The Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce is at the forefront of the campaign promoting the extension of the 0.625% countywide sales tax.
Its political action committee contributed $25,000 to the advocacy campaign last month, according to the December financial report the For Our Roads Now Committee filed with the Arkansas Ethics Commission last week.
But Hot Springs City Manager Bill Burrough said a conversation he had with County Judge Darryl Mahoney was the genesis for the Feb. 8 special election that will ask voters to extend the sales tax through June 2027.
It's secured $54.6 million in road bonds since July 2017, debt collections are expected to retire by the end of this year's first quarter. When Mahoney told Burrough the bonds would be paid off more than a year earlier than Stephens Inc. projected when it underwrote the debt in late 2016, the two chief executives discussed extending the sales tax to create a new revenue stream for the 1,000 miles of roads and more than 100 bridges the city and county maintain.
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"I said this may be a golden opportunity for us to make a difference in these streets," Burrough said Tuesday night at the town hall meeting the For Our Roads Now Committee held at the Garland County Library. "I wondered if we'd be able to extend that five years and try to bring that money for our local streets. We started exploring that.
"We asked the chamber PAC what they thought about it. We met with Fifty for the Future and asked what they thought about it. We asked other local businesses what they thought about it, and everybody seemed to think it was a good idea. That's how this campaign started.
"It didn't start with the chamber. It didn't start with Fifty for the Future. It didn't start with Oaklawn. It started with a phone call conversation between he and I. If folks get upset about us trying to extend this and make a difference in our people's lives, they need to know it was us who did that," Burrough said.
If voters elect to extend the sales tax, the proceeds wouldn't secure more debt but would flow directly to the city and county road funds, generating a projected $42 million for the county and $24 million for the city over five years.
Burrough and Mahoney, who are listed as members of the advocacy group on the statement of organization the committee filed with the Ethics Commission last month, see the sales tax extension as the latest opportunity to solve a long-standing issue. Soon after moving into the executive suites of City Hall and the county courthouse in late 2018 and early 2019, the two set out to resolve the utilities issue that had divided the city and county for more than a decade.
They presented an interlocal agreement to the Hot Springs Board of Directors and Garland County Quorum Court ending the city's restrictions on water and sewer access in the unincorporated area of the county in return for the county providing the city a per capita share of sales tax growth generated by the 0.50% countywide sales tax that supports the county's general and solid waste funds. The city board and quorum court ratified the agreement last year.
Burrough and Mahoney have turned their focus to roads, an issue they said elicits the most complaints from their respective constituencies. The sales tax will expire this summer if voters decide not to extend it.
"We're charged with coming up with solutions for problems," Burrough said. "This is a solution that I don't know we'll ever see again. When this tax goes away, I don't know if we'll ever be able to get a sales tax for streets. We pay this now. There's no increase in costs, but it is an increase in our quality of life."
If voters endorse the extension, city and county-maintained roads and bridges will be the next public good the 0.625% sales tax benefits. It secured $41 million in bonds that financed the construction of the Garland County Detention Center that opened in 2015 when voters first authorized the sales tax in an October 2011 special election, addressing a public safety issue caused by inmate crowding at the old detention center.
It secured $54.6 million in debt that provided the county's $30 million contribution to the $79 million extension of the King Expressway after voters reauthorized the levy in a June 2016 special election, cutting travel time between Hot Springs Village and Hot Springs when the 5.82-mile extension opens later this year.
"We made a promise, and we kept the promise," Burrough said. "We built the jail. We built the expressway. If this passes, in five years you'll see a game changer in Garland County and the city of Hot Springs."
He said the $24 million the sales tax is projected to raise for the city over five years could overlay 60% of the 300 miles of roads the city maintains, provided paving costs revert to the $134,000 average per mile from the previous five years. The city's per-mile cost was $187,000 last year.
Mahoney noted the ballot language pledges the sales tax revenue to existing roads and bridges, not more infrastructure the city and county would struggle to maintain.
"We're not looking to increase our infrastructure and build something else we can't take care of," he said. "We're not doing a good job of taking care of what we've got, because we can't. By ballot title, we made sure it has to be used on existing roads and bridges."