The Morning News
Local News for Northwest Arkansas
Candidates, Public Point Fingers At Coody
By Skip Descant
THE MORNING NEWS
FAYETTEVILLE -- Improving infill development and preventing sprawl seemed to be the common mantra mayoral candidates agreed upon during Thursday night's debate. But everyone seemed to be taking a different path to get there.
"Build a box around the city," Lioneld Jordan said. "And then infill that box."
Jordan, a Fayetteville City Council member for Ward 4, wants to use a graduated scale for impact fees as a way to encourage growth within the city. Impact fees -- costs developers pay for infrastructure such as water and sewer lines -- would increase as development spread farther out.
Sami Sutton, a University of Arkansas college student taking her first stab at elected office, says the city should build upward.
Incumbent Mayor Dan Coody cited the city's 2025 development plan as indication Fayetteville is developing in an appropriate fashion.
"We're heading in the right direction, but we're not there yet," Coody remarked, carefully taking the middle road.
After nearly an hour and a half of questions drafted by the Fayetteville Council of Neighborhoods, the questioning opened up to the standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 people packed into the community center at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Most of the some half-dozen crowd questions were phrased more as critiques of the current administration. One woman asked about what's commonly referred to as "the big hole," the downtown site where the Eastside Development company plans to built a hotel. The site has sat empty for months. The same development team is planning a huge 1,000-acre development on the outskirts of town, complete with a 240-acre regional park. How, the woman asked, should the city -- more specifically, the mayor -- make the developers do what they say they will.
Most candidates simply said the developers need to finish the job, but gave few specifics around how to hold anyone's feet to the fire. Jordan, along with candidates Steve Clark and Sutton, diverted the conversation to what they called a "toxic dump." Jordan was making a reference to a 33-acre expired landfill on the SouthPass site. According to the Fayetteville planning staff and the developers, the site would not be developed for programmed use such as a soccer field, but would be left to "passive recreation."
But that's not the way Jordan presented it.
"I don't want my grandchildren playing on some sort of toxic dump," he remarked. Jordan also took a moment to accept responsibility for voting in favor of the establishing a tax increment financing district for the downtown hotel project. The districts are incentive programs many communities use to attract business interests.
"I made a mistake on that. I'll admit that," Jordan said. He added he does not intend to support SouthPass.
"It's not a toxic waste dump," Coody retorted, noting the site was used to dump household garbage and building materials in the 1960s and '70s. "It's not a problem."
Coody was critical of "all this misinformation where all our kids are gonna die if they go play soccer."
Another questioner wanted to know who should hold the blame for the increased cost of the new $186 million Westside Wastewater Treatment Plant. Again, everyone pointed their finger at Coody.
Eilers, however, went a little easier and said, "I see it as a shared responsibility between mayor and council."
Jordan, reaching to one of his father's old sayings, said "a fish rots from the head down," adding, "the buck stops with the mayor."
"I would take full responsibility and not pat myself on the back for a job well done," said Adam Fire Cat, to a room of chuckles.
Cat, dressed in a neat black bow tie and vest and with a pair of red-shaded sunglasses hanging around his neck, may have been the candidate who offered the most humor during the evening. For a question aimed at what qualifications and education a mayor should have, Cat gave a long discussion about motivation, and then finished with, "I can talk all day about doing something, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get up off my ass and do it."
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