Future Fort Smith members focused on reviewing, updating comprehensive plan

Members of the Future Fort Smith Committee agreed Monday (March 11) that the Future Fort Smith Comprehensive Plan is still a quality guide for the City of Fort Smith, even if it does need a little tweaking.

At Monday’s meeting, the committee discussed what was needed to make the comprehensive plan more current for the needs of Fort Smith including getting input from key players who were absent when the plan was first developed as well from more of Fort Smith’s residents.

“Due to significant citywide development over the last 10 years, aspects of the plan have become out of date and potentially lack a true representation of Fort Smith,” Future Fort Smith board members said in a review of the plan.

The Future Fort Smith Comprehensive Plan contains goals, policies, and actions that define and support a common vision and purpose. It sets a direction that is used by the City of Fort Smith to proactively manage future change, according to the city’s website. The plan was completed almost 10 years ago and the committee was put into place to make sure the plan was not forgotten. In 2019, the committee updated the plan’s completion matrix.

“Some of the information is dated. How we can get that updated might be a little more complex, but think we can do that,” said Timothy Varner, committee chair.

Rocky Walker, committee member said for starters the committee needs new data of who Fort Smith is now. Then they need to make certain to reach as many people as possible in order to see what the goals of the city are.

“Obviously in the plan, we’ve got what the people wanted, and we did this 10 years ago, and obviously that is going to have changed by now,” Walker said. “But we need to do that without having to do a whole new plan. That’s cumbersome. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of money.”

The board discussed establishing more surveys for citizens but expressed concern that it is always the same people responding to the surveys. It was decided surveys could be a part of the information gathering, but the committee also needed to host meetings that would attract a variety of residents and go to places of employment so they could meet directly with residents.

The committee agreed that in areas of community consensus, they need to add a community Top 10 list. This should be collected, reviewed and shared annually to supplement annual city department reports in analyzing where the city stands on keeping up with the goals the citizens set. They also said a database of completed goals should be kept up-to-date on the city’s website.

They also would like to use polling or focus groups to supplement current public assessment of the city’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In order to make a better assessment of future land use, the committee said key players who were not active in originating the plan 10 years ago – including the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education (ACHE), Ebbing Air National Guard Base, and the U.S. Marshals Museum – need to be brought to the table to help determine goals.

“We need to develop a coalition, get their Top 10 list as well. Let these agencies contribute,” said committee member Zena Marshall. “They have investments, and they have thoughts on what it can become. We can look at what is their Top 10 in comparison to that of the  citizens.”

In economic development, the committee said it needs to incorporate ACHE, new Fort Smith schools and existing schools’ new facilities and programs into the goals and responsible parties. It also wants to look at businesses that have closed in the past few years, the reasons why they closed and what can be done to keep businesses in Fort Smith. A key component of this is whether it is something the city can do or is it simply supply and demand, Varner said.

“Obviously during COVID, we lost a lot of small businesses nationwide. Some of them have come back, some have not,” Walker said. “It’s like a fire. When a field burns, eventually it will come back greener. … There will be a new generation of small businesses that will allow individuals to have their own businesses. … We just have to be a city that is friendly to small business and that fosters that germination of business growth.”

Economic development also includes growing the employment base and retaining existing employment anchors. Committee member Ashley Gerhardson said one key thing would be to get fiber optic networks through the city.

“All the small towns around us have it, but we still don’t have it in places, including at (Chaffee Crossing). That hurts us,” Gerhardson said.

Economic development also needs a broad range of housing alternatives, continuing work on blight in the city that keeps it from being attractive to visitors and an assessment of the tax base, the group decided. And in order for the plan to be a comprehensive guide to the city, it needs to not focus on just one area, but on all of the city, the group agreed.

“Fort Smith is a lot of communities. We need to look at certain areas, look at what they are missing or what they need to be part of the larger community,” Varner said.

The board set a meeting for April 1 to further define other aspects and how to best update the Comprehensive Plan.