City Council’s regular agenda schedule was light leading up to the November local elections and as I highlighted in my last post for anyone looking for more frequent updates and if you are on Facebook I encourage you to join the Springdale Community Group.
At last count the Facebook Community Group had over 950 members and is very active – with updates everyday sharing goings on in Springdale and some of our neighboring communities. The group is well moderated and generally has a very positive vibe to it. Feel free to tag me in any questions over there too, I try to keep up with it as much as possible.
As for recent meetings, there are two items I wanted to highlight:
- Surplus Property Sales
- Local Elections
Surplus City Property Sales
As comes up from time to time the City often finds itself with equipment that is passed its useful life and needs to dispose of it. For items that still might have value the City tries to donate it or sell it to recover some of the cost. Typically donated items are public safety equipment (such as fire fighter safety gear) to other smaller communities that might be able to use it but may not be able to afford new equipment. Surplus that may be useful for everyday folks often finds itself up for public auction on govdeals.com. This can be everything from old software manuals and office supplies to out of service police cruisers – in past surplus sales we even sold our old firetruck this way! Before equipment can be released it shows up at Council for approval. Another round of old equipment was released and is available online. This round included some older vehicles as well including our old Kia Soul / with a DARE program wrap as well as other cars. Not 100% on it but I heard some of our older police cruisers (well used and now too expensive to maintain) have ended up at a movie production company – so one of those exciting chase (and crash?) movie scene may have starred our former cruisers.
Local Elections
November 7th Springdale had its latest local election – up for a vote were the 3 At-Large City Council Seats as well as the election for Mayor.
While the Mayor election only had one person running – current City Council Vice-President Lawrence Hawkins the At-Large Council had 7 people running for the 3 seats. With only 2 of those 7 being current members running for re-election.
For the first tie in a long while all 3 At-Large Council Members will be new. The final seat was won by a margin of only 21 votes over the closest incumbent!? (and the next closest after that – another first timer – was only another 12 votes from there!?) Mr. Gleaves served as the Vice Chair for the Springdale Board of Zoning Appeals (a Board I was the Chairman of for the past several years) and ran one of the most ‘full contact’ campaigns the City has seen maybe ever. He (and his supporters) were everywhere – talking to anyone who would listen and then in turn listen to what was on their minds. I was very impressed with how engaged his team was those whole time leading up to the election. Mrs. McFarland is a newcomer to City business but in no way new to the City. I have seen her work and volunteer with so many youth and family groups including the Springdale Sailfish, Springdale Youth Boosters (SYB), and the Springdale PTA. More on her is online at her website https://www.michelleforspringdale.com/. I don’t have anything to share for the final new Council Member Mrs. Webster. Throughout the campaign she was selective in who she would engage with – when she was in my neighborhood talking with folks our house was skipped for a visit as well as not sending or leaving any campaign materials. A bit of a surprise as the last time her husband ran for mayor and stopped by the house to see what was on our minds we even put up one of his campaign signs up.
I look forward to looking with everyone on Council the next 2 years to keep Springdale moving in the right direction.
If I can answer any questions just drop me a line or tag me on Facebook in the Springdale Community Group!
What do you think? Let your elected officials know!
email and phone numbers of all your City Council members are online – https://www.springdale.org/city-council/page/meet-your-city-council
and
City Administration as well –
https://www.springdale.org/mayor-clerk-council
or
Connect with your Neighbors –
https://www.facebook.com/groups/333111242219243
Related Links
Past Minutes and Agendas: https://www.springdale.org/meetings/recent
Upcoming meetings: https://www.springdale.org/meetings
Request Public Records: https://www.springdale.org/living-springdale/page/public-records-access