order for the department to cover operating and maintenance costs as well cover the city’s debt service requirements.

The city has approximately $180 million worth of revenue bonds outstanding. When those bonds were issued, an authorized ordinance indicated that the city will maintain net revenues available for debt service at 110% of what the city’s operation and maintenance expense and debt service requirements are, the city’s Director of Finance Andrew Richards said.

In 2023, the city only raised 108% in revenues. For the first six months of 2024, utility department revenues were $2.916 million short of covering expenses even though the sewer department was $1.707 million in the black, Richards said. The rate increase passed July 11 will not allow the city to make the needed 110% in 2024, but a second increase in January could allow the city to reach that in 2025.

“If we work as a group, we can devise solutions that can work,” Morton said.

Although he will be stepping off the board Dec. 31, Morton said he would always do whatever he could to make sure the city continues to move forward and realize every good thing it can.

Three candidates – Russ Bragg, Lee Kemp, and Carl Nevin – have announced that they are running for the Ward 3 seat. This year, the four ward positions – Positions 1-4 – on the Fort Smith Board of Directors are up for election. Jarred Rego, who is in his first term in Ward 1, has said he will run for re-election, as has George Catsavis, who has served as the director of Ward 4 since first elected to the position in 2010. André Good, who represents Ward 2, was first elected to the board in 2008.

Candidates for the Fort Smith Board of Directors must be at least 21, a registered voter in Fort Smith, must have been a resident for at least six months prior to filing, and reside within the ward in which they are a candidate. The city director candidate filing period this year is July 31 to noon on Aug. 7. Under a new state law, in the city administrator form of government, candidates will fall in line with all other forms of government whereby the filing period is later in the year than years past and no primary is held, Sheri Gard, Fort Smith City Clerk has said.

All candidates go directly to the general election in November. The general election is Nov. 5. If no candidate obtains a clear majority, the top two candidates for the position will then go to the runoff election in December, which will be held on Dec. 3.