Director: Government change talk will not impact city administrator search

Fort Smith Director Lee Kemp is not overly concerned that an announced push to seek a change in Fort Smith’s form of government will have a negative impact on the ongoing effort to hire a city administrator.

The board fired Carl Geffken as city administrator in December 2024. Geffken was hired to be the city administrator in March 2016 with a salary of $175,000. His annual salary when he was fired was $204,513. Deputy City Administrator Jeff Dingman has been the interim administrator since Geffken’s firing.

Instead of hiring a national search firm, the board on Aug. 19, 2025, voted to have the city’s human resources department post the job on the city’s website. The board also named Kemp as the board’s liaison with the city administrator search. After that effort failed, the board in early March agreed to work with Daytona Beach Shores, Fla.-based Colin Baenziger & Associates (CBA) to conduct a nationwide search for a city administrator.

In Fort Smith’s form of government, the city administrator is the CEO, managing an annual budget of more than $300 million and more than 1,000 city employees who provide safety, sanitation, water, sewer, and other key services to a city with a population of around 90,000.

Kemp has said early conversations with the search firm and Eric Garvin, the city’s human resources director, indicate it is possible to have an administrator hired by mid-July. He said he and Garvin have a conference call Thursday morning with CBA to discuss moving forward with the process.

During the board’s Tuesday (March 10) study session, Shayne McKinney, who has said he is running for mayor, announced that he and others will seek enough signatures to place an item on the November ballot seeking to change the city to a mayor-council form of government.

Kemp told Talk Business & Politics that those seeking to change the form of government will have a “very big uphill battle” when residents learn more about that will mean. The form would place the mayor as the city’s CEO, and require election of a city clerk, city attorney, and city treasurer. The elected officers would have four-year terms. The city would still have a seven-member board, or city council. The city mayor now is largely ceremonial, with a primary role of presiding over city board meetings.

Kemp suggested that people explaining why they are mad about some city decisions may not be enough to convince a majority of voters that a change of government is in the city’s best long-term interests.

Kemp doesn’t believe publicity about an attempt to change the form of government will have a chilling effect on candidate applications. He said people in civic administration understand that government change is an acceptable risk of the profession.

“My hunch is that these individuals who are putting their names out there for these things, have realized probably this form of government is always at question, and that it’s sort of the business norm that there would be some group continually in the back of the room that want to lobby for a change of government,” he said.

He added that qualified candidates will be attracted to the “economic positives” of the city and the region.

“There is a lot of development around the city of Fort Smith, that I would think somebody would want to come here and prove themselves to be a strong candidate for administration of government,” Kemp said. “That’s my take.”

Fort Smith attorney Joey McCutchen, who has been an advocate for a form of government change, said he has provided some help to McKinney.

“I support mayoral candidate Shayne McKinney’s petition to change the form of government to a Mayoral-Council form of municipal government,” McCutchen said. “Under this new form of government, the mayor will directly report and be accountable to the people of Fort Smith through the election process. As we have seen time after time with this current form of government, there is an unelected bureaucrat who has been allowed to make unauthorized, important decisions behind closed doors.”