Trio Vies for Springdale Mayoral Slot

When longtime Springdale Mayor Charles McKinney left office in 1998, it provided a political opportunity the city hadn’t seen for two decades. The popular mayor who served 16 years as an alderman before taking the mayor’s office in 1979, died in March.

Jerre Van Hoose, 64, a Springdale School Board member for 13 years, seized the opportunity and was elected in 1998. Four years later, he’s defending that seat against two challengers.

His opponents, both graduates of Springdale High School, seem to have come from opposite ends of the spectrum. They include a 38-year-old single mother who owns rental property and a 57-year-old native with 30 years of real estate and development experience, who also happens to serve on the city council.

Beck Campbell

Beck Campbell moved to Springdale when she was 7 years old. Other than a few years living in Fayetteville while earning a degree in sociology and criminology, she’s “never been far.” A divorced mother of four, with three still at home, Campbell decided to get more involved after a hard look at city demographics and other statistics.

At the time, she was also gathering information in a battle against a subdivision that was eventually denied. Campbell successfully argued against a proposed Lindsey Management apartment complex on a 47-acre tract of land at the Luvene Avenue and 40th Street intersection just over a year ago. Her arguments included a lot of information on how density affects the city and results of that research caused her concern, she explained.

“I really was disturbed at the numbers I was finding,” Campbell said. “We are in an area of Northwest Arkansas that is exploding, and Springdale is actually in some areas remaining stagnant, and in some areas we are declining.”

In a flyer Campbell is distributing about her campaign, she compares the city’s per capita income to that of its neighbors. It’s 17.2 percent less than Rogers’, and the flyer cites a 4 percent decline in owner-occupied housing units from 1990 and 2000.

But the first “warning sign” Campbell notes in the flyer is that 60 percent of Springdale’s growth has been Hispanic — an issue the city is ignoring, she said. The administration should be doing more to make sure its Hispanics understand city regulations and help acclimate them to the new environment, especially because Hispanics have “a much higher rate of poverty” than other races, she said.

The city needs to promote education, improve its infrastructure and recruit high-tech and other higher-paying jobs, Campbell said. Improving the looks of the city through a stronger code-enforcement program and setting higher expectations in recruiting new businesses are important steps she’d take to help do that, she said.

“Getting new businesses into Springdale is going to be a very difficult thing to do, especially since we’ve not done a very good job in the past,” she said.

At the same time, Campbell said the city needs stronger development regulations to protect the city’s preservation and its quality of life. But, she said, the city doesn’t need to “go overboard on the trees.”

Mike Overton

Mike Overton, a second-year alderman, lists two primary tenets: clean up the city, and provide a clear and accurate accounting system with an understandable budget.

“It really disturbs me that that’s the reputation that Springdale has of being an unattractive area and there’s really not any reason for it,” Overton said. “If we want this to be an attractive place to make a good impression on people, first of all we’ve got to start cleaning it up.”

The city doesn’t need to add any ordinances to clean up the city, but it needs to enforce the regulations it has. He explained that stiff policies with some consistency in the code enforcement department could straighten it out. If the city set an example of property owners who refuse to comply by charging a fee to have the work done and placing a lien on their property if it’s not done, there would be more compliance, he said.

“Right now we really don’t have a clear management system to take care of that,” he said.

In addition to making the city look better, Overton said, he’d like to see the city build frontage roads along Interstate 540 to attract more retail business.

“In order for a community to attract the business, you have to have the infrastructure in place and a place for a business to operate,” he said.

Overton said he doesn’t support impact fees for Springdale. It’s the responsibility of the community to provide infrastructure to attract business to the city, he said.

As mayor, Overton said, he would work to coordinate city departments so that goals are more uniform throughout the city. He said infrastructure should be developed to meet the needs of growth and attract economic development, and the school district should also be involved in that planning.

The city has a lot of talented, capable people, but they need to be coordinated, he said. Right now, the city is plagued with “gross inefficiency,” and nobody knows “who’s driving the bus,” he said.

He’s concerned about “not knowing how the tax dollars are being spent.” Overton said the city’s budgeting process is so cumbersome that nobody understands it.

Overton said his wife will take over management of his real estate agency if he’s elected.

Jerre Van Hoose

The first-term mayor mentions growth when asked how business has been in Springdale since he took office. The city’s growth in sales tax revenue isn’t keeping up with the growth in people served by those tax dollars, he said, and retail opportunities in Rogers and Fayetteville have drawn shoppers away from the city. In recent months, however, there have been more inquiries to the city from retailers, and he’s hoping that’s a sign of change.

The city would like to have more high-tech industry to attract higher-paying jobs, but there’s stiff competition for those firms, he said. “That’s on the agenda of every city in America,” he said.

Addressing another issue that’s come up since he took office, Van Hoose said he doesn’t think the city should follow Bentonville’s example and implement impact fees — at least not until clearer guidelines are set in stone on how they should be applied.

“It’s illogical that all the rest of us citizens should have to pay the bill for large improvements necessary to support that large growth,” he said.

“But we have to remember, too, that it’s developers, either home developers or commercial developers or industrial developers, that build cities. City hall doesn’t build cities.”

Changes in Springdale that Van Hoose also noted include:

• $30 million in capital improvement projects completed during his tenure. A number of those projects were planned prior to his taking office in 1999. The projects were funded through the dedication of 75 percent of revenue from the city’s one-cent sales tax.

• the merger of several city departments to create the Planning and Community Development Division.

• efforts to improve employee stability — a change in the city pay periods from twice monthly to every other week, the implementation of new 401K and 457 retirement plans and wage increases in the police and fire departments.

• A new information systems department also has been established since he took office. Van Hoose said city departments each had their own computer person or worked without one previously. Combining those talents under one umbrella is more efficient, he said.